This sentence from Carl Jung hits hard.
“No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.”
Harsh truth: Nobody cares how busy you are. You can work 12 hours a day and accomplish almost nothing. What matters is the value you create, the problems you solve, and the results you produce. Stop being busy. Start being effective.
You can spend 5 years, working harder than anyone else, writing the best book in the world, but if nobody knows about it, then you will not be a successful author.
This is the downfall of most creatives. They hate marketing, but marketing is 80% of their success.