Interesting, I feel like I have the same problem for the opposite reason - things I cared about came easy to me in HS and college, so I never learned to put in effort as much as others had to; if the task is daunting I am likely to just give up.
I found that what works well for me is breaking the task iteratively into (sometimes, ridiculously) small steps, writing them down (that is important for the approach to work, at least for me) and forcing myself to just do one small step at a time.
Interestingly, this approach affected my skillset for software development too... for example, on my current team I have a reputation for being good at debugging difficult issues, even though I dislike debugging and I'd rather never do it. I dislike it so much I always narrow down and break down the problem into very small parts, which apparently is a great approach to debugging.
Btw, another thing that helps me is playing challenging videogames. There was this article I can't find now about CRPG and action games, where you are either often rewarded for just sitting there, or actually have to learn a physical skill. I found that forcing myself to suck and improve a little bit in RTS and action games, instead of playing (awesome) CRPGs all the time, is a nice low stress way to learn to make effort :)
I found that what works well for me is breaking the task iteratively into (sometimes, ridiculously) small steps, writing them down (that is important for the approach to work, at least for me) and forcing myself to just do one small step at a time.
Interestingly, this approach affected my skillset for software development too... for example, on my current team I have a reputation for being good at debugging difficult issues, even though I dislike debugging and I'd rather never do it. I dislike it so much I always narrow down and break down the problem into very small parts, which apparently is a great approach to debugging.
Btw, another thing that helps me is playing challenging videogames. There was this article I can't find now about CRPG and action games, where you are either often rewarded for just sitting there, or actually have to learn a physical skill. I found that forcing myself to suck and improve a little bit in RTS and action games, instead of playing (awesome) CRPGs all the time, is a nice low stress way to learn to make effort :)