I have the SAME problem. I'm perpetually not getting any of the stuff I want to do done, only what NEEDs to be done to survive. That's causing severe morale issues on my end and probably is whats hit my health so hard.

Problem is, inviting a "panic monster" into your life is harder than it should be O_O

This is one of those Big Human Problems with which enormous volumes of humans are dealing. There's a reason for the tens of thousands of articles on productivity - everyone but the very highest performers suffers from some measure of a lack of productivity.

I'm inclined to believe that anyone can overcome this, but that doing so is a long, arduous process of shifting mindsets and behaviors, and that such a task differs for each person. No one-size-fits-all.

I'm half-guessing, though. I don't know I have this stuff figured out, either.

This is exactly what has been going on in my brain too and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it. I can't imagine how much progress on my game dev stuff I would have made, if I weren't procrastinating so hard. I only made so much progress, since I've kind of set myself artificial deadlines and constantly reminded myself about the fact that people are paying me money (Patreon) and I don't want to let them down. This only works so much however. I think there might be something to what Sashoon said, that implementing small routines into your daily life might help but even with that is the issue of getting it started. My guess is that it would be best to have someone else that helps you get motivated/started on things.

While typing that last sentence I had an idea that migh benefit both of us and other procrastinators. Let's do like weekly scrums. We did that for my Bachelor project and it was quite effective. So we pick a day in the week and a timeframe (taking time difference into account) and we present each other, what we've accomplished this week (via messenger or like a Discrod group, if more people would happen to get involved). Can be anything from drawings, sketches, concepts, game dev, whatever. We of course give each other feedback on it too. The whole purpose would be to create a "deadline" but it's not just one that you've created for yourself. Since another person would be involved, there's also the thought of not letting them down by not having anything to show. Even if you were to make something just the day or even hours before, at least you've made something. Maybe this'll establish a bit of a routine, just to get things going. The hardest part is always to start and I already had to convince myself to write this, since it would also involve me committing to this, which displeases my instant gratification monkey.

A friend of mine recently did a channel-wide art-challenge where once a week he would give us a theme to do by the end of a given day. There were a handful of small stipulations like no repeats or something trivial, but it did wonders for getting creativity flowing. YOu're on the right track there!

An addendum, if I may?
My guess is that it would be best to have someone else that helps you get motivated/started on things.

If all else fails...make someone up who will get you motivated and who 100% believes in you, who embodies all the good things in you.
That's a big reason -why- one of my characters exists, more or less! It's a little tricky and weird, but it's a lot of fun.

I don't know if injecting more "panic" in your life would necessarily be to the most constructive way to get over that hump. It sounds like that would add stress and hurry through things you'd need plan out. Getting started on something is always the hardest part... but one one good way would be to set some goals. Somethings like: by the end of week the sign up for classes at a community college, or sign up on job site like indeed by the end of the day, try and apply for at least one or two jobs by the end of the week... setting some short term goals can help get you started on planing towards more long term goals.

Another suggestion... maybe go out and do some regular volunteer work at hospital or some place. Having somewhere to be or something to do at least once a week can help overcome that inertia to meet those short term goals.

Definitely agreed on 'panic' not being the state of mind to be in.

What would work well would be shaping that urgency from 'panic' into 'resolution', and doing so in a shape or a form that is tangibly associable with good feelings. Positive reinforcement can work as well as negative, but it takes a little bit longer to ramp up because of the way the human mind prioritizes learning from and remembering negative experiences over positive ones.

Also signing on board with the 'volunteer' goals. Doing something else is a *fantastic* conduit to doing what YOU want to do later on. It helps produce a flow state and allow you to seam together your day from one positive thing to the next.
I recently got a new job, and although it's a bit stressful to train right now, it's also bumped my creative drive up to twice what it was before. I'm not the only one, I know that too.

I'm so much the same way, and I feel it's all the harder with writing in this community. You have to poke and prod people to read things here, and even then, you're barely ever recognized, it seems. So when I work to put a lot of heart into a piece and it's all but overlooked, it's hard to really push myself for the next one. It still means a lot to ME to work on it, and hopefully, when you find pieces that are personal and special to YOU, you can kick that instant gratification monster and put your best into them, no matter what.

Unfortunately, all of us have the horrid condition of being hunks of meat driven by electrical and chemical impulses. There's very little we can do about this part.

However, what you can do instead is prepare. Make the actions you want to achieve easier to pick up, and the actions you want to discourage harder. Whether that means uninstalling WoW, using another computer for art, making a fresh space to achieve things in (and using it only for those things) is up to you. People naturally want to follow the path of least resistance - even the people who achieve great things only do so because they do the things that are natural to them. Marie Curie didn't write Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley didn't discover the properties of radium. Truly the best starting point is looking at the structure and logistics of how you work: logistics wins wars, and you want to win more than just a few battles.

I hope this helps in some way. If you need any other help, contact me and I promise I will try my best.