We can describe this hard way in terms of reinforcement learning: after intending to learn Swahili but not doing so, I feel stupid. This unpleasant feeling propagates back to its cause, the behavior of intending to learn Swahili, and negatively reinforces it.

I think I've always had this unpleasant feeling back-propagation, to the point that at the start of your article, I thought you must be wrong...surely everyone knows better than to get pleasure from thinking about doing something that isn't yet done! But maybe I'm wrong.