Meaning grows when effort reaches beyond self-image.

A lot of effort is quietly organised around how you appear, to others or to yourself, and that ceiling is low because self-image is easily satisfied. When the effort is genuinely aimed past you, at a problem or a person, it can go further and it produces something that image management never does.

Ask of your current work how much of it would change if nobody, including you, were keeping track of how it reflected on you. Whatever survives that question is the part with weight in it.