Deadline
A deadline is the day work must be finished by. In an app with two date fields it schedules nothing — it is a fact about the world rather than a decision about your week.
By Bohdan StefaniukLast updated
Deadline against due date
Most apps have one date field, call it a due date, and quietly ask it to do two jobs: deciding when the task appears, and standing in for when it is actually due. For most tasks those are the same day and it works.
A deadline is the second field, for the cases where they are not. The tax return is the standard example — due 30 April, started on the 12th. Todoist frames it well: a deadline is “for tasks in which missing the deadline has external consequences”. See deadline vs due date.
Who has one
It is no longer rare. Todoist shipped Deadlines and gates them behind Pro; Things 3 has had a Deadline field alongside When for years; TaskPocket has one as part of Premium. Apple Reminders and TickTick do not — Reminders has a single date field, and TickTick has a due date with an optional duration rather than a separate cutoff.
The rule worth keeping
Add a deadline only when missing it costs something outside your own head — money, a lapsed renewal, somebody else blocked. If it is only your own intention, that is a start date, and dressing it up as a deadline is how the field stops meaning anything.