An origami model looks like a random mess of folds until the last few steps. Some projects only make sense at the end.

Some work is built so that nothing is visible until almost all of it is done. The creases that look pointless are doing the holding, and they only become legible when the final folds pull them together. That shape of progress is brutal, because the honest answer at step thirty is that it still looks like nothing.

When you are in the part where it looks like nothing, check the steps rather than the result. Ask whether you did today’s work and whether it matched the instructions. Keep what you made at earlier stages, because comparing step thirty to step five is the one honest piece of evidence you have.