Effort pays, but it pays late. Most people leave before the check clears.

The delay between work and reward is the hardest part of nearly everything worth doing. You put in weeks and see nothing, which feels identical to doing the wrong thing entirely, and from the inside there is no way to tell those apart. Most quitting happens in that stretch, not because people are weak but because the feedback has not arrived yet.

Decide in advance how long you will give something before judging it, and write the date down. Until then, measure what you put in rather than what came out.