How do you choose which game mechanics to apply to a non-game system?

As this question i had asked in StackExchange, there are multitudes of mechanics, list some below:

Achievements
Appointments
Behavioral Momentum
Blissful Productivity
Bonuses
Cascading Information Theory
Combos
Community Collaboration
Countdown
Discovery
Epic Meaning
Free Lunch
Infinite Gameplay
Levels
Loss Aversion
Lottery
Ownership
Points
Progression
Quests
Reward Schedules
Status
Urgent Optimism
Virality

Turns
Action points
Auction or bidding
Cards
Capture/Eliminate
Catch-up
Dice
Movement
Resource management
Risk and reward
Role-playing
Tile-laying
Game modes

If you go to figure out what the meaning of each single one before you starting to apply them to other system, it quite a waste time and senseless. As i said, I presumed each one has it own system and some are popular and in common use. Such as Gabe's theory. Say there are 7 important ones:
point
level
badges
leader boards
challenge & quests
onboarding
(social) engagement loops

At the meantime, one of my live network said "a currently popular set of game mechanics (that are powerful, but often incorrectly used) are points, levels, badges, trophies, and virtual currencies."
From all of this, it obviously tell me It doesn’t matter how many game mechanics are exist, it matters what game are my users already playing. and how do you find a mechanics that is suit for your project, and what is your criteria?