Good choices look boring on a Tuesday and beautiful two years later.

The right thing on an ordinary day almost never feels like anything. There is no moment of reward, no visible difference, nothing to point at, which is why it is so easy to drop. The payoff is not stored in the day. It is stored in the pile, and piles only become visible at a distance.

Stop grading the individual day. Count the weeks instead, and make the daily version small enough that a bad mood cannot cancel it. In two years those boring days will be the only reason anything is different.