I just try to enjoy my time in space. I often do bounty hunting more than most other things although I've tried pretty much every basic field and enjoy something in every one of them.
Trading for me is not a serious effort, but a little extra to explore.
Exploring with the advanced scanner is a job, a method to get credits and get a bigger ship. Exploring with the basic scanner offers some gameplay challenges to keep you guessing "have I found everything I can in this region, is there something that I missed?". but essentially, exploring shouldn't be about clicking the button and then pointing your ship to the unexplored regions and waiting for it to ding, it should be about seeing with your own eyes the wonders the galaxy has to offer. I remember on one of the first days post launch, I decided to travel a bit since I had always remained mostly in the same few systems (comfort zone). I jumped into a system and got the 1 new object discovered notice for the main star. So I scan the star, a basic red dwarf, but its showing a weird orbit, I can't detect anything with my basic scanner since the other objects in the system were most likely too far away but I trust that the star wouldn't have an orbit line if there wasn't something large close by affecting it. So I decide to head in the general direction of the orbital ellipse and after a little while, I notice a star point that seems to be brighter than the rest of the stars (must be in system I thought), and the closer I got to it, the more I noticed that it was starting to shift in position from the other points of light in the black. "No way the measly couple thousand LS I've traveled so far could affect my perspective on anything that wasn't in system" So I was on the right track. I continue on for a few minutes until I notice that the point of light is starting to split into two distinct points. When I got there, the two stars were basically hugging, creating a magnificent scene that I had up to that point never seen, and if I would have used the advanced scanner, would not have seen as I would have scanned, clicked on "system map" noticed that the only other things in system were two other stars and would have went on my merry way.
THAT is the joy of exploring for me, the visual thrill of seeing something that you've never quite seen before.
Bounty hunting is my bread and butter, but nowadays I tend to try to change things up. I have a habit of falling into a comfort zone, either with star systems or even just equipment. So I spend a lot of time now in stations outfitting my ship with different options to try out what I enjoy. Not necessarily what is most optimal but try to understand the quirks in the different weapons, trying the different modules and getting my impression of what the changes do for the feel of the ship beyond "this shield is obviously stronger since it's rated higher". Can I run bounty hunting with sub par shielding if I'm careful? Can I do it with no shielding at all? How much can I push a basic sidewinder in battle when I don't have the advantage of a multi-million credit enhanced ship to rely on? All stuff I try to change things up from "go to nav/Ressource extraction point and kill until I have million or so in bounties and then get the cash".
Mining is meditation for me. When I feel like flying, but not necessarily shooting or finding new sights: I put on a playlist of podcasts, get to a field and dance with the fragments. It's like playing tetris, you just get into the groove.
Piracy I've only done once or so, but the thrill of the hunt, getting the ship to lose its cargo and then dodging scans as to not get fines in your favorite systems is something that I will try to do more of, and give myself bigger challenges as I get better.
I guess TL;DR: getting better is what is motivating me. I'm not a bad pilot or explorer, kind of a poor trader (too lazy to take the time at the moment and refuse to use outside tools [have nothing against those who do though]) but one thing I've learned in real life is that no matter how good you are at something, you can always get better.
