So basically, what you're saying is that you get satisfaction from doing things that give you fairly immediate rewards (being considered awesome) from people. If I guess correctly, you are probably quite extroverted and like being around people. (This is fairly rare on LessWrong, and it isn't the case for me.) A possible solution would be to try to tie those things you don't get as much satisfaction from (writing a book, writing philosophy articles, etc) to getting respect and having people think you are awesome. If you can think of a way to do that, I'm guessing it would help.

I would be ridiculously lying to say that it makes me happier than, say, reading less wrong replies about my comments.

Like I said. Making the world a 'better place' is not necessarily about making just yourself happier. (Though I haven't done a huge amount on that front either.)