Things' Due Soon
Next up (after Defer Date) on my list of missing things in Things was the Due Soon feature of OmniFocus.
In OmniFocus settings you can set a timeframe what you consider due soon and OmniFocus will put items on your agenda if their deadline is within this timeframe. As opposed to Things which only puts items on your agenda on the day of the deadline.
I really liked this because there are some things where starting them just the day of the deadline doesn’t cut it and brings a lot of stress (yes when you do proper planning it shouldn’t happen - but life happens…).
How it’s implemented
Similar to the Defer Date I put up a Personal Automation which runs daily at 23:59:
- Find all items which don’t have a Start date and the Deadline is within 3 days. (Due soon means 2 days)
- Set the Start date of those items to tomorrow.
I run the automation just before midnight and schedule for tomorrow so the items won’t roll over and have the yellow indicator as new items.
I also excluded projects since they have enough visibility for me and I rarely assign a Start date to the whole project but plan the individual todos.