Oy. I was hoping I could migrate away from Omnifocus to Checkvist and abandon MacOS, but not having 'defer' is a dealbreaker.

I make large lists and then stay sane by kicking tasks I don't want to--or can't do right now--down the road. Omnifocus even has an elegant UI for quickly deferring +week, +month, +random.

But we're coming up on the 11th anniversary of this feature request so I won't hold my breath.

This is a tickler file. The more stuff you have to visually scan (even if only when viewing invalidated tasks) the more taxing. Rather, you deliberately push something out of sight and out of mind for a time (similar to the repeating tasks implementation). Deferring tasks (actually hiding them!) with dates saves one from visually sifting heaping mounds of invalidates tasks when they're unhidden. You're already using a sort of start date with repeating tasks (e.g. Re-open n days before the next due date). You could get by reusing this mechanism.

One would need a means of viewing all deferred tasks. The Due view displays tasks based on due date. Displaying deferred tasks (start date not yet arrived) would require some kind of visibility toggling. Regardless of implementation the key ask here is date-based hiding.

Once implemented, a snooze command ("s") could easily bump a start date out by some value in the user settings (e.g. a month). Thus, "s" would snooze a task a month and "s6" would snooze it 6. The start date could not be pushed past the due date.

Hi John,

Thanks for sharing, quite an interesting system :)

I am currently using the 43 Folders system in Checkvist. I have one list for each "folder". I then use [mm] to put a task on the correct list. Here is a video explaining the 43 folder system. This will allow you to post pone a list item until the appropriate time and not see it until you need to deal with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG0FU_M_YB8

A short note - it is possible to use CSS like

#parentTask_0 .dueFuture { display: none; }

To hide items (with sub-items) with due after tomorrow from all screens except the Due page.

May be useful to someone.

I am interested in a Start Date field for list items as well. Rather than thinking of these as "Hide task until N days before due date", think of them as a separate date field. Some tasks would have start dates without recurrence or due dates.

After playing a bit I think there is a bit more to this than "hide until N days before due date". The difference shows up in search. You could just have a "show hidden", but I think users would really want something that works off the search items like ^week and ^month. Personally I would like ^week to show everything that starts in the next week vs due in the next week.
In fact I am thinking maybe I need to switch to using actually using due as my start and then typing the actual due date just as text. That is more work, but it gives me the filtering around start and priority I think I need.

With some of your recent additions, this actually seems to be the last big hurdle for me. I need start dates to support proper filtering of what I don't need to worry about yet. Its particularly important for recurring items.

To add more context to the descriptions below, "Start Date" is a pretty standard task management concept. It usually combined with a "days before" field and start, due, and days before are all computed relative to each other (if you update one its updates the others).

You can find good examples in lots of task management software - Outlook, OmniFocus, Ecco Pro, MyLifeOrganized, InfoQube, Toodledo, etc...

Kirill, regarding your workaround: start dates are not necessarily used to tell me when I *have* to start working, but rather when I *could* be starting to work on it. (For example: I *cannot* call the bank before monday, so my task "call bank" should not appear on my list until monday.)

@John Hicks I think you can create a subtask of your Due task and assign a Start date for this subtask. This way this "Start day task" will appear in your Due list when you have to start working on the task. Not a true solution, but a workaround.

Yes, a Start Date please, a lead time before the Due Date. If a task has a Due Date, don't show it until the Start Date. Otherwise Due Date is Too-Late Date. Due Date without Start Date is for calendar appointments, not tasks that take time.

Actually, I think we'll need another state for such tasks.

This would be the same as "invalidating" a task—but until a given date. Right?

Sorry, we haven't started neither recurring tasks nor this issue. No ETA either. Right now we're focused on group plans and attachments.

Any update on the status of this one?

I should admit that I tried to mix concepts here.

Both recurring tasks and due tasks may have an option "hide until there are n days before due date". But in case of recurring tasks, the task's due will re-appear in the future, and for simple postponed tasks, they won't.

I.e., as I understand this request, for a due task with due in the future, I can specify a number of days before due, when this task will appear in the view.

Also, there should be a command/filter to show all postponed tasks.

that would work. I still worry that there would be a bit of confusion in terms of intuitiveness, if you were to mark something as "complete" and "delay" in exactly the same manner. if i set a due date of next monday, but then complete the task today (and don't remove that date) it may be a surprise when it pops back up close to next monday. I think it's better to somehow separate out the "delay" versus "complete" functions. This could be either a) there is a different layer of "complete" which gives the task these properties (instead of completing, you mark something as "postponed") b) there is a different "date" field that is the postpone-until date.

I just think that without making it a bit more explicit (or explaining heavily upfront), the behavior could be confusing to most users.

Total tangent: is there a way currently to see when a task was actually marked as complete? If I set a task as due next tuesday, but then complete it today, is the completion date of "today" recorded anywhere or do I need to manually update the date to today and then complete it in order to store that information for future reference?

Jonathan, if you're able to complete the task today, you can just complete it and remove the due date at all. This way it won't be re-opened again. If I understand your scenario properly, of course.

i think that would work. basically you can "complete" tasks today to get them out of view, but if you have set a future due date they will pop back in then.

only issue here, is that it could cause confusion if you have a tasks set to be due next tuesday and for some reason you are able to complete it today. so then you mark it as completed. but if the default is that completed tasks become visible again if they have a future due date, this tasks would pop back in even though you meant to "really" complete it and not just postpone it. need some sort of delineation between these two cases.

at least that is how i understood your suggestion. perhaps i'm missing something.

May be, this is just a duplicate of "recurring due tasks"? When a due task is completed, it can be hidden from the view. But when there are, say, 5 days before the due date, the task can be reopened (and will 1. become visible 2. you'll be notified via e-mail a day before the due date).