Choose work where you’d still be proud of the effort if the outcome flopped.

Outcomes are only partly yours and effort is entirely yours, which makes effort the safer thing to care about. Work chosen purely for its result leaves you holding nothing when the result fails to arrive, which happens often, for reasons unconnected to you. If the process itself was worth your hours, a flop costs you the prize and not the time. That is a much better place to stand.

Test the next commitment on that basis before you make it. Ask whether you would be glad of the months if nothing at all came of them. A yes there is worth more than an impressive-sounding maybe.