One is supposed to grow out of caring about the result. A master at their craft creates masterpieces because day in, day out they sit at their desk and create. When they're sad, they sit down and create. If you love the process, you keep at doing something; doing something repeatedly is how you become a master.
If you want to go spiritual, there's karma yoga from the Bhagavad Gita: "You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction."
Did Leonardo work for fame and monies, or simply because he found massive enjoyment in it? What about Hemingway, or Einstein?
This might all sound like new age bullshit, but it's taken me literally 15 years of my life to understand this and grow out of chronic procrastination and dissatisfaction.
most of today's problem's in this field is because upper management got swindled into thinking that the process doesn't matter, as long as something comes out the other end. Doesn't need to work properly.
But this shitty state of software nowadays is mostly due to only caring about the result and not the process.
To be clear: this existed even before AI, and also led to the proliferation of electron and its ilk.
Not to be condescending, but everyone goes through this phase, then they grow up, it’s literally what separates the amateur from the master.