I guess I worded the question poorly. I mean, what did you change that made you more productive? I'm trying to see if there's any obvious and fixable reason that it didn't last. This can require precision in describing your mental state to get right.
I will attempt to do so but I have no way of knowing whether this is accurate or it is just the best rationalization my brain came up with. In addition, I know very little of psychology and my attempt at introspection is probably inadequate to give much useful information.
If I introspect while making a decision I can notice a succession of feelings in response to each other. I tried reflecting upon the experience of making a poor decision and explicitly noticing the affective factors that influenced my decision. I constructed a new feeling which I thought ...
I don't like doing much work. I would however, like my future self to do work so that my far future self will have better opportunities.
To clarify, I want these things for each specified self:
The problem is, I expect that my future self will feel the same way and also want immediate gratification. What can I do now to achieve all 3 of those goals? How can I manipulate my future self into doing more work without having to do much work right now?