Getting Things Done in 2080

Most people who quit GTD didn’t quit the method. They quit the maintenance.

David Allen’s system is sound. Capture everything, decide what it means, put it where it belongs, look at it regularly, then do the work. The problem was never the thinking. The problem was that every app you tried made you the database. You had to remember to move a task from “Someday” to “Next Actions.” You had to remember that step three of the kitchen renovation can’t start until the contractor calls back. You had to hand-maintain a Waiting For list that only stayed accurate if you groomed it every week, and the week you skipped grooming it was the week the whole system went quietly stale.

2080 was built around a single idea that happens to solve exactly that: task status is calculated, never set by hand. A task is Available, Blocked, Scheduled, Waiting, or Completed based on facts the app already knows. You describe reality once. The app keeps the lists straight forever.

Here is how to run a full GTD system on it.

The five-minute version

If you want the shape before the detail:

Now the parts that matter.

1. Capture: make it cost nothing

The first rule of capture is that it has to be faster than the thought. If getting an idea into your system takes eleven seconds and three clicks, you will stop doing it, and a GTD system with an incomplete inbox is worse than no system at all, because you will trust it.

Cmd+1 puts 2080 in Capture Mode: a blank screen, one input box, a counter of how many things you’ve added this session. No lists, no sidebar, no tags, nothing to look at and nothing to decide. Type the thing, press Enter, type the next thing.

Do not clarify while capturing. This is the discipline that makes the rest work. “Call the dentist” and “the whole Q3 launch thing” and “figure out taxes” all go in raw. Sorting them out is a different job with a different mode, and mixing the two is why people’s inboxes turn into a graveyard.

Everything lands in the Inbox by default, which is a real list in 2080 that cannot be renamed or deleted. That permanence is deliberate. Your inbox is a fixed point in the system.

If you already know the details at capture time, the quick-add bar speaks shorthand:

Call the dentist #phone due friday
Draft launch email ^Q3 Launch #computer start monday

# adds a tag, ^ assigns a list, due and start accept plain-language dates like “friday,” “in 3 days,” or “next monday.” Tags and lists that don’t exist yet are created on the spot. Use it when the shape is obvious. Don’t use it as an excuse to start thinking mid-capture.

2. Clarify: one pass, four questions

Once or twice a day, open Review Mode (Cmd+4) with the Inbox selected. Review Mode hands you one task at a time and gives you exactly four moves: mark it reviewed, edit it, complete it, or delete it. There is no list to scroll and nothing else on screen. This is the closest thing in any task app to sitting down with a physical in-tray and processing to zero.

For each item, the standard GTD questions, and what each answer looks like here:

Is it actionable? No means delete it, or park it in a Someday list, or keep it as reference. Yes means keep going.

Does it take under two minutes? Do it now and tick the checkbox. Review Mode lets you complete a task without leaving the flow, which is the entire point.

Am I the right person? If not, set the Assignee to whoever is. 2080 gives every task assigned to anyone other than “Me” the Waiting status automatically. Your Waiting For list is now a permanent, self-maintaining consequence of delegation. You will never again hand something off and lose track of it because you forgot to log it in two places.

Does it happen later? Set a start date. Tasks with a future start date get the Scheduled status and stay out of your working views until the date arrives. That is a tickler file with no filing.

Is it more than one step? It’s a project. Which brings us to the next part.

3. Organize: projects, contexts, and the sequencing trick

Projects

You have two options, and both are correct in different situations.

Use a list for anything with more than a handful of steps, an ongoing area of responsibility, or something you want in the sidebar where you can see it. “Q3 Launch,” “House,” “Client: Meridian.”

Use a parent task with subtasks for small multi-step outcomes that live inside a bigger area. “Renew passport” with three subtasks underneath it doesn’t deserve its own sidebar entry. Subtasks nest up to three levels and inherit their parent’s list, so they stay where they belong without extra filing.

Contexts

Tags are your contexts. Keep them few and keep them physical: #computer, #phone, #errands, #home, #deepwork. The test for a good context is whether it tells you something you couldn’t already see. #urgent is not a context. #errands is, because when you’re in the car it eliminates ninety percent of your list instantly.

Tags in 2080 can nest, and filtering by a parent includes everything under it. That’s useful for things like #work with #work/calls and #work/writing beneath it, where you sometimes want the whole surface and sometimes want one slice.

The sequencing trick, which is the real payoff

Classic GTD asks you to identify the single next action for every project and put only that action on your lists. It’s the right instinct. It’s also the piece nobody sustains, because it means every time you finish a step you have to remember to go promote the next one by hand.

In 2080 you use the Blocked By field instead. Lay out all the steps of a project up front, then say which ones wait on which:

1. Get quotes from three contractors
2. Choose a contractor          (blocked by 1)
3. Sign contract                (blocked by 2)
4. Schedule demolition          (blocked by 3)

Steps 2 through 4 now carry the Blocked status and stay out of your action lists. Step 1 is Available. When you complete step 1, step 2 becomes Available on its own, immediately, without you touching anything.

You get the discipline of “only the next action is on the list” without the bookkeeping that made it collapse. You can dump the full project out of your head in one sitting, which is where it wants to be anyway, and the app will feed it back to you one step at a time in the right order. A task can be blocked by several tasks and can block several others, and circular chains are rejected, so you can model real project structure rather than a straight line.

Someday / Maybe

Make a list called “Someday.” Then open Settings, go to Focus Mode, and add it to the excluded lists. It stays visible in your sidebar for the weekly review and disappears from the view you actually work in. If something is only paused until a specific date, prefer a start date, since Scheduled status handles it automatically and returns the task to you on the day.

4. Reflect: the Weekly Review, made mechanical

The weekly review is where GTD systems live or die, and the usual failure is not laziness. It’s that “review everything” is an unbounded instruction with no obvious finish line, so it never feels done and eventually stops happening.

2080 gives it a finish line. Every task carries a Last Reviewed timestamp, updated when you mark it reviewed in Review Mode. You can sort or group by it. Sort ascending and the tasks you have ignored the longest rise to the top, which means your review always starts with the part of your system most likely to be rotting.

A workable weekly pass:

1. Empty the inbox. Review Mode on the Inbox until it’s clear.
2. Sweep the stalest tasks. Planning Mode, sort by Last Reviewed ascending, then Review Mode to walk them. Marking a task reviewed is a real decision, so make it: still relevant, still worded correctly, still blocked by the right thing.
3. Check Waiting. Filter to Waiting status. Anything you’ve been waiting on too long needs a nudge, which is itself a task.
4. Check Blocked. A task that’s blocked by something completed should have unblocked itself. A task that’s blocked by something you’re no longer doing needs the dependency removed.
5. Scan Someday. Anything ready to promote, move it into a real list.
6. Look at each project list. Does it have at least one Available task? A project list where everything is Blocked, Scheduled, or Waiting is stalled, and that is exactly the diagnosis that’s hard to make in other tools and obvious here.

That last one is worth sitting with. In most apps, “which of my projects are secretly stuck?” is a question you answer by reading and remembering. In 2080 it’s a glance at the status colors.

Build the review views once as saved filters and pin them. A filter can combine lists, tags, statuses, and assignees, and three of them can live in the sidebar. “Waiting on others” and “Stalled” earn their spots.

5. Engage: one thing at a time

Cmd+3 is Focus Mode. It shows only Available tasks, one card at a time. Not a list of available tasks. One.

This is where the whole setup pays off, because “Available” here is not a label you maintained. It is a computed fact: not completed, not blocked by anything unfinished, not scheduled for a future date, not assigned to somebody else. Everything you see in Focus Mode is genuinely startable right now. That is what GTD’s next-actions list was always trying to be.

Filter by a tag to pick your context. #errands before you leave the house, #computer when you sit down, #phone for the block you set aside to make calls. Turn on due-date sorting if deadlines should drive the order. Exclude the lists and tags that shouldn’t be in play during working hours.

Then work the card in front of you and complete it from the card. The next one comes up. Nothing else is on screen, including the count of what’s left, which is the correct amount of information to have while working.

What this costs you, honestly

Two things.

The dependency modeling takes real thought up front. Laying out a ten-step project and wiring the blockers is slower than typing ten tasks into a list. You are paying once for something you would otherwise pay for weekly, forever, and for most projects that trade is obviously worth it. For a three-item errand run it is not. Don’t wire blockers on things that don’t need them.

And there’s a habit to unlearn: you cannot mark something as a next action by hand. Some people find this uncomfortable for the first week, because the control they’re used to exercising has been taken away. What replaces it is that the list is right without you, which is a better deal than it feels like on day three.

Start here

You don’t need the whole system on day one. In order of payoff:

1. Use Capture Mode for a week. Capture everything, clarify daily, nothing else.
2. Add three or four context tags and start using Focus Mode filtered to one of them.
3. Set assignees on anything you delegate and watch your Waiting list build itself.
4. Take one real multi-step project and wire the blockers. This is the moment it clicks.
5. Add the weekly review with Last Reviewed sorting once the rest is habit.

Everything stays in a local SQLite file on your machine. No account, no sync, no server holding your commitments. Export the lot to JSON whenever you want.

GTD asked you to keep a trusted system. It is a lot easier to trust one that keeps itself.

Download 2080 and try it free for 7 days. No account required.