Ugh Fields

Pavlovian conditioning can cause humans to unconsciously flinch from even thinking about a serious personal problem they have, we call it an "Ugh Field". The Ugh Field forms a self-shadowing blind spot covering an area desperately in need of optimization, imposing huge costs.

If a person receives constant negative conditioning via unhappy thoughts whenever their mind goes into a certain zone of thought, they will begin to develop a psychological flinch mechanism around the thought.

This can be a overdue task, painful email that requires a response, whatsapp message, etc.

Eg. Procrastination Behavior

Solutions

1. Happens to everyone, forgive yourself.
2. Label it as Ugh Field rather than personalizing.
3. See if you can do a smaller version of it. Eg. Replying to the email that you can't take that up.
4. See if the importance you place on task is based on reality.
5. See if needs to be done anymore.
6. Hire/ask someone else to do it.
7. If you have mental health issues, this will be a more prevalent issue. Try to fix the underling problems first.
8. Learn the pattern of things becoming your Ugh Field.

Sources

• ‘Ugh fields’, or why you can’t even bear to think about that task
• Ugh fields