Meta-Tasks, When, and Things

Over the past two years the way I use the "When" system for To-dos in Things has shifted. I have realized that When is a tool of intention, rather then "snooze" or "deferral"¹.

Before, I would assign a When date to to-dos based on the next time I wanted to look at them. I now only use When to denote "when" I am going to start a task.

The ability to "defer" looking at a task is however very useful… I'm sure I'm not the only one doing a lot of deferring in these strange times. There is a way to stay true to When's original purpose and still defer: Instead of assigning a When date merely to "hide until a certain day" you should instead create a meta-task to "check on <item>." If you use Things.app's Copy Link functionality, you can even hop straight from the "deferral to-do" to the list or to-do in question.

These sorts of "meta-to-dos," (tasks for working on your tasks) are super handy… I first started using them in my bullet journal practice.