It seems there are two different uses of the word motivation. One is more fleeting - oh wow, I really feel like waking early and jamming out the rest of this code in my head - and one is more long lasting, my god I don’t know if I can read this story once again, but I am really committed to helping this small human grow up and become a kind and intelligent member of society, so reading it is something I am ready and willing to do, again and again.
The longer term motivation, having a big picture in which your work, fun and dull, is understood to be important and useful, makes both discipline and ephemeral motivation a lot easier to come by.
This operates at many scales - I may try very hard to please a difficult boss, both for the pleasure of approval and as a sort of technical self-challenge exercise (not as a substitute for finding a better boss, but to make the wait more pleasant). Overall, I find my life most fulfilling when it is dedicated to the well being of things larger than just my self, family, society, profession, species, the general goodness of existence.
Other people have long term goals of success or power, and from that desire can spring an impressive amount of discipline and motivation.
If you have to hammer yourself down to get thru your tasks, you might want to think about how a change would be possible.
