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Things 3 is released
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Posted by Hugh
May 20, 2017 at 12:12 PM
From what I can see without downloading the app, Things 3 has start-dates as well as due-dates. For those of us whose tasks tend to last longer than an hour or two, start-dates are pretty much essential. Previously, I think I’m correct in stating that Things lacked them (which was a problem for me when I had a “Things 2” phase), and hitherto, Omnifocus has been one of the very few Mac task managers to incorporate them; now Things joins it.
Posted by Paul Korm
May 20, 2017 at 08:35 PM
Things 3 doesn’t have start / end dates (both dates) for individual tasks or projects. For projects, it has “Deadlines”—the date the project should be completed by. Tasks within projects have due dates. So, the way to have a “start” date is to have a task within a project that has a due date in the future. So, the project could on July 31 and the first task within the project could have a due date of June 1—which means nothing for that project appears on the Upcoming list until June 1.
To be clear—this is not the same result as OmniFocus, where we can have “defer” (start) dates and “due” dates for each task and for each project.
Posted by Luhmann
May 21, 2017 at 12:06 AM
The most important part of separate start/due dates for me is not just the information about when something is due, but how this items appears in one’s Today list which is where I look to see what I need to focus on right now. I hated the fact that in Todoist I had to lie about the due date in order to get something to appear in my Today list.
I particularly like the way 2Do handles separate start and due dates. In addition to manually setting a start date, one can set a “duration” which is a relative start date based on the due date. So if something is due the second Tuesday of every month, the start date can be 3 days before that. Also, 2Do’s Today list shows the items in my Today list, but after the items that have due dates which are sooner. This is exactly how I like to have things listed. As an academic I have a huge number of deadlines and have to be able to juggle things that are due in two weeks as well as things that are overdue, few apps I have used have allowed me to see this information in a way that matches my own priorities, but 2Do does it very well. It also has a ‘defer’ option if you want to quickly re-schedule something for a later date, which is useful for procrastinators!
Posted by Hugh
May 21, 2017 at 12:46 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
Things 3 doesn’t have start / end dates (both dates) for individual
>tasks or projects. For projects, it has “Deadlines”—the date the
>project should be completed by. Tasks within projects have due dates.
> So, the way to have a “start” date is to have a task within a project
>that has a due date in the future. So, the project could on July 31
>and the first task within the project could have a due date of June 1—
>which means nothing for that project appears on the Upcoming list until
>June 1.
>
>To be clear—this is not the same result as OmniFocus, where we can
>have “defer” (start) dates and “due” dates for each task and for each
>project.
Thanks for the correction, Paul. I had relied, as far as I remember, on a review of Things 3 which stated that metadata included start dates - and I’d assumed that to include task metadata. Evidently not.
It’s a little strange that some top-line task-management apps continue to fail to include this feature, even as an option. When I used Todoist several years ago, users were asking for start-dates, and I understand that they’re still asking. The 2Do way of doing it does sound useful.
Posted by MadaboutDana
May 22, 2017 at 07:07 AM
Things has two different date settings: a “When” date and a “Deadline” date. If you set the “When” date only, it assigns the task to the specified date. So I’ve got a couple of tasks arranged for Wednesday, for example, and they appear on Wednesday in the “Upcoming” view.
But if you set the “Deadline” date, while the task itself is assigned to the “Deadline” date, you also get a little note alongside each task with the number of days to go (so “Due in 2 days”, for example).
You can use the “When” date as a way of keeping track of tasks that may have a deadline in two weeks’ time, but need action now. So for my tasks with a Wednesday “Deadline” date, I could set a “When” date of today, meaning they need attention today, but the actual deadline isn’t until Wednesday. And Things will show this in its display: the task will appear in the “Today” view, but with a note saying “Due in 2 days”.
This is an interesting compromise on the concept of starting date, and personally, I find it quite user-friendly, but then I’ve never been able to get on with start dates etc.; I prefer to assign a “When” to tasks when I know I’m going to have time to do them. Being able to specify an end-deadline is a nice extra; previously, I’ve always put the task’s end-deadline in notes, which is less than ideal when trying to keep an overview.
I hope that’s helpful!
Cheers,
Bill