Postponing Tasks

Jotter includes a powerful Task Postponement engine designed to help you battle task flood and keep your active workspace uncluttered.

When you postpone a task to a future date:

1. It disappears from your active board columns (like To Do or In Progress).
2. It is placed into a virtual Postponed column.
3. The virtual column can be toggled visible or invisible. When hidden, postponed tasks are completely filtered out of your view.
4. Once the postponement date is reached (or passed), the task automatically surfaces back into its original column, ready for action.

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Postponing a Task

You can postpone a task in three ways:

1. From the Task Detail Overlay

Double-click a task card to open the Detail Modal.

• Change the column dropdown to Postponed.
• A date input selector will appear below the column selector.
• Select the date until which the task should remain hidden. If no date is picked, it defaults to tomorrow.

2. Via Drag and Drop

On the Kanban Board, toggle the Postponed column visible (see below). Drag any task card from another column directly into the Postponed column. This will automatically set its postponement date to tomorrow.

3. Bulk Postponing

Select multiple tasks by clicking the checkbox at the top-right of any task card. In the Bulk Action Bar that appears at the bottom of the screen:

• Click the Postpone button.
• Select a preset (e.g., Tomorrow, Next Week, In 2 Weeks) or click Pick Date to choose a custom date.
• Click Apply to postpone all selected tasks at once.

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Hiding and Showing Postponed Tasks

You can toggle the visibility of the virtual Postponed column at any time:

• Board View toolbar: Use the Hide Postponed checkbox next to the Hide Done and Hide Archive checkboxes in the toolbar.
• Filter Modal: Open the Filter Modal (search bar filter icon) and check or uncheck the Hide Postponed toggle under Column Filters.

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How It Works Under the Hood

Plain-Text Markdown Storage

Jotter is local-first and stores your tasks in plain-text Markdown files. Unlike moving a task to a separate physical folder, postponing preserves the task's original bucket parameter (e.g., bucket: todo or bucket: in-progress) in the YAML frontmatter and adds a postponed_until property:

---
id: 01HJKM7ST89AB234CDEFGHJKMN
title: Redesign landing page
bucket: todo
postponed_until: 2026-07-15
---

Because the original bucket is preserved, Jotter knows exactly where to return the task when the postponement expires.

Expired Postponements

When Jotter loads, it evaluates task postponement dates against the local calendar date:

• If postponed_until is in the future, the task is virtually mapped to the Postponed column.
• If postponed_until is in the past or is today, the task surfaces in its original bucket (e.g. todo) and renders as a normal active task. The expired date remains passively in the markdown frontmatter as a historical reference without triggering automatic file re-writes, keeping your Git synchronization history clean.