You sound like me. I currently work in healthcare doing non-patient-care stuff, and I'm learning programming when I'm not working. My days are normally boring and steady-paced.

When my boss asked me to temporarily pick up some slack and new responsibilities, I immediately surged into action and got some praise. I was feeling productive, so I built a few things when I got home even after doing 10 hour days.

If someone asks me to build something for them, it gets a fair amount of attention right now (mostly because I'm trying to break into programming/webdev), and occupies my thoughts. When I have no demands, I'm pretty meh on projects unless I think I have a good idea.

I simply need an external demand to operate productively. I think I would end up ignoring any productivity programs.