When an item is deferred while waiting for an update or a response it would be much more useful to wake the item up earlier than the defer date.
As an example, a case comes in and needs a human to verify some details - we need to defer the case so that it will be captured in an output file of the number of cases worked so the case would be deferred for 24-hours to ensure it gets reported.
The issue that then happens is that if the return from a colleague is before the defer time ends you are not able to pick the case back out of the BP queue.
In most common work flow systems you can pend/defer cases for a set period of time but also wake that case back up sooner if the required updates have come back so it would be much better to allow BP to do the same