The problem with most things that make us feel good right now is that they tend to cause you to either do less or worse than you would without them. But there are many things you can do that will feel good right now, and some of them can be used to increase your productivity in achieving what provides enduring and residual good feelings by advancing your purpose.
Do not seek lasting meaning by pretending that something that feels good right now has enduring value if it doesn’t. Use things that feel good right now to supercharge the advancement of your purpose, not to detract from it.
For example, use something that feels good right now as short-term synthetic rewards for long-term efforts. Use assigned rewards to impart motivation to lackluster, long-term, or laborious tasks. Use the things you find enjoyable to motivate the things you do not. This will compound the positive reward with the satisfaction of doing what you need to do combined with the pleasure of doing what you want to do. It will also condition you to associate work with pleasure.
You are the master of your own life, and you have the power to arbitrarily link any reward to any task. For example, if you like snacks, have them right before a weight-lifting session. Doing so will not just help you gain motivation to work out; the easy-to-digest calories will increase your workout performance, and the exercise will metabolize it before it has a chance to turn into fat. If you like coffee, reserve it as a reward to co-occur with work, rather than something to precede it.
If you enjoy a leisure activity, tell yourself that you get to play for 15 minutes if you finish a key task. If you like scrolling the internet, do so as a reward you can look forward to after a stated increment of measured progress—more often than not, once you achieve the progress, you will feel better about that than the internet, and will just keep working.
If you are struggling to pay attention to something that bores you, like reading a required report, interleave the activity with reading something you find enjoyable using some ratio that favors the task you need to do. If you need to crunch through some intense calculations, and you love books, make a deal with yourself that you’ll read for 5 minutes out of every hour until the task is done, and you’ll be shocked at how much more enjoyable the task becomes. Use music when it makes your work more productive and enjoyable—such as blasting upbeat music during backbreaking work, but not when it makes it more enjoyable at the cost of slowed production—such as some music does when you really need to think deeply about complicated information.
For even greater benefits, use something less important from your to do list that is more enjoyable or less difficult than what you are doing as your short-term reward. For example, “reward” yourself for preparing for a tough presentation by answering an email from your spouse.