Defer a repeating project (or task) without affecting original defer and due dates

[ditw]

Is there a way to defer only the current instance of a repeating task without affecting the original defer/due dates?

The situation is this:

• I have a sequential project to ensure I make a payment once a year. The project has 6 tasks. For example:

  1. Find receipts
  2. Audit receipts
  3. Calculate resulting payment
  4. Send all to partner for review
  5. Waiting for partner to confirm
  6. Pay

• The project is deferred to 3 weeks before the payment is due and has a due date, which applies to all tasks.

• The project is set to repeat once a year from Assigned Dates.

It works perfect if I complete all tasks before they’re due. They pop up with enough time to get it all done and all tasks that I haven’t completed 3 days before due date go yellow (due soon), which helps to put pressure on me. And they all go red if it’s overdue.

The problem is that this year in particular, I am running late. I requested an extension and I got it, so now I’d like to defer the whole project by 6 weeks and change due date to 8 weeks.

But if I do that, the original dates change. So when I finally complete it in 8 weeks, the next project will be due a year from when I finish, not when it was originally due.

At the moment, I’ve just left it there with 6 tasks overdue. But it’s annoying and messing with my whole system.

I could just duplicate the project as a once off without repeating and “complete” the overdue one. But that seems like a hack and inelegant.

Any ideas?

[psidnell]

I’ve taken to creating a Deferred (on hold) tag that I can assign things to just so I can hide tasks I don’t want to deal with today but can avoid messing with their dates.

I can remove the tag later to reinstate it.

This only works if I check the Deferred bucket regularly/daily so things don’t rot in there.

Currently I’ve called this tag “Week” for things I want to accomplish this week - but not today.

I check it it every morning and if it gets too big (i.e. there’s no way I can do it all) then I know I need to reschedule things properly.

[Hal9K]

You can read about my solution for this a few posts into this topic:

Modify one instance of repeating task

Oftentimes as I enter my weekend, I end up with some work related tasks still on my “hit list” perspective of flagged available tasks. Naturally, the simple solution is to defer anything I’m not interested in pursuing over the weekend to Monday. However, some of these work tasks are repeating tasks that have defer and due dates. If I were to defer these, then they would repeat with a shorter gap than desired between their next defer and due dates. For example, there is a repeating task that is…

[ditw]

@Hal9K Thanks, I tried the shortcut/workflow, but I’m not sure how to trigger it.

[Hal9K]

Perhaps I should have been more clear in my writeup. You go to the task in OF, then use the share sheet to select that shortcut. It will process it, then throw up an alert to remind you to check off the original task. Then, it will dump you back to where you were in OF, only now there is one instance of the task that repeats, and one that doesn’t. Just check off the one that repeats to send it off to its next occurrence, and you are free to modify the remaining one.

[ditw]

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing the Shortcut/Workflow.

Something like this should be standard functionality in OmniFocus. It’s amazing that we have to do workarounds like this.

I submitted a feature request, but your shortcut does the trick. Thanks.