Deadline vs due date: which one does what

A due date and a deadline answer different questions. The due date is when you plan to do the work, and it decides what today looks like. The deadline is when the work must be finished, and it schedules nothing — it records a consequence. Most tasks need one. The ones needing both are the ones that hurt.

The two questions

Every task carries at most two dates worth recording, and it helps to say them as questions rather than as field names.

When will I pick this up? That is a decision about your week. It is provisional, you will move it, and moving it should cost nothing. This is the date a task list should schedule from — it is what puts something in Today, what keeps it out of Today until then, and what you drag around when Tuesday turns out busier than you thought.

When is this actually due? That is a fact about the world. The tax return is due on the 30th whether or not you feel like starting it, and the date does not move because you rescheduled your afternoon. It is not a plan, it is a constraint.

Conflating them is the default in most task apps, and it fails in both directions. Put the true due date in the single field and the task sits in Today for eighteen days going grey, teaching you to ignore Today. Put your intended start day in it and the real cutoff is recorded nowhere except your memory — which is the thing you bought a task manager to stop relying on.

A worked example

A tax return, due 30 April. You intend to start on the 12th.

With one date field, you pick. Choose the 30th and it is invisible until the day it is due, which is too late to start. Choose the 12th and you have quietly overwritten the only record of when it was actually due — so if you push it to the 14th, then the 19th, nothing in the app knows you are running out of runway.

With two, the 12th goes in the scheduling date and the 30th in the deadline. On the 12th it appears. Push it to the 14th and the deadline does not move with it, because it is not that kind of date. On the 25th you can look at what is due rather than at what you planned, and the difference between those two lists is the entire point.

A rule for deciding

Most tasks do not need both, and adding a second date to everything is its own kind of overhead. The rule that survives contact with a real list:

Give it a deadline only if missing the date has a consequence outside your own head. A fine, a lapsed renewal, a colleague blocked, a flight missed. Todoist frames it the same way — set deadlines "for tasks in which missing the deadline has external consequences."

Everything else gets a scheduling date and nothing more. "Tidy the garage" has no deadline. It has a Saturday you intend to do it, and if you do not, it gets another Saturday.

Which apps have both

Two dates used to be genuinely rare and it is not any more. What varies now is whether you pay for the second one, and what it is called.

App	Scheduling date	Second date	On the free plan?
Todoist	Yes, the date field	Yes, "Deadline"	No — Pro and Business only
Things 3	Yes, "When"	Yes, "Deadline"	One-time purchase — see their App Store listing
Apple Reminders	Yes	No	—
TaskPocket	Yes, the start date	Yes, the deadline	Start date yes, deadline no

Two things worth knowing about that table. Todoist's second date is Pro-only — their own documentation says deadlines "are available on the Pro and Business plans" — so anyone telling you Todoist gives you two dates for free is out of date. And Todoist has the scheduling date but explicitly not a deferring start date: it says plainly that it "does not support start dates that hide your tasks until their start date is due."

Google Tasks is missing from the table on purpose. It is widely repeated that it added deadlines in late 2025; that could not be confirmed in Google's own documentation, so it is not claimed here in either direction.

What this looks like in practice

Whichever app you use, the habit matters more than the field.

• Default to one date. Reach for the second only when the rule above says so. A list where everything has a deadline is a list where deadlines mean nothing.
• Reschedule freely, and never touch the deadline. The whole value of the split is that one date is cheap to move and the other is not. If you find yourself editing deadlines to keep things out of view, the two fields have collapsed back into one.
• Review by deadline, work by schedule. They are different lists and they answer different questions. Looking at what is due is a weekly-review activity; looking at what you planned is a daily one.

In TaskPocket the split is the model rather than a setting: the start date is what Today and Upcoming read, the deadline has its own view, and a task can carry either, both, or neither. The start date and everything built on it are free; the deadline field and the Deadlines view are Premium — which is worth saying plainly, because both products that offer two dates charge for the second one and it would be strange to pretend otherwise.

Where the split does not help

Being honest about the limits of the idea:

• It adds a decision to every task. Two fields is two things to think about. If your list is mostly one-line errands, one date is genuinely better and a second field is overhead you will not get back.
• A deadline you never look at is worse than none, because it feels like you have recorded something. It only works if a view shows it to you.
• Neither date reminds you. In TaskPocket specifically, nothing notifies you when a deadline arrives — there are no notifications on any platform yet. A deadline is something you look at, not something that finds you.