One time I was listening to Artie Lange on the Howard Stern show talk about how he got interested in watching sports. (This is related, bare with me). He said something to the effect of "You want to get interested in a local sports team? Fine. How much money is in your bank account? Ok, $1,200 in your bank account. Great. Tonight go put $1,500 on the Nicks game. You won't be able to take your eyes off the TV."

I'm paraphrasing. The point is if you bet money you didn't have on a game, your stake in the outcome of that game would be HIGH.

Your challenge right now is, you have no stake in the matter. I heard someone say one time (Tim Ferris?) that success is just about incentives. Again, poorly paraphrasing.

The point is; with the right incentives you can accomplish amazing things. When I was single and dating, I was funny, charming and generous. The incentive there was obvious.

So how do you incentivize yourself to learn a new technology? Easy: create a situation where you MUST learn it. How? Sell (or promise) a project that includes finishing something in the tech you sold (or promised).

I would pick something that is slightly outside of your comfort zone, not WAY outside. The more you must get something done, the more you'll learn. You'll learn fast if you make a habit out of it.

Sometimes you can do it with a passion project too. So pick something that is important to you personally and just pick the tech you want to learn.

Programming is hard, the passion will carry you through the really hard problems.