We act like we're fully in control of ourselves, but few people are. There's the 'immediate reaction you', 'the you' that you need survive a lion attack or whatever, that gets in the way of the 'long term you'- 'the you' that goes a little hungry in order to stock up food for the winter. Often, we attempt to tell our in-the-moment self he should do something, and then he doesn't, and then you feel guilty, and then you think...why try? It's not like anything matters. It's not like I matter. Might as well have fun and ride the tide, right?
Except there is a choice. You just treat your in-the-moment self as a different person. If something doesn't work, it's the system you used to motivate that person that failed, not you. You've just got to keep trying until you find things that worked- like a constant experiment to see what works when training a dog. Except you're not training a dog, you're training yourself.
Not all the same things work for everyone because human minds are complex, which is probably part of why there's been little progress in finding effective methods, there.
I've found that framing my real life like a game helped a lot. You often consume some media (a game, a movie, a book, etc) and think "Ah! If only I was in this magical world I would have a life that mattered and save the world, etc, or fix things, or live a life of fun adventure, etc." Except, if we really got zapped into such a world, we'd probably be random NPC #677229, slacking at his farm and shooting the shit at the village. You don't care about the evil empires, the necromancers, or the shitty guild that's ruining things nearby. You just want to get to the end of the week, drink your ale, play some cards, and stare at the commotion when some big strapping hero with white hair and two swords comes by and starts some shit. And then you go back to your life.
You do have opportunities. Things aren't as clear cut as they are in games, but there are lofty missions to pursue, though they might seem much more boring than fighting a monster. Oh, and there are monsters too, but they're hard to find, and fairly rare in our well-developed societies. The biggest ones are more common, but they're ephemeral, herculean problems that no one thought to tackle until some independently minded problem solver got lucky on the 31234234 time trying. Even if you fail with one of these big bosses, the next hero who comes along might learn from your failure, and win the fight one day.
So find a mission. Break it down. Determine what stats you need to take on such a mission, and then what you have to do to grind those stats. Break the action down to the tiniest levels, and always have them in the back of your mind. When you feel like procrastinating, procrastinate with side missions. For example, your main mission might be to save lives in the simplest and most direct sense, so you decide that the best way to do that is to become a trauma physician. You figure out all the little steps needed to become a physician, and break it down to the point that you know your next step is writing a letter to Dr. Bob to get a recommendation so you can get into med school next year, or finish page 2 of organic chem. Your side mission might be 'become a musician', and you've decided that guitar is the easiest thing for you to learn, so your next step there is matching chords to pitch, with your eyes closed. When you procrastinate with your organic chem homework, procrastinate by practicing guitar. That way, even your procrastination is productive. I'm not saying eliminate all mindless pleasure. Just reserve it for real downtime.
We like games because they're full of small successes and chances to correct our mistakes. They're simple enough that it's easy enough to spot our mistakes once we've made them. Real life often has too much data to do that, but you can break down every task further and find ways to evaluate yourself until it's just a next action. If you say "I want to succeed socially", you've got to figure out what that means. You figure out how people communicate, how they think, and you break it down and see what your biggest mistakes are and fix that. So after looking at the quality of your voice, the content of what you say, your mindset, and your body language you might realize that your voice just sounds weird and reedy, so now you know you might benefit from a vocal coach, or just learning everything you can about voice training. You find out what some of the exercises are, and you know you want to breathe with your diaphragm and speak from the back of your throat. That's a lot easier than 'succeed socially', and it's easier to see progress there, and once you succeed once you can apply the same process to find the next 5 second action to complete.
That little dose of pleasure you get when snipe someone from across the map? That's the kind of pleasure you need to be able to derive from learning the skills you care about in real life.
