How I process overdue tasks

Part of § My productivity system.

Key principles

• Only complete tasks when they were actually done
• Only use due dates for real deadlines
• Schedule most personal tasks for Friday
• Delegate tasks when possible

Decision patterns

Recurring tasks that drifted

• Don't reset all to today (creates fake urgency)
• Spread across upcoming natural dates
• Match task to appropriate day per My personal task scheduling

Seasonal tasks

• Season passed → push to next year's occurrence
• Still urgent despite being late → schedule immediately

One-off tasks that aged

• Still relevant → remove due date, keep next label
• No longer relevant → delete
• Evolved into bigger effort → convert to project with active or someday label

Tasks with dependencies

• Identify precursor tasks (order before replace)
• Create subtask with earlier due date
• See Having a daily to do list with GTD

Scope

All GTD projects. Excludes communication inboxes (Slack, Linear, Campsite, Email) which have their own workflow — see How I process communication inboxes.

Related

• My Weekly Review process
• My GTD project definitions