The humble checkbox makes a bold claim: work is either done or it isn’t. Anyone who has written an essay, shipped a feature, or planned an event knows better. There’s drafted but not reviewed. Sent, awaiting reply. Blocked on the vendor. Between “not done” and “done” lives most of the actual work.

When your tool can’t represent those states, you smuggle them in anyway — “(WIP)” scribbled in titles, tasks split into “write report” and “send report,” a mental note that the checked-off item isn’t really finished. The information exists; it’s just stored in your head, which is exactly where a task system is supposed to not keep things.

States you define, not states you inherit

Tasklium lets each workspace define its own status flow. Not a fixed kanban template — your names, your colors, your order:

  • A student’s thesis: To Do → In Progress → Review → Complete
  • A freelancer’s invoices: Draft → Sent → Paid
  • A job hunt: Applied → Interview → Offer → Accepted
  • Your personal list: just To Do → Done, because simple is also a workflow

Each status has a color, so a glance down the list shows the shape of your week: a wall of amber means too much in progress; a stack of blue means you’re the bottleneck on reviews.

Statuses chain, like the work does

Statuses in Tasklium know their order — each one points to the next, so advancing a task is one tap, not a menu hunt. The final state is the one that counts as done, which means done-ness stays meaningful: a task in “Review” correctly shows up as unfinished, even though the writing part is over.

This is the difference between a status and a label. A label describes; a status progresses.

Why not just use a kanban board?

Boards are a view, not a data model — and a column named “In Progress” helps only if the underlying tool understands it. Tasklium keeps the list (fast to scan, easy to reorder, dependency-aware) and lets the status ride along on each task. You get workflow tracking without giving up the list you actually work from.

Start with three

If you’re new to custom states, resist the urge to model your whole process. Start with three: To Do, Doing, Done. Add “Review” or “Waiting” only when you catch yourself writing it in a task title — that’s the signal the state is real. Your workflow should be discovered, not designed in advance.

The checkbox was never wrong. It was just half the story.