I agree with this, foo/bar/baz stuff is abstract and means nothing. This means the learner need stop associate something they don't know with nothing which is really hard. An analogy of something the learner knows is way easier to grasp..
Let me start off by saying that this is a great experiment and that I probably couldn't get half as far as you did.
However, I do find it annoying that when it asks what state I live in and I answer "I don't live in a state" I get a response in the line of "Well I do, so what state do you live in?" That really annoyed me big time, it's also a pattern I saw in many other sentences I typed.
I agree, waiting to get motivated can be really frustrating and it can fuel a sense of guilt because you know you should be doing something. Just starting do it triggers a rewarding feeling and spawns that precious feeling of motivation i guess.