The ones who last are interested in the work

Standing is a finite motivation, curiosity about the material appears not to be.

Ask why someone is still at it after a very long time and the answers are usually small and specific: an unresolved problem in a particular technique, curiosity about what a material does under a condition they have not tried, an irritation at one recurring fault. The answers are almost never about status, and where status was the original motivation it tends to have been exhausted long before, because status is either achieved (and then stops motivating) or not achieved (and then embitters). Interest in the work itself has neither failure mode.

This is not a moral point about purity. It is closer to an observation about what survives a decade of poor returns. Recognition is intermittent and outside your control. Comparison with others produces either complacency or despair depending on who is in the room. A specific question about the work is available every single day, is unaffected by anyone else's opinion, and generates the next question when it is answered. It is simply a more durable fuel for a process that runs on very little.

It follows that the practical advice is unglamorous. Keep a live problem in the work at all times, something you genuinely do not know the answer to and want to. Find the small number of people whose assessment you actually respect and stay in contact with them. Expect the returns to be irregular and mostly private. That is not an inspiring description of a life spent getting good at something, but it appears to be an accurate one, and it is more useful than the alternative.