How to schedule a periodic task in Java?

Use a ScheduledExecutorService:

 private final ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
 scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(yourRunnable, 8, 8, TimeUnit.HOURS);

Try this way ->

Firstly create a class TimeTask that run your task, it looks like:

public class CustomTask extends TimerTask  {

   public CustomTask(){

     //Constructor

   }

   public void run() {
       try {

         // Your task process

       } catch (Exception ex) {
           System.out.println("error running thread " + ex.getMessage());
       }
    }
}

then in main class you instantiate the task and run it periodically started by a specified date:

 public void runTask() {

        Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
        calendar.set(
           Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK,
           Calendar.MONDAY
        );
        calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 15);
        calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 40);
        calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
        calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);



        Timer time = new Timer(); // Instantiate Timer Object

        // Start running the task on Monday at 15:40:00, period is set to 8 hours
        // if you want to run the task immediately, set the 2nd parameter to 0
        time.schedule(new CustomTask(), calendar.getTime(), TimeUnit.HOURS.toMillis(8));
}

You should take a look to Quartz it's a java framework wich works with EE and SE editions and allows to define jobs to execute an specific time