Now that you know about effort justification, you can rate your projects more objectively. Try it out: Whenever you have invested a lot of time and effort into something, stand back and examine the result—only the result. The novel you’ve been tinkering with for five years and that no publisher wants: Perhaps it’s not Nobel-worthy after all. The MBA you felt compelled to do: Would you really recommend it? And the woman you’ve been chasing for years: Is she really better than bachelorette number two who would say yes right away?