What is the difference between Scheduled and Due Dates?
February 4, 2010 | 10 Comments
Scheduled and due dates are two different things in Get It Done.
Scheduled (for review)
Think of Scheduled as “I want to review this task at a later date but get it out of my way for now”. When you schedule a task it will remain in the scheduled folder until the date you specified. On that date it will be moved into your “Today” folder. This is a great way to declutter your ‘Today’ folder of tasks you don’t want to do today but need to do it the next day or a specific day.
To schedule a task for future review, just drag the task into the “Scheduled” category under your focus group on the left of your screen. You will see the following screen where you can specify when you want to see this task again:
Schedule task for review
Due Dates
Due dates are a way for you to visually see how long you have until the task is due. To set a due date, just click on “no due date” to the right of your task. This will pop up a dialog for you to set a due date:
Setting a due date for your task
After you set due dates for your tasks, you can quickly see when all your tasks are due:
Quickly see when your tasks are due
Mischa Coster 4 Feb 2010
Will a task with a due date automatically appear in my Today list on the due date? Of maybe xx days before due date (like how Things handles due dates)?
Seems now that I would have to enter a due date, and also seperately a scheduled date if I want te task to appear let’s say, 3 days before due…
Would be cool to have both:
1. Option to set a scheduled date relative to due date (e.g. 3 days before)
2. Option to set a scheduled date without setting a due date. This is already available but this is what I’m missing in Things.
Mike 'Get It Done' Staff 4 Feb 2010
Currently we do not move a task “X days before” a task is due, we just move the task if you move it to scheduled.
1. I have had a few requests for this so we will look into implementing it in a way that is not too confusing
2. Like you said we already do this, you do not have to set a due date in order to schedule it for review.
Thanks for the feedback!
Damian Castillo 5 Feb 2010
I agree with Mischa Coster on this. I have a real world example that just happened today.
I received an email from my boss telling me that I MUST attend a party from one of the law firms we work with. I read the email and it gave me all the information of the party and the date it will take place.
This party is not until next month, so I don’t want to really think about it too much. I also noticed that there is an RSVP date as well.
What I wanted to do is Schedule this task to remind me on the RSVP date, but I also wanted the task to show the actual Due Date of the party.
Here is the only problem with this logic. Once the task shows up on my Today list and I successfully send the RSVP email to confirm my attendance. I am really not done with that task. The party is not for another week. So I completed the task but I still have to remind myself to attend the party on the correct day. I would have to drag the task back to my Next list since I can’t do anything with it at this time.
But if the due date arrives and it’s not moved to the Today list automatically, I may forget about the party.
I presented a couple of issues here. Scheduled task with due dates and also task that show up in the Today list on the due date.
What are your thoughts?
Mike 'Get It Done' Staff 5 Feb 2010
I like the idea of moving the task to today on a due date.
Currently if I was in your situation I would have RSVP then drag the task again into “Scheduled (for review)” because I do not want to see this task again until a date in the future.
On the date that you want it to show up in your Today it will.
I think of scheduled as “I do not want to see this task until a certain date”
I think of due dates as “This item has x many of days until it is due, I could do it any time between now and then”
But I do agree that moving a task on it’s due date would be helpful in some situations.
Damian Castillo 5 Feb 2010
If there was an option for task due today to automatically show up on the “Today” list, it would be perfect.
I can’t think of a reason I would not want a task DUE on that day to be front and center on my Today list. It is a task due today by rule but we must manually move it over.
In a real life not every task that I moved to my Today list may get done that day for many reasons. But If I plan on finishing them up the next day, I won’t move it from there so that it’s ready for me in the morning. I start a new day and may get focused on the items already in my Today list and forget to check for any task due today based on their due date field and may not check them in enough time to actually complete it.
In GTD the Calendar is sacred so these task are very important and it would be great to have them show up in Today automatically.
I understand that we should check out Calendar first and look over our Next list before we get our day rolling, but sometimes life get’s crazy and I may get to this too late in the day.
Thanks.
LB 25 Feb 2010
Hi guys,
I am new to the tool, but so far so good.
I must admit, I find it slightly counter-intuitive that due dates and scheduled dates are different.
Initially, I thought they were one and the same thing and must agree Damian’s comments.
Kind regards,
Lesli
David 2 Mar 2010
I actually made it here and saw this discussion because I was confused about the difference between due dates and scheduled dates also. I love this program but this seems to be the only thing that isn’t “natural” in the entire program.
I would love to see the option to have your due dates show up in your today folder as they come due. It seems my thoughts of how I need this to operate are also supported by others.
I love the rest of the program but I would love to see this change.
Thanks for listening,
Dave
Courtney 20 Mar 2010
I think this is confusing because GTD only uses the “defer/tickler” and “as soon as I can” approach to timing actions. I really like the due date function with days left, I think that will help my weekly review.
It might help if you called your “scheduled dates” – “defer for X days” or “defer until X date” to track the GTD concept of defer – everything that has been deferred would live in a “Tickler” folder which you could check during your weekly review to see if anything needs to be rescheduled, moved to Next Action or moved to Today.
GTD doesn’t really use due dates, but I think the due date with the countdown until due will be really useful to streamline the weekly review. The due date would show up on the calendar when due but would also live in next actions since I can work on this before the actual due date.
I would also suggest a third category and those are the real calendar items – meetings and things that have due dates but I can’t work on them before they are due. I would like to have these in a calendar separate from my “due date” items since I only need to look at them to get a sense of my commitments for the week but I don’t need to actually think about whether they can be moved around reprioritized during the weekly review.
For example, I can see looking at my weekly calendar that I have ten things listed for Thursday. Three of those are meetings (no flexibility) but five are due dates (I can do them early) and two are things that I tickled for that day. I would like to be able to distinguish between these during my weekly review so I can – see my commitments (the three meetings), move one or more of the due date items earlier (so I will not get jammed on Thursday by not prioritizing properly because I am not focusing on the fact that everything is due the same day) and then I can tag the tickled items as calendar, due date (so I can track days until due), defer again, move to next action or do nothing and allow to move to Today on the tickled date (this would be the default)
So, I guess that is my suggestion: Rename “Scheduled Date” to Defer/Tickler. Keep the Due Date function and add a separate calendar function, which would handle date specific items that you can’t do early. I would also like a calendar page (or feed) that would show each of these “date oriented” actions in a way that you could easily distinguish among them when looking at your calendar during your weekly review.
Anyway, I think the due date/countdown is a great enhancement for those of us who aren’t as disciplined with next actions and need the help during our weekly review.
Courtney 20 Mar 2010
@Damian Castillo: I think in the GTD model your RSVP example is actually two actions – a calendar action (actually attending the party), and a next action (making the RSVP).
You would put the RSVP in your next action list with an @computer tag (if email) or @call tag (if you need to call them). That way you decide how you want to prioritize it when you do your weekly review.
If you want to wait until the deadline to RSVP, then you just put that action a calendar for that date. Then you could use the schedule function in Get it Done. I see this as the same as an “all day event” placeholder in Outlook.
The fact that you are talking about taking the same task and touching it twice (once to RSVP but that doesn’t complete the action because then you need to move it to the date of the party) says to me that under GTD you have two actions – (1) RSVP to the party and (2) go to the party.
You would capture them both at the same time, if you ended up not RSVPing then you would take the party off your calendar when you did your weekly (or more often) review to update all of your outstanding actions.
If you find that you are moving the same task around as you complete parts of it, then you haven’t defined all the next actions to reach the desired outcome. It really doesn’t matter for something like a party, but it is developing the thought process of breaking down *everything* into the specific next actions that will lead to your desired outcome that is the “magic” of GTD.
Tammy 21 May 2010
Can you sort tasks by due dates?