Most task apps hand a to-do exactly one date and let you decide what it means. That single field is doing two jobs at once, and start date vs deadline is the distinction it flattens: one date answers when can I pick this up, the other answers when does this stop being optional. Put both meanings in the same box and a list you trusted in March is a wall of overdue red by June.
A start date is a filter. A deadline is a promise, sometimes to yourself. The first hides work until it is worth looking at. The second is a fact about the outside world that does not move because your week went badly.
The two dates are not two flavours of the same thing
Take one to-do: file the quarterly VAT return. The portal opens on the first of the month and the money is late after the thirtieth. Two numbers, behaving differently. Before the first, the task is not late, not urgent and not actionable. After the thirtieth it is a problem with a fee attached.
An app with one date makes you pick which number to store. Store the thirtieth and the task shouts at you for four weeks before you can act on it. Store the first and it looks fine on the twenty-ninth, which is the day it will hurt you. Most people quietly pick a third option and enter the date they intend to do it — neither number, moved every time they touch it, meaningless within a month.
What each app calls the two fields
Every serious task app has landed somewhere on this, and the vocabulary is inconsistent enough to need a table. These are the vendors' own words.
| app | the "not yet" field | the "must be finished" field | what happens before the first date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Things 3 | When | Deadline | the to-do waits in Upcoming, then moves itself into Today |
| OmniFocus | Defer Until | Due | the action is greyed out and counted as unavailable |
| Todoist | no start date | Deadline, on paid plans | nothing hides — a date is the day you plan to work on it |
| TickTick | none; a Duration carries a start | the same Duration's end | nothing waits outside — the task occupies a span and is visible for all of it |
| init.Tasks | start date | deadline | it stays out of today and appears the morning it opens |
The two ends of that table are the interesting part. The OmniFocus manual is blunt about what a defer date buys you: an item that has not reached it is "not considered available so they won't clutter your view until you can work on them" — the defer-until field exists to remove things from sight, not to add them.
Todoist went the other way and says so plainly. Its help centre answers with a flat no: "Todoist does not support start dates that hide your tasks until their start date is due", suggesting workarounds instead — a "start project X" task, or a recurring date with an end. Todoist did add a separate deadline field, on paid plans, but it is a second due-like date rather than a start date. You can say when something must be finished and when you plan to look at it; you cannot make it vanish until then.
What one field costs you
The damage is not the missed deadline. It is the everyday erosion.
Today fills with things you cannot start. The car service booked for the fourteenth is in today's list on the second. You skip past it, and after a fortnight of skipping you have taught yourself to skim the list rather than read it.
Overdue stops meaning late. When half the red items were never actually due, red becomes decoration — and the value of a deadline is that it is rare enough to be alarming.
You defer by editing. Pushing something out of view means rewriting its date, which destroys the record of when it was really due. Six edits later nobody can tell whether the thing was always for October or has been slipping since May.
How to split the two dates on a list you already have
You do not need a fresh start. An hour on an existing list is enough, and the sorting rule is mechanical.
- Open your full list rather than the today view. Sort by date so the oldest sit at the top.
- For each dated item, ask one question: does anyone outside your own head care about this date? If yes, it is a deadline. If no, it is a start date. Bills, renewals, submissions and anything with a fee are deadlines. Almost nothing else is.
- Move the honest deadlines into the deadline field and leave them alone. Never adjust one to make today look calmer.
- Give everything left a start date instead — the earliest day the work is genuinely possible, not the day you hope to feel motivated.
- Anything with no real date in either column was wearing one as a disguise. Strip it off and move the item to the someday shelf or into a project with a next action.
- Set start dates deliberately far out for seasonal work. Tax paperwork, insurance renewals, the passport that expires next spring — nine months ahead is not procrastination.
- Repeat the pass a week later. The second one is faster and catches the dates you defended out of habit.
Expect to delete more dates than you move. On a hundred-item list, real deadlines usually number about ten.
The split is what makes a weekly review short
A review is mostly a question about the coming week: what starts, and what ends. With one date field you cannot ask that, so the review becomes a full re-read of everything, which is why people stop doing it by week three. With two fields, "starts this week" and "due this week" are two short lists and the rest can stay closed. The weekly review checklist is the longer version of that argument.
Reference material — the renewal letter, the quote, the screenshot of a policy number — has no date at all and should never be wearing one. If yours sits in a task with a fake due date, that is a filing problem rather than a scheduling problem, and second brain apps is where that thread continues.
Where init.Tasks fits
init.Tasks stores a start date and a deadline as two independent fields on every to-do. It is a terminal-looking app for tasks, personal projects and the material they need, on iOS, macOS and web. Quick add reads a date out of plain language, so collect mover quotes 12 sep #apartment-move files itself into the right project with the twelfth already attached.
Around that sit the views the split exists for: a today list that overdue items roll into rather than sink beneath, then the next seven days, the upcoming stretch beyond that, the someday shelf and the logbook. The feature list is the honest inventory. If GTD is why you are reading this, the app for GTD piece maps the five lists onto an app, and that ground is not gone over again here.
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FAQ
What is the difference between a start date and a deadline?
A start date is the earliest day a task can sensibly be worked on, and it exists to keep the task out of sight until then. A deadline is the day the task must be finished, because something outside your system depends on it. Start dates are for you, deadlines are for the world, and an app storing only one is guessing which you meant.
Should every task have a start date?
No. Most tasks need neither date. A start date earns its place when the work is blocked until a day arrives — a form that opens, a delivery that lands, a season that begins. Adding them to everything recreates the same noise from the other direction: a list that goes quiet, then dumps forty items on you at once.
Does Todoist have start dates?
Not in the hiding sense. Its help centre answers that directly: no field keeps an item out of view until a chosen day, and the recommended workarounds are a separate "start project X" item or a recurring date with an end. Todoist does offer a deadline field alongside the ordinary date on its paid plans, which covers "must finish by" but not "not before".
Is a deadline the same as a due date?
In most apps, yes — one field with two names. The distinction only appears where an app carries a third date, and "due" then means the day you scheduled the work while "deadline" means the day it is late. Check which one your app paints red before trusting either.