Stay with valuable work past the point where social excitement disappears.

Anything worth doing gets attention at the start and then stops being interesting to everyone else long before it stops being valuable. Staying past that point means working without social reward, which is a different and harder proposition than working with it.

Notice if your engagement drops at the same time other people’s attention does. If so, some of your motivation was external. Finding an internal reason now will matter more than any amount of initial enthusiasm.