It got to the point where I didn’t want to add any more info to my 6,000-word review of OmniFocus. But these tips from page 22 of the OmniFocus Manual about how to type in due dates are priceless.

You can be pretty creative with the way you enter dates; OmniFocus is rather smart about guessing what you mean. For example:

  • 2d, -3w, 1h, 1y1m, and so on — Relative dates and times put the date at a certain amount of time from right now. Negative numbers represent times in the past.

  • 2 days, -3 weeks, 1 hour, 1 year 1 month, and so on — You can use the full names of units too.

  • yesterday, tomorrow, next thursday, last month, this friday, and so on — You can refer to relative dates using common words. “This”, “next”, and “last” have specific meanings: this friday always means the Friday in this week, next friday always means the Friday in the next week, and last friday always means the Friday in last week, regardless of what day today is. Other units work in the same way.

  • september, thurs, 2019, and so on — If you enter the name of a specific time period, the date will be at its beginning. So september means Septem- ber first.

  • 5/23/08 10a, 9.30.09 2:00 PM, and so on — You can use the short date format as defined in your International system preferences.

Clever Shortcuts and Other Parameters for Entering Due Dates Into OmniFocus [PDF]