One of the things (ha) that I miss since adopting things as my task management system is the notion (no) of defer dates. I’d love to be able to look my Anytime list to see tasks as options for me, minus those that I have actively decided “not right now” to.

Thanks to the Shortcuts support in Things, I was able to devise a simple workflow to implement the concept of deferring tasks to a later time for being viable options (not necessarily due on or starting on that date, just off my radar until then).

There are several components to this workflow:

1. A tag called Defer
2. A Shortcut to defer tasks with (though it is easily enough done by hand, too)
3. A Shortcut to “clear” deferred tasks (more on this in a bit)
4. A rule: trust my dates in Things

Basically, the logic is this: any task on a date but tagged with Defer is known to neither be due on the date it is set to, nor necessarily starting on that day. So, it’s as simple as “set the date and add the Defer tag” to a given task(s). My Defer Things → Shortcut guides this (using selected tasks).

On a day on which there are deferred tasks, they appear in the Today list, of course, and identified by the Defer tag. The Clear Deferred Things → Shortcut “clears” these, by removing the Defer tag and setting the start to Anytime, thus making them available options as tasks to work on.

As I write this, it all seems rather elementary, but it is really helpful for me to push off tasks I know I’m not committed to (but don’t feel comfortable about throwing into the deep box of Someday).

I’d love to hear if anyone else finds this useful as well!

Here is another Things Shortcut that takes selected tasks and tags them with a tag named through ask for input.

Tag these Things →

I like this because I can select a bunch of tasks for tagging at once (read: inbox) and not use the tag selector. And, because this uses the Get selected items action, it can be invoked from Siri (or Share Sheet or Spotlight), so I can speak the tag to add.

Enjoy!

Okay, so I don’t always finish my work as intended. Fine.

To help out, here is a Things Shortcut that takes selected tasks and moves their start date to the next business day.

Bump Things date Shortcut →

Because this uses the Get selected items action, it can be invoked from either Share Sheet, Spotlight, or with Siri (which is rewarding). Enjoy!

Certainly, there are all the Shortcuts on my Day automation page, but I happened to simplify one today and thought I’d share:

Agenda Daily Note with Tasks from Things →

This Shortcut creates a new note in Agenda (yes, that’s a referral link for a bonus 6 months on a subscription), titled with Today’s date, containing calendar events and tasks for the day.

I used the Agenda native Shortcuts actions (now federated across all platforms, hooray!), so no more bonkers URL encoding everything (another big hooray!), and the newer Shortcuts actions in Things to get those tasks on its Today list, linking back to them in Things natively.

Hope someone can make some use of this!

Another Things Shortcut, this one is for creating a project based on an existing task as a template.

It assumes there is a task in Someday that has a checklist items within it. This Shortcut will search for that task based on key words, confirm it found the right one, then make a project from it with each checklist item as a task inside it.

I like this approach, because the management of the template is super easy inside of Things, and this Shortcut could then be bigged up pretty easily with more features:

• make a menu of known task templates to use instead of typing keywords
• add ask for input actions to set deadline dates
• add placeholder text that is replaced with other ask for input questions
• show the checklist items as a list and select which all to add to the project in cases where maybe not all tasks apply
• and so on

Enjoy!

Download the Things project template Shortcut →

Converting an OmniFocus Shortcut for use with the new Things 3.17 Shortcut actions (currently in beta released publicly!), here is a Shortcut that asks for the name of a tag, then adds anything with that tag to a list in an email. It also asks if the tag is the greeting (the common use case is for a tag that is a person’s name). Enjoy!

Things Meeting Prep Email Shortcut →

Recently, Cultured Code, the group behind the task management app Things, shared that the upcoming 3.17 version woul include deeper support for Shortcuts. I get a lot of requests for my Shortcuts to support Things, but that hasn’t been possible until this new version (previous versions' Shortcuts actions basically all landed you in the Things interface, without being able to otherwise read, manipulate, or share Things data).

I will be re-tooling a bunch of my Shortcuts to support Things in this new incarnation, but as a start, I thought I would share a first fast one I whipped up:

Things Meeting Prep Email Shortcut →

This Shortcut creates an email draft intended to be sent to recipients in advance of a meeting.

It asks for a tag to be searched for and creates a text list of tasks with that tag in a draft email. It will also either use the search key as a greeting in the email or allow you to enter one of your own.

This is great for meetings with my boss, where I can search her name as a tag in Things, and then have an email drafted to her before our weekly 1:1 conversations.

As of this writing, Things 3.17 is in beta, so that is required for this to work for you, but hope you enjoy!