Can I hide "Defer Until" in the sidebar?

Hi, I just don’t use Defer at all. But because it shows up first in the sidebar, sometimes I enter a date in this field when I mean to be entering a Due date. I’ve unchecked it in Preferences and various view options but it is always there. Thanks!

Bonnie

You can’t currently customize the Inspector on OmniFocus for the Mac the way you can on iOS.

In Preferences > Layout you can specify whether or not the Defer Date column appears when the layout of the main outline is set to “Columns”.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to email your feedback/request to the Omni Group by choosing Help > Contact Omni or by emailing omnifocus@omnigroup.com.

On a side note, the Defer Until feature can be very helpful. I think it’s one of OmniFocus’ best features. It provides a way of distinguishing actions and projects that can be worked on now from ones that you don’t intend to or can’t work on until the future.

For example, if you told someone you’d give them a call on Monday, you could defer this action until Monday so that it’s not cluttering up on your available lists until then.

I hope this helps.

Tim is right, even if you can hide it, you ought not to want to (as he describes). Better to spend some time understanding what it does (and why) to leverage the power of the tool, and free your mind from looking at information it doesn’t need at the moment. Either that or you need more tasks, which is true of no one!

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Thanks for your replies. I appreciate that Defer Date offers a powerful tool for many (most?) users, but it just isn’t useful for my workflow.

I am a virtual administrator for several professional organizations. I draft and send emails, set up events, edit web sites, handle membership issues, etc. About 99% of my tasks come via email. I send the emails to OF, then sort through my Inbox to assigns projects and Due Dates. The due dates are almost ALWAYS within 3 days or less, so the Defer Date box is just in the way.

Some of the tasks are recurring and every once in a while they relate to the somewhat distant future - change a price in 30 days or take some action on a future date - and I can vaguely see how Defer is useful although I just set the Due Date for the future Due Date and the task is out of sight.

But as I said, the vast majority of my tasks are due today or tomorrow. The Defer option is just setting a trap where I might enter my due date in the wrong field. If it can’t be removed, I would prefer it to be BELOW the Due Date where it won’t interrupt my work flow EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I recognize that I’m an outlier so I am perfectly content to continue as I have been.

Thanks again!

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Thanks for sharing your use case, which now makes sense. OMG that sounds stressful; I am in awe of people who do such things! I have to immerse deeply to be productive; with that kind of context-switching I would simply crumble in hours/days ;-)

Interesting to learn more about your use case @bonniet.

If you’re using the Pro version of OmniFocus, you might consider creating a perspective called something like “Deferred” and adding it to the sidebar for easy access. This perspective will show you everything that’s incomplete and has a defer date.

You could click on this perspective as often as you need to (perhaps once or twice a day)…and make sure that it doesn’t include anything that you intended to set to be due instead of deferred.

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Thanks. For better or worse, I am so used to multi-tasking now that it’s almost a compulsion. If I’m talking on the phone I have to brush the dog or wander into the kitchen to wipe the counters. The OF Inbox is wonderful because new ideas/to-dos are always popping into my head! And the ability to forward emails (using just one key, thank you Keyboard Maestro) is a game-changer!

Thanks, Tim, I’ll definitely create that perspective. One less thing to worry about!

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You’re very welcome, @bonniet. Great to hear this was helpful!

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