Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

The prize is described as the work itself rather than what the work produces, which sounds like consolation until you have had a long stretch of the other kind. Effort poured into something you do not believe in is exhausting at a fraction of the intensity. Effort poured into something that matters to you can run for years and leave you more alive than it found you.

Two conditions have to be met, and people usually check only one. Hard is not enough on its own, and worth doing is not enough if it never asks anything of you. Look at your week and work out which of the two is missing, because they need different fixes.