Help me Omni Gurus! Defer Dates within Repeating tasks

Ok omnipros, I’ve made the switch over from Things 2, I’ve been attempting this switch for some time now and I’ve finally mastered my perspective settings the way I want them (Perspectives are amazing once you figure out how to use them, thanks Omni!) However, the way I like to work involves all tasks having a defer date. I defer tasks to dates and always perform a daily review of the forecast view to see what tasks have just become available today, I guess similar to how some people use flags but I just prefer to always have my pipeline of tasks set to specific days within the week to become available. If it’s deferred to that day, I want to accomplish it that day, If I don’t, I defer it to the next day I think I can get it done. Soooo, on to my question; this workflow works for me in all cases within OF with the exception of 1 Repeating tasks with defer dates already set

For example: I have a yearly task called “Plan Christmas purchases for family”, it repeats once yearly. The defer date of this task = 12/1/2014 and the due date = 12/17/14. i’ve deemed this as a task i don’t even want on my periphery until the 1st of december but the absolute due date is the 17th because I’ll probably order most gifts from Amazon. Essentially I’m having the defer date remind me “Hey, time to start thinking about the holiday, are you ready to act on this? -My omnifocus today perspective”

Let’s say I get my Christmas bonus on the 4th of december… What I want to do is change the start date to the 4th, on this yearly repeating task, just for this year “Hey Omni, thanks for reminding me it’s time to start looking at Christmas, this year I get my bonus on the 4th, so please leave my TODAY perspective until I get my bonus.”

But when I change the defer date for this year it changes the defer date for the repeating task every year. So now, every year OF thinks I want to defer it till 12/4, but I don’t know when I’ll get my bonus next year. I want the repeating tasks to maintain the constraints of the defer and due date. But I want the actual task for this specific year to be adjustable once it becomes available.

This became very long-winded, my apologies. I just wanted to make sure I illustrated my workflow so this made more sense. I guess the only solution I see thus far is to start using flags instead of defer dates to make my today view. I guess my problem with that idea is that on 12/1 I know that I am not going to want to revisit this task until the 4th, but unflagging it will simply remove it from my today view, it will not automatically reflag itself on the 4th

No persistent Defer/Due dates at the moment. I also think they would be nice, but the only way ahead is submitting a feature request and that, has to be done via email. Just go to Help>Contact Omni and you will find everything you need ;-)