The phenomenology of 'nnnggg, I don't wanna!'

Sometimes there’s a task which is on my to-do list, or which I “have” to do, and I powerfully, deeply, intensely do not want to do it.

This is particularly bad if the Bad Task is part of a paid project: if it’s something I’ve committed to, and others are relying on me to do it, it’s much harder to say ‘I’ll never do it, and damn the consequences!’

It’s particulary particularly bad if the Bad Task is my only obligation, or the largest or most time-consuming or most daunting one. This is counter-intuitive: surely having to do one hard task is strictly better than having to do the same one hard task, plus a smattering of medium and easy tasks?

Not so: if the Bad Task is my only or dominant task, it means the time spent not doing the Bad Task is spent ruminating on how bad it feels to have the Bad Task hanging over me, feeling frustrated that I can’t do it, and fruitlessly strategizing about how to do it; or simply procrastinating in the dark playground. Conversely, if I have other tasks to do, I can make progress on them and build a sense of ‘I am a competent person who completes most tasks, despite the occasional block’.

(Maybe it’s not coincidental that I am a PhD dropout and have had bad experiences around Large Interminable Singular Tasks)

What does this feel like?

In my body, when I contemplate the Bad Task, it feels sort of…. Emotionally nauseous? Eww. I want to curl my lip. There’s disgust here.

I feel tense. I want to hold my shoulders back, press my arms to my side.

It feels like someone I don’t like is going in for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It feels like being cornered by a boring monologuer for hours, one who insists on standing too close. It feels boundary-crossing.

This fits with how my reactions to Bad Tasks can be understood through the trauma-response typology: I might flee (avoid the task by doing other things), freeze (just sit there), fight (ruminate or complain to my partners about how much I hate the task and why it’s objectively Bad).

This suggests that Bad Tasks become bad because they trigger some scary trauma-y feelings somehow, even when they seem trivial, everyday, not ‘objectively’ scary.

When thinking about a Bad Task, I feel bad about myself. An obvious way to understand this is that I feel bad about myself because I feel guilty or ashamed for not doing the task. This is partly true, but not the full story. Most of the time, I don’t endorse feeling guilty or ashamed, anyway (most of the time, the stakes of me waiting time to do the task are nil or extremely low).

Another analogy: have you ever been out all day in the sun, travelling, and you feel kind of scruffy and grubby and you’re desperate for a shower?

This feels worse than that situation. I feel disgusted but also kind of like I am disgusting.

This fits with the idea that we have many psychological parts. Clearly, parts of me are polarized, here. At least one part wants me to do the thing. At least one part wants me not to. So plausibly, one part feels disgusted by another part (who feels disgusting).

Am I ‘disgusted with myself’ for not being able to do the task? No; I think it’s more that one part of me is being pushy and coercive and other parts are disgusted by them: as you might feel disgusted and frightened by a pushy person who’s forcing themself upon you.

Is this ‘ugh-fields’?

Bad Tasks share some features with ugh-fields. One is that the negative feelings I have towards them can spiral and compound: on Days 1 and 2, the task is Bad for some objective reason (I’m tired, it’s slightly distasteful to me, I feel incompetent at it). By Days 3, 4 and 5, it’s now Bad because I spent hours feeling terrible about it each previous day.

But there are some ways in which my Bad Tasks don’t fit the pattern of ugh-fields. Canonically, you avoid thinking about ugh-fielded tasks. My Bad Tasks are often so central or important that I can’t avoid thinking about them. In fact, one of the bad things about having a Bad Task on my plate is that a lot of my bandwidth gets taken up with preoccupation about the task, strategizing about how to get it done, etc.

With ugh-fields, canonically the task and the ugh-field only gets worse over time. With Bad Tasks, this sometimes happens, but more typically it doesn’t. Sometimes, a Bad Task inexplicably becomes a Good Task the next day! Other times, the task always has an aura of Bad Task-ness, but it feels notably less bad on some days than others.

In general, I think it pays to be cautious about novel psychological concepts like ugh-fields: they can be very useful as handles, but they can also function as curiosity-stoppers: if something bears superficial similarities, the risk is that you go ‘oh it’s “just” an ugh-field’, or ‘it’s “just” an X’, and fail to analyze your experience any more deeply. This could lead to you applying solutions that work for X but not for your thing.

The fact that Bad Tasks can become Good is important, because it means that it makes sense to not do (or ‘procrastinate’) Bad Tasks while they are Bad. An ugh-fielded task — by the classic definition — isn’t going to get better, so it’s imperative to prevent ugh-fields from forming in the first place, which implies that when you have an aversive, ugh-prone task on your to-do list, you should do it immediately. But if the task will become better in future, it makes sense to do it in future, when it’s better, rather than now, when it’s Bad (unless it’s urgent).

If one person doesn’t want to do a task and another, equally (or more) competent person wants to, clearly you should give it to the person who enjoys it! This is equally true if the two people are current-Amber and future-Amber.

Also, happy me is more productive and competent than sad me, so from the point of view of clients (or whoever else cares about the task being done), they should want it to be done by happy, willing Amber, not sad reluctant Amber (again, unless it’s really urgent).

Also, attempting and failing to do a task when it’s Bad makes it worse the next day, since it builds an association with bad feelings and failure.

Yet it’s hard to internalize this: it feels like I should try to do tasks when they feel bad, even if I predict that I’ll feel better about them on another day, and even if there’s no clear urgency. Why is this?

Well, I think it’s hard for me to viscerally feel and internalize that the Bad Task will feel better on another day, even if my analytical parts can remember specific times that this happened. This fits with my intuition that Bad Tasks are Bad because they’ve brought up some small-t trauma: I think traumatized parts tend to be trapped in a specific moment and they don’t really understand time and change. I sometimes find it hard to act as if difficult feelings are temporary, even if some parts of me know that they are. And if the task will always feel Bad, it’s clearly better to do it sooner rather than later.

Another reason is that the worse the task feels to do, the better it feels to have done it, and the worse it feels to have it hanging over me. So ambitious parts of me are always keen to get the Bad Task done, if possible. Anything fun or enjoyable I do while the Bad Task is undone feels guilty — even if the other tasks are useful too.

In general, cultural ideas around willpower, grit, perseverance and conscientiousness can lead us astray here: we’re taught that it’s virtuous to persist in adversity and to endure present discomfort for future gain. Sometimes, this is a pretty useful message, one that counterbalances our bias towards focussing on the present. At other times, it can just lead to needless suffering.