This is my iPhone's home screen.

You may notice that it is free of notification badges - those little red circles that adorn some icons when there's something that needs to happen.

Except for that one on Things. And boy, has it bugged me.

I know what it means. I know what the task is behind it, and I know I'm not going to do it. So in the 2,492 times I look at my iPhone's home screen each day, that little red "1" taunts me. It teases me. "You're not really going to do this, are you?" "You're not doing this." "Still not doing this!" "HEY! Look at me!"

Sure, sure, other badges come and go. But I feel I can get rid of them sooner. I actually became fearful of looking at this item in Things - the one thing that was looking at me the whole time. I gave it a lot more power than necessary. It's just a bunch of pixels on a screen.

So, I opened up the app and looked at it. And yep, it was exactly what I knew it would be. And I had to be honest: I wasn't going to do that task. I simply wasn't. So I deleted it. Why lie to myself, and why have a little electronic device help me in that?

The badge is gone now; that pleases the neatnik in me. But more importantly, I was honest with myself on that task. No reason to have a pretend thing looking at me every day.