With Rapid Entry, you can quickly add tasks in the web app without moving your mouse.

Basic Rapid Entry use

1. To start, use the keyboard shortcut Shift + E or choose to show Rapid Entry from your preferences. You’ll see a line appear above the top item in every list.
2. Click the line or hit E to focus on it, type your item title, and press Enter. Your new task will be added to the bottom of list. Keep typing and pressing Enter until your mind is clear again.

Good to know: You can press Shift + Enter to add items to the top of the list instead of the bottom.

Add properties with Rapid Entry

In addition to creating basic entries, you can also add tags and certain properties using Rapid Entry. Just follow the order below:

1. Type the name of the item.
2. Add tags by preceding them with a hashtag # . This feature is available only for tags that do not contain spaces. Tags are also case sensitive, so watch out for that Shift key. If you type a new tag, it will added as a label, but you can change the type of tag later.
3. Add a due date by typing #due , a space, and a valid date (such as January 10, mm dd, mm dd yy), “today”, “tomorrow”, or an upcoming day of the week.
4. Add a focus star by typing #focus or #star .
5. If you’re in the Inbox, you can add the item to certain lists by typing #next or #someday .
6. Make your entry a project by typing #project .
7. Press Enter / Shift + Enter and your item is created.
8. If desired, press Esc to remove focus from the Rapid Entry line or Shift + E to hide it.

In this example, the entry “Buy groceries #Personal #errand #star #due August 1” will create the focused task “Buy groceries” with a due date of August 1st and the tags “Personal” and “errand”.

Good to know: Tags are automatically added if your current view is filtered. In the example above, the Inbox was filtered for “Food”, causing the new entry to also contain this tag.

Assigning tags and attributes to your items is a great way to clarify and organize your stuff. Here’s how to add details such as these:

Assign tags and attributes

Good to know: Reference items and project actions inherit the tags of the project or reference list itself. You can add tags and attributes to project actions or reference items individually. However, if you want to delete an inherited tag from the item, you’ll need to remove it from the project or reference list itself.

You can add, delete, and modify your tags easily in Nirvana.

Good to know: The free version allows you 2 area tags and the Pro version allows you an unlimited amount.

Contacts can be managed and added to items in the same way as other tags, but there are 2 differences:

• They can be added to your tasks as “waiting for” contacts or as regular tags.
• In the web app, you can associate your contact with an email address.

Add contacts like regular tags

When you assign a contact to an item as a tag, the item stays in its original list. You’re just adding the contact for organization purposes. If any action is going to take place, it’s your move.

Add “waiting for” contacts:

When you change an action’s state to Waiting, you’ll be asked to associate a contact with the task. This is the person who needs to do something. By looking in the Waiting list, you can see which tasks are pending and with whom you should follow up.

If your items are not really actions, you’ll want to put them in a reference list. To create one, you can:

• Click New Item or tap the from within the References list.
• Use one of the keyboard shortcuts, such as L or N .
• Convert an item to a reference list.

Give the reference list a name and add any relevant tags.

Add items to the reference list

• You can create reference items by clicking New Item or tapping the from within the reference list or with keyboard shortcut N .
• You can also move items from one reference list to the another.

Use tags with reference lists

As with project actions, reference items inherit the tags of the reference list itself. You can also add tags to reference items individually. However, if you want to delete an inherited tag from the item, you’ll need to remove it from the reference list itself.

Nirvana allows you to convert an item into an action, project, reference list, or reference item. Here’s how:

Good to know: Converting an item with action-related attributes, such as a task or a project, to a non-actionable item, like a reference list or item, will remove the action-related attributes.

Depending on whether you’re using the mobile or web app, there are several ways that you can move an item to a new action list, project, or reference list.

Using the web app, you can batch-edit several items at once. Here’s how:

Select the items to change

• Click to the top-left of the first task you want to edit.
• Hold the mouse and drag until you’ve selected the last task you want to edit.
• You’ll notice that the dots on the left side of the selected tasks will be highlighted in grey.
• Press and hold CTRL or COMMAND to add another group of items to the selection.

Edit the selected items

• Change the state or parent list by dragging your items to an another action list, project, or reference list.
• You can also right-click the items and select the desired tags, time, energy, due date, or action state from the context menu.

See the total estimated time

Lasso multiple items, right-click, and you’ll see the total amount of time to complete the selected items.

Decide between a due or scheduled date

Ask yourself 2 questions:

• Does the task needs to be completed by a certain date? Add a due date.
• Do you intend to do the action on a certain day, but it’s not crucial? You should probably schedule it instead.

What’s the difference?

• Actions with a due date stay in in their original list (unless they’re also given a scheduled date). When the due date arrives, they get a Focus star, and will continue to show their due date until completed.
• Scheduled actions stay in the Scheduled list until the date arrives, then move to the Next list and get a Focus star. At this point, the date disappears and the action will remain in the focus list until done.

Adding a due date works similarly to adding other tags and attributes. Take a look at how to add tags and attributes, including the due date.

You can set a deferred start date for your actions or projects by scheduling your items. When the start date arrives, they’ll move to the Next list and get a Focus star.

From a list, select an item or project and drag it over to the Scheduled list . Select a start date from the calendar that appears.

When editing or creating a task, click the state (ex: Next, Active Project, etc.) and, from the context menu, change it to Scheduled. Click Start date and select one from the calendar that appears.

From a list, swipe an item or project to the left and tap the blue arrow. Select the Scheduled list and choose the start date from the calendar that appears.

When editing or creating a task, tap the state (ex: Next, Active Project, etc.) and choose Scheduled. Select your start date from the calendar that appears.

Schedule items for today

Since scheduling is meant for items you intend to do in the future, you can’t technically schedule an item for today. However, you can achieve the same effect by starring the action.

If you’d like to have a date attached to your action, you can give it a due date of today. This will give the item the Focus star as above, but will also add the label Due Today (which will change if it becomes past due).