> “amateurs talk about effort, professional talk about impact”.

I rather prefer to talk about elegance, thus I am likely neither an amateur nor a professional, but rather suited to academia. :-)

(I really liked my graduate studies, but was more suited for finding deep connections in research problems than for academic politics, which is why I left academia)

Although an obsession/compulsion with the results, veers your mind off of the process needed to acquire great results. Especially for complex/long-range efforts, I'd argue that "quality of efforts" > "quality of results". Without such an orientation, it becomes difficult keep up with a challenging course of action.