Obsidian Tasks Custom Statuses

Earlier this evening I was trying to figure out if I could have Obsidian Tasks community plugin https://github.com/obsidian-tasks-group/obsidian-tasks alongside checklists. The Tasks plugin is nice for many reasons. One being that it prompts you with some values to help you set due dates and also automatically records when you complete a task. You can turn off the default stamping of completion dates but I find it handy.

In my mind, a checklist doesn't really need a date completed. Let's take a Packing List as an example. If I mark the "Shirts" item as done that merely indicates to me that the item is in my bag I have no reason to have a date on there.

The solution to this is custom statuses in Obsidian Tasks.

In Obsidian Tasks settings you can set all kinds of custom statuses. Here I have set 2 of them. What this allows is for me to create a note and put in the markdown something like:

- [?] Shirts
- [?] Socks
- [?] Jeans

When I click on one of the list entries, it fills the check box with 'o'. In other words, lets say I've packed my Shirts and Socks, the list would look like:

- [o] Shirts
- [o] Socks
- [?] Jeans

The advantage here is that the way I have these states set up in the settings, neither one is a 'DONE' state to the Tasks Plugin. Thus, we don't get the date stamp. Exactly what I want for this purpose.

Here's the non-markdown view of the above:

Happy list making in Obsidian! Obsidian Notes