I'm a student in university now, and I can relate to your experience. What helped me a lot as a kid was being motivated to learn things when it didn't seem lik

I'm a student in university now, and I can relate to your experience. What helped me a lot as a kid was being motivated to learn things when it didn't seem like "learning". For example, I was able to get the hang of programming by playing a game that incorporated it, and it succeeded because it got me excited about doing cool things. Maybe this kind of "gamification" could be more useful than just adding points and rules to things to make people compete.