How to Automatically Reschedule Overdue Todoist Tasks to Today

If we’re not careful, it’s easy for overdue tasks to pile up fast, especially over a busy weekend or after a few days of firefighting. And, when it comes to getting back on track, if you want to move them all to today, the only option you have natively is to manually push the dates forward yourself.

So, in this post, we’re going to look at how you can set up automatic rescheduling for Todoist tasks via Doify. By the end of it, you’ll have configured a Doify rule that automatically reschedules overdue tasks to the current date with no manual intervention required.

Why Todoist’s Manual Reschedule Isn’t Enough

As any Todoist user knows, you can update due dates manually, just select multiple tasks, right-click, and pick a new date. And, when you have a backlog of overdue tasks all moving to the same date, this process can save some time.

But the issue is that it still requires you to think about it and actually do it.

Every time your overdue tasks pile up, you have to notice them, decide to update them, and then actually reschedule them. And, for some workflows and users, that friction adds up and is unacceptable. So, for those users, being able to automatically reschedule tasks to the current date is a big deal.

The issue is Todoist that doesn’t support this level of automation natively, so users have to find workarounds.

The first option is a generic automation tool like Zapier or IFTTT. Both can connect to Todoist and run automations on a schedule, but they’re general-purpose tools not built around Todoist-specific workflows. The pricing is also another problem. Zapier’s free tier allows 100 tasks per month, and the cheapest paid plan after that is $29.99 per month, which is more than most people spend on Todoist itself.

A second option is open-source scripts from places like GitHub. There are a handful of these available that will poll your Todoist account and reschedule overdue tasks as needed. But they also require a level of technical knowledge to set up, host, and maintain. For some, that’s fine, but for a lot of people, it makes this option non-viable.

So, both of the most popular solutions have their issues. But this is where Doify can help.

How Doify Supports Automatically Rescheduling Overdue Tasks to Today

Doify lets you listen to events that happen in your Todoist account and perform actions in response to them. We call these triggers and actions .

To configure our automation for automatically rescheduling overdue tasks to the current date, we can pair the Task is Overdue trigger with the Reschedule to Current Date action. This means Doify will periodically check your Todoist account for overdue tasks and, when it finds them, automatically move them to today’s date while also preserving any time set on the task, including both fixed timezone times and floating times.

How to Configure a Doify Rule for Automatically Rescheduling Overdue Tasks to Today

1. Sign up to Doify , the free plan is fine for this guide. During sign-up you’ll connect your Todoist account, which is how Doify is able to listen for events and run actions on your behalf.
2. Create a new rule. Rules are the core of Doify’s automation functionality. Each rule pairs a trigger with an action to run when the trigger fires.
3. Choose the Task is Overdue trigger. This tells Doify to periodically check your Todoist account for overdue tasks and fire the rule when it finds any.
4. Choose a target project. The rule will only check for overdue tasks inside this project, allowing you to keep your rules scoped to where they’re relevant. Pro users also have the option to select all projects if they want the rule to apply globally.
5. Choose the Reschedule to Current Date action. This is the action that will move the overdue task to today’s date.
6. Save your rule. Doify will start monitoring for overdue tasks straight away.

From this point on, any task that becomes overdue in your target project will automatically be moved to today without you needing to do anything.

Recap

In this post, we’ve looked at why Todoist’s lack of native automation means overdue tasks require manual intervention to keep on top of. We also looked at how Doify solves this problem with a simple rule that pairs the Task is Overdue trigger with the Reschedule to Current Date action to keep your task list in sync with the current date automatically.

If you want to explore other automations you can set up in Todoist, take a look at how to automatically move completed tasks to a different section .

If you have any questions about Doify or this workflow, get in touch, and we’ll be happy to help.

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FAQs

Can Todoist Automate the Updating of Due Dates on Tasks?

Todoist has no native functionality for automatically updating due dates; to achieve this behaviour natively, you’d need to manually intervene. However, if you want to automate it, you can use a third-party tool like Doify.

Can Todoist Automatically Move Overdue Tasks to the Current Date?

Todoist doesn’t support this natively. But, Doify’s Reschedule to Current Date action enables that exact functionality. It automatically moves any matching task to the current date and preserves any time specified on it.

How Can I Move All Overdue Tasks Inside a Specific Project to Today Automatically?

Natively inside Todoist, this isn’t possible without manually selecting all the overdue tasks in a project and performing a bulk update. But, you can achieve this with Doify by using the Task is Overdue trigger and Reschedule to Current Date action.