I wish HN would ban BS psychology articles. There are real, scientific, actionable steps to understanding perceived motivational deficit and this article doesn't get close to them. It retreads stigmatizing labels, regurgitates useless advice, and provokes high confidence low value anecdotes.
1. Motivation is a chemical state.
You can induce motivation generically through dopamine reuptake inhibitors. Why do you think Adderall makes you clean your room? It's not a sudden hatred for dust, it's that your baseline motivation to accomplish any task is enhanced and you're in a task rich environment with a messy room. Many other interesting chemical pathways and interventions exist to directly change the frequency and nature of task initiation performance and completion.
2. Environment strongly impacts internal chemical state.
Take an "addicted" rat and put her into a rich environment and the apparently highly motivating cocaine reward looses its attraction. Take a minimally athletic human and put a bear behind them and they will run.
In neither of the above does a person need to re-evaluate their life and identity, utter crap.
My point here is that HN has an unusual respect for technically interesting and accurate news. It's not all gold, but it seems to favor factual pieces over largely emotional and unproductive arguments. Pop-psychology and feel good generic advice blogs are firmly in that second category. Their value has not advanced since the 50s and we should start seeing them as the kind of harmful, anti-scientific, community deviding memes they are.
End rant.