I’ve been learning Chinese for four years. The first two years, I didn’t bother learning to write. I figured it was a waste of my time. Finally, one day I stopped giving myself excuses, and just sat down and grinded out writing characters for three months. On top of that, I took time off in between jobs and paid for a teacher every day.

Unsurprisingly, my results were huge.

I started applying this mindset to every skill I had a tertiary interest in. Public speaking, marketing, even stand up comedy. Using my own money and any free time I had (tonight I’m meeting with a comedy coach at midnight because of the time zone difference).

I know work in a sales engineer (cs degree) role, get to give fun presentations (public speaking/comedy), and write the odd blog post (marketing) for the company. All these skills I paid for myself with time and money. But the result is a fun and lucrative career that’s only going to become more fun and lucrative.

It sounds like you need a bigger goal. Having a huge goal is a good way to shift your mind from “How do I get paid now” to “How do I get to do what I want to do everyday, and get paid a lot later”