I use a technique that may serve as a stepping-stone for you. I find scales and such really boring. It just isn't musical enough to keep me enthusiastic. What I do is fret chord progressions while I plectrum-pick the sort of string patterns used in finger-picking styles.

Start with something fairly simple like 5-2-4-1 while changing from one chord to the next. The nice thing about this is the total absense of 'wrong' notes which might cause you to flinch, and spoil your rhythm. The important thing is that you develop your ear-hand coordination by teaching yourself where the next note should come from.

You don't 'program' yourself to pick a particular string because that's what the exercise says to do. You pick a particular string because that's where you'll find the note you want... trust me on this, it does make sense after you've tried it for a while. And practicing is [u]fun[/u]!