Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Pausing tasks using the updated date

When postponing a task isn’t quite what you want, what do you do? This week’s tip comes from fizzyice, who “pauses” tasks using the updated date and a tag. You can make the task disappear for a bit in their Smart List, and automatically return.

To pause tasks for a specified number of days, the formula I use in the Smart List for this is:

(tag:x1 AND updatedWithin:"1 day of today") OR (tag:x2 AND updatedWithin:"2 days of today") OR (tag:x3 AND updatedWithin:"3 days of today")

You can use the word ‘now’ instead of 'today’ in the formula. I go up to 7 days in mine.

I have named this Smart List 'pps’, you can name it what you want.

Next, incorporate this into any other Smart List that you wish to pause tasks in by typing the following in its formula:

NOT list:pps

I have added this to my ‘😀T-O-D-A-Y😀’ Smart List. (This is my go-to Smart List everyday and I use emojis so I can spot it easily.)

Using this allows me to add a tag, either 'x1’ or 'x2’ or 'x3’ etc to any tasks in the specified Smart List that I wish to pause.

So if I decided I don’t want to see a task in my ‘😀T-O-D-A-Y😀’ list for the next 3 days then I will add the tag 'x3’ to that particular task. The task then disappears from that list for 3 days, then 3 days later it automatically reappears in that list without me having to do anything to it.

As long as you don’t update these tagged tasks when in use, it should work well. Remove the tags when they are no longer needed, otherwise updating the task later will cause it to hide again from that list.

I use this instead of 'postpone’ when I don’t want to disturb the due date or start date, or if it’s a repeating task etc, but there maybe other uses for it.

Thanks for sharing this tip, fizzyice! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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