ASAP, High, Medium, Low — and ASAP really does jump the queue.
In most apps a priority field is decoration. Here it moves work. ASAP beats every deadline, so an ASAP task doesn't get to have one.
Priority in the add-task form, on a once-over card, or in the task panel. Choose ASAP and the deadline fields disappear, with a line saying why.
"I'd like this done Friday" and "this has to be done Friday" are two different instructions.
A soft deadline is a target. Miss it and the block turns amber and keeps rolling. A hard deadline can break out of your normal hours if that's the only way to make the date — you're saying this one's worth an evening.
Set Due, then tick Hard deadline underneath. The tickbox only appears once a date is set.
Say "not before the 14th" and it stops cluttering this week.
Start later in the add-task form, or under Due date, earliest day, schedule on a once-over card.
Stop early, say what's left, and the rest finds its own next slot.
Most tools give you two options: done, or not done. Real work stops halfway. So you don't have to chop a four-hour job into four pieces up front — you just stop when you stop, and the remainder books itself in.
Click the block → Enough for today → How much is left? (pre-filled with the remaining time) → Park it. Today's block disappears and the remainder is placed at the next opening. Never mind backs out.
Drag a block where you want it and it stays there.
Auto-scheduling you can't overrule is just a straitjacket.
Drag the block with a mouse or trackpad. Or click it → Pin to a time → set Day and Start at → Pin it here. A pinned block shows a Pinned badge; the button becomes Move it, and Unpin hands it back to the scheduler.
Dragging is mouse and trackpad only. On touch, use the panel — a calendar you can't scroll would be worse than one you can't drag. A pin that's still unfinished 30 minutes after its time's up goes back to find a new one, instead of sitting there lying to you. And you can't drop a block in the past; it tells you why.
Got the time wrong? Fix it, and the day re-plans around it.
You guessed most of these in a hurry — a lot of them in three seconds, from the inbox. Stuck with that guess you either live with a bad plan or delete the task and type it again, and that second one is how people end up abandoning planners. Anything you set when you made a task, you can change afterwards, and the day rebuilds around it.
Click or tap the task → Edit. Change What needs doing, Description, How long, Priority, Deadline (optional), Hard deadline, Start later (optional) or When can this happen?. Save changes rebuilds the plan; Never mind backs out. Same form on the phone, with the button on the task sheet.
Changing How long resets what's left, so a task you'd already parked half of starts again from the new length. Switching to ASAP clears the deadline: ASAP work outranks every deadline and can't carry one, and the form says so before you save. Edit one occurrence of a repeat and only that one changes; the pattern lives under Repeating. What a description can hold is the next entry.
Put the whole how-to in the task: the steps, a checklist you tick as you go, and bold for the bit you always forget.
Plenty of tasks are really a routine with a right way to do them: closing up, payroll, the weekly update. In plain text that's a wall of words you have to reread. Here the steps are a numbered list, the things to check are boxes you tick, and a repeating task brings its checklist back every time it comes round, unticked.
It's the Description on any task, in Edit on the task sheet or when you add one. On the web, the bar above it has Heading, Bullet list, Numbered list, Checklist, Bold, Italic and Underline. Or just type: "- " starts a bullet, "1. " a numbered list, "[ ] " a box and "## " a heading. ⌘B, ⌘I and ⌘U (Ctrl on Windows) do the rest, and Tab nests. Paste an address and it becomes a link. On the iPhone the same bar sits above the keyboard, and Return carries a list on. Tick a box straight on the task, no editing needed. For a repeating task, write it under Repeating → the task → Description, and every time it comes round starts with it. Templates take the same formatting under Notes.
On the iPhone you edit the text with its marks showing (**bold**, - for a bullet). It's formatted everywhere you read it, but only the web formats it as you type. A box ticked on one occurrence of a repeat stays on that occurrence, and changing the routine's description later leaves occurrences you've already ticked alone. One heading size, and no colours, tables or pictures. Nobody has used the iPhone's bar on a real phone yet.
Plans a year and a half out, and doesn't pretend to know what time.
Inside 14 days you get clock times. Past that you get the day and no time. Knowing you'll start at 10:15 six weeks from now is a fiction, and a tool that fakes certainty teaches you to ignore it.
Look at month view. Near chips carry a clock time, far ones carry a length and no time, and a line under the grid explains it.
When something genuinely can't be placed, we tell you. You don't have to notice.
A banner appears at the top of the Calendar, and a Won't fit group on Tasks. Fix it by shortening the task, moving its deadline, or freeing up time.
It only fires when a task can't be placed anywhere in the next 18 months, not when it's simply going to be late. Work that will definitely miss its deadline gets scheduled late and drawn in amber instead of raised in the banner. Whether it should warn you sooner, we haven't decided.