NOTE: This is not bragging, I really really want to change many of my ways and think part of this info is relevant to that. Trying to give you a bit more precision about my intentions and perceptions. 1) I'm very good at finishing stuff if it is social/sexual/friendship stuff, or reading, or writing essays. 2) What I am not good is what requires feedback, things like finding an agent for book publishing, writing a good paper even though I am from Brazil and no one would revise it, or pretending to be interested in a low-impact master thesis. Now, to your comments: Sure man, having gotten something done is great, now the kinds of things that really make me shine inside for having done them: Creating new friendships between two similiar people, giving presentations on transhumanism or philosophy and being high regarded, seducing women whom I'm likely to love, winning in intelectual games, and more than everything, being regarded, after planning an event, as a person who really takes the fact that we only live once and thus ought to savour every moment seriously. I've been told that I'm the person who most changed their lives by at least five people. I've optimized for being considered awesome by those who know me little. These things, I like the feeling of having done. Now if you ask me about how good I feel about having written a book on Dan Dennett, about having writen three unpublished philosophical articles, or about having caused 5 people to take immensely seriously the possibility of dedicating themselves to transhumanism/singularity/utilitarianism, I would be ridiculously lying to say that it makes me happier than, say, reading less wrong replies about my comments.
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 g...
An exercise:
Name something that you do not do but should/wish you did/are told you ought, or that you do less than is normally recommended. (For instance, "exercise" or "eat vegetables".)
Make an exhaustive list of your sufficient conditions for avoiding this thing. (If you suspect that your list may be non-exhaustive, mention that in your comment.)
Precommit that: If someone comes up with a way to do the thing which doesn't have any of your listed problems, you will at least try it. It counts if you come up with this response yourself upon making your list.
(Based on: Is That Your True Rejection?)
Edit to add: Kindly stick to the spirit of the exercise; if you have no advice in line with the exercise, this is not the place to offer it. Do not drift into confrontational or abusive demands that people adjust their restrictions to suit your cached suggestion, and do not offer unsolicited other-optimizing.
To alleviate crowding, Armok_GoB has created a second thread for this challenge.