org: Deadlines and scheduling
8.3 Deadlines and scheduling
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A timestamp may be preceded by special keywords to facilitate planning:
DEADLINE
Meaning: the task (most likely a TODO item, though not necessarily)
is supposed to be finished on that date.
On the deadline date, the task will be listed in the agenda. In
addition, the agenda for _today_ will carry a warning about the
approaching or missed deadline, starting
‘org-deadline-warning-days’ before the due date, and continuing
until the entry is marked DONE. An example:
*** TODO write article about the Earth for the Guide
DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun>
The editor in charge is [[bbdb:Ford Prefect]]
You can specify a different lead time for warnings for a specific
deadlines using the following syntax. Here is an example with a
warning period of 5 days ‘DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun -5d>’. This
warning is deactivated if the task get scheduled and you set
‘org-agenda-skip-deadline-prewarning-if-scheduled’ to ‘t’.
SCHEDULED
Meaning: you are planning to start working on that task on the
given date.
The headline will be listed under the given date(1). In addition,
a reminder that the scheduled date has passed will be present in
the compilation for _today_, until the entry is marked DONE, i.e.,
the task will automatically be forwarded until completed.
*** TODO Call Trillian for a date on New Years Eve.
SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat>
If you want to _delay_ the display of this task in the agenda, use
‘SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat -2d>’: the task is still scheduled on
the 25th but will appear two days later. In case the task contains
a repeater, the delay is considered to affect all occurrences; if
you want the delay to only affect the first scheduled occurrence of
the task, use ‘--2d’ instead. See ‘org-scheduled-delay-days’ and
‘org-agenda-skip-scheduled-delay-if-deadline’ for details on how to
control this globally or per agenda.
Important: Scheduling an item in Org mode should not be understood
in the same way that we understand scheduling a meeting. Setting a
date for a meeting is just a simple appointment, you should mark
this entry with a simple plain timestamp, to get this item shown on
the date where it applies. This is a frequent misunderstanding by
Org users. In Org mode, scheduling means setting a date when you
want to start working on an action item.
You may use timestamps with repeaters in scheduling and deadline
entries. Org mode will issue early and late warnings based on the
assumption that the timestamp represents the nearest instance of the
repeater. However, the use of diary sexp entries like ‘<%%(diary-float
t 42)>’ in scheduling and deadline timestamps is limited. Org mode does
not know enough about the internals of each sexp function to issue early
and late warnings. However, it will show the item on each day where the
sexp entry matches.
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org: Creating timestamps
org: Dates and Times
org: Clocking work time