A treadmill and a bike ride burn the same sweat. Only one of them takes you somewhere new.

Effort and progress are not the same measurement, and it is easy to feel the first and assume the second. You can work hard for a year inside a system that returns you to the same spot, and the tiredness is honest while the position has not changed. Exertion is a poor way to tell whether you are moving.

Look at your week and ask which efforts are maintenance and which are actually taking you somewhere. Keep the maintenance, since bodies and lives need it. But put at least one thing in the week that ends somewhere you have not already been.