But the cookies are right there

The biggest problem I've always had with carrot-and-stick motivating factors that I control – like, "if I clean this room then I can have a cookie" – is that I can just... have the cookie. I'm the one enforcing the reinforcement mechanism and I can just not enforce it if I want to.

Ultimately, to get me motivated to do something I wouldn't otherwise do, it has to resolve a pain point (and not just the artificial pain of not being able to have the cookie right now). And more and more often, it has to be a pain point I haven't learned to live with – and there are a lot of pain points where my response is "well, this is my life now".

I dunno. I guess I'm just not a very motivated person? Maybe I should make a list of things I want to do today and then come up with a good reason to do them and make my life better, instead of just the same as it was yesterday.