Start dates, not just due dates
The scheduling model in Jupiter Optimus
Most task managers give a task exactly one date, and everything goes wrong from there. "Prepare the conference talk" is due in six weeks — but you can't start until the schedule is announced in three. So you either put it in Today and swipe it away every morning for three weeks, or give it a fake early deadline and teach yourself that your own dates are lies.
The problem is that one field is holding two different facts. When you intend to begin and when it must be done are not the same thing, and a system that merges them makes both meaningless.
How it works here
A task in Jupiter Optimus can carry a start date, a due date, both, or neither:
- A task with a start date in the future stays out of Today, out of the Inbox's urgency, and out of your face. On that day, it appears — no reminder needed for the fact of becoming relevant.
- A due date means what it says: a deadline. Reminders hang off it, overdue styling is earned, and it fires at the task's own time or your default reminder hour.
- Both together bracket the work: invisible until the start, escalating toward the deadline. The due date can never sit before the start — the app holds that invariant for you.
Someday: parking without pretending
Some ideas have no date at all, and giving them one is how a system rots. Mark a task Someday and it is parked: out of Today, out of Upcoming, out of the Inbox, but findable in its own list. Parking clears its dates — a parked task with a deadline would be a contradiction, and contradictions are how you learn to distrust your lists.
What this does to "Today"
Today becomes a short, honest list: things due now, things you said you would begin now, and things you dragged there yourself. Nothing arrives in it because six weeks of future work was flattened onto one date field. A Today list you believe is the difference between a system you use and one you appease.
The GTD connection
If you run Getting Things Done, start dates are the mechanism behind the tickler — defer a next action until it becomes actionable, and let the system present it when it does. Combined with projects, sections, Someday and a weekly review (there is a recurring task for that in the sample data), Jupiter Optimus covers the working core of GTD without demanding you adopt anyone's orthodoxy.
Small print that keeps it honest
- Start dates are date-only, at your local midnight — an intention, not an appointment.
- Deferring is not snoozing: the task's deadline (if any) never moves when you set a start date.
- Quick add understands dates in the line, so a task can be scheduled the moment it is captured.
Jupiter Optimus on the App Store — $9.99 a year with a 7-day free trial, for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.