fortunately or unfortunately, I also have parents to provide me with reasons to have urges to do things I wouldn't otherwise have an urge to do.

A good point.

Social incentives that directly incentivize the immediate steps toward long-term goals seem to be key to a surprisingly large portion of functional human behavior.

People acquire the habit of wearing seatbelts in part because parents'/friends' approval incentivizes it; I don't want to be the sort of person my mother would think reckless. (People are much worse at taking safety measures that are not thus backed up by social approval; e.g. driving white or light-colored cars reduces one's total driving-related death risk by ord mag 20%, but this statistic does not spread, and many buy dark cars.)

People similarly bathe lest folks smell them, keep their houses clean lest company be horrified, stick to exercise plans and study and degree plans and retirement savings plans partly via friends' approval, etc.; and are much worse at similar goals for which there are no societally cached social incentives for goal-steps. The key role social incentives play in much apparently long-term action of this is one reason people sometimes say "people do not really care about charity, their own health, their own jobs, etc.; all they care about is status".

But contra Robin, the implication is not "humans only care about status, and so we pretend hypocritically to care about our own survival while really basically just caring about status", the implication is "humans are pretty inept at acquiring urges to do the steps that will fulfill our later urges. We are also pretty inept at doing any steps we do not have a direct urge for. Thus, urges to e.g. survive, or live in a clean and pleasant house, or do anything else that requires many substeps… are often pretty powerless, unless accompanied by some kind of structure that can create immediate rewards for individual steps.

(People rarely exhibit long-term planning to acquire social status any more than we/they exhibit long-term planning to acquire health. E.g., most unhappily single folk do not systematically practice their social skills unless this is encouraged by their local social environment.)