I think a primary root cause to all motivation problems is that our brain is programmed to be lazy. By lazy, I mean, we are programmed to exert the least amount of effort possible to secure our safety and physiological needs.
And, in today's developed world, it's EXTREMELY easy to secure our safety and physiological needs. Once these basic needs are met, we find ourselves in a position where happiness is a function of self-esteem, fulfilling relationships, and physical health.
The problem is that these higher goals take hard work to obtain and maintain. And, our brain isn't wired to want to do that hard work - as long as we're safe & satiated, it wants to check out.
As a result, we have to learn to trick our brains into feeling motivated to achieve these higher goals.
One way to do this is to attach failure of goal completion to something scary like loss of income (see OP's article) or social status. This will trigger motivation because you're endangering your safety and physiological needs (which is what your brain is programmed to react to).
Another way is to learn to silence your subconscious programming (that voice in your head that convinces you to be lazy). You can do this with meditation or by following the 5 second rule: When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1-GO and just start moving towards action.
Finally, after you're done taking action and doing the hard work, you'll feel good. Taking time to notice these positive feelings, and building a causal connection between hard work and positive self-esteem makes goal completion easier as time goes on.
Being lazy is completely natural, and instead of feeling badly about it, we should just accept that our programming is misaligned with the modern world, and learn to take action towards being happy despite of it.