To continue doing something without stopping, especially when it is hard.
To continue doing something without stopping, even when it is difficult or you feel like giving up. It often describes persisting through challenges in order to finish or succeed.
Type
Inseparable
Collocations
keep going despite obstacles — continue in spite of difficulty
encourage someone to keep going — motivate someone to persist
just keep going — a short, direct phrase of encouragement
⚠️ Watch out
Always followed by a continuous, ongoing sense of action — don't add 'on' after it (not 'keep going on').
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In January 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. By November the ice had crushed and sunk her, leaving Shackleton and his twenty-seven men stranded on the frozen surface with three small lifeboats. Over the following months, the crew drifted on ice floes, eventually launching the boats into {{violent|adjective|easy}} Antarctic waters. Shackleton then led an 800-mile open-boat journey to South Georgia Island — widely considered one of the most {{dangerous|adjective|easy}} sea voyages in history — arriving in May 1916 with five {{exhausted|adjective|medium}} men. He then crossed the island's unmapped mountain range on foot to reach a whaling station and organize a rescue. Every single member of the expedition survived. Shackleton made no dramatic speeches about resilience; he simply {{assessed|verb-various-tenses|medium}} each new obstacle and {{found|verb-various-tenses|easy}} the next possible action. {{So|connective|medium}}, the expedition is remembered not because the mission succeeded — it failed entirely — {{but because|connective|hard}} when every reason to stop {{accumulated|verb-various-tenses|hard}}, Shackleton and his crew found a way to {{keep going|phrasal-verb|medium}}.
To continue or persist means to keep doing something without stopping, even when it becomes difficult or tiring. It suggests a steady, determined effort to move forward despite challenges or setbacks.
Type
Intransitive verb / verb phrase
Collocations
continue despite setbacks — used when obstacles arise but effort is maintained
persist with something — collocates with a specific task or goal (e.g. persist with the plan)
choose to continue — emphasises a deliberate, conscious decision to press on
continue regardless — suggests persisting without being deterred by circumstances
persist through difficulty — highlights the challenging nature of the situation
⚠️ Watch out
Be mindful that 'persist' can sometimes carry a mildly negative connotation, suggesting stubbornness or annoyance (e.g. 'he persisted in interrupting'). In neutral contexts, pair it with a positive goal or challenge to keep the meaning clearly resilience-focused. 'Continue' is generally safer when the tone needs to stay fully neutral.
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Marcus had been working on his podcast for eight months without much traction. Downloads were modest, guests were hard to book, and there were weeks when recording felt pointless. His friends suggested he move on to something else.
But Marcus chose to persist. He tightened his format, improved his audio quality, and focused on topics he genuinely cared about.
By month eleven, a well-known industry newsletter featured one of his episodes. Downloads tripled overnight.
He later said the decision to continue through those quiet, discouraging months was the only reason any of it had worked. The breakthrough didn't come despite the struggle. It came because of it.
The Long Road Back: How One Community Rebuilt After the Floods
Three years ago, the town of Crestfield lost nearly a third of its homes to catastrophic flooding. Streets that had stood for a century were underwater within hours. Families were displaced, businesses were destroyed, and for many residents, the future of the town felt genuinely uncertain.
What happened next is, by most measures, remarkable.
Rather than accept the slow decline that follows many natural disasters, local leaders and residents chose to continue rebuilding — methodically, unglamorously, month after month. Council meetings ran late. Funding applications were filed and refiled. Volunteers showed up on cold Saturday mornings to clear debris and lay foundations.
"There were plenty of moments when it would have been easier to walk away," said Diane Hooper, who chairs the town's recovery committee. "But people here have roots. That matters."
Today, Crestfield has new flood defences, a rebuilt town centre, and a population that has largely returned. Independent surveys suggest community morale is higher now than it was before the disaster.
Those who persist through collective hardship, it turns out, sometimes emerge with something they didn't have before: a clearer sense of who they are and what they're willing to fight for.
In professional contexts, 'maintain progress' means to continue advancing toward a goal without interruption, particularly when facing obstacles, setbacks, or demanding conditions. It emphasises sustained effort and forward momentum in the face of difficulty.
Type
Verb phrase (transitive)
Collocations
maintain progress on [a project/task] — the most common structure; specify what is being progressed
maintain progress despite [setbacks/challenges] — highlights resilience in the face of difficulty
maintain progress toward [a goal/milestone] — indicates direction and purpose
fail to maintain progress — used in risk assessments or performance reviews to flag concern
committed to maintaining progress — formal pledge, common in reports and stakeholder communications
⚠️ Watch out
Avoid using 'maintain progress' without specifying what is being progressed, as it can sound vague in formal reports or client-facing documents — always pair it with 'on', 'toward', or 'across' and a clear subject. Do not confuse it with 'make progress', which simply means to advance; 'maintain progress' carries the additional meaning of continuing despite difficulty, so reserve it for contexts where persistence under pressure is the point.
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When Priya took over as interim project lead in February, the team was already two weeks behind schedule. A key vendor had pulled out without warning, and morale was low. Priya called an emergency planning session and restructured the remaining workstreams around available resources. She made it clear to everyone that the priority was to maintain progress, even if it meant adjusting scope temporarily. It was not easy. Some team members were exhausted, and the client was asking difficult questions. But Priya stayed focused and communicated clearly at every step. By the end of March, they had caught up significantly. The client later praised the team's ability to maintain progress under genuinely difficult circumstances.
Clearwater Solutions had been working on the Halford account for eleven months when the acquisition news broke. Overnight, the client's internal priorities shifted, decision-makers changed, and three previously approved workstreams were placed on hold pending a strategic review by the new parent company. For the account team at Clearwater, it was one of the most disorienting periods in the firm's recent history.
Account Director Daniel Marsh gathered his team the morning after the announcement. He acknowledged the uncertainty openly but was direct about what was expected. The work that remained in scope had to continue without interruption. Clearwater's reputation depended on its ability to maintain progress even when the ground shifted beneath them. He assigned clear ownership to each live deliverable and established a daily check-in to catch blockers early.
Over the following six weeks, the team delivered two major milestones on schedule. When the new stakeholders at Halford finally convened their review, they were struck by the quality and consistency of what Clearwater had produced. The lead partner noted in her feedback that the firm's ability to maintain progress during a period of significant client disruption had been a decisive factor in recommending contract renewal. For Daniel's team, it validated every difficult week they had pushed through together.
To 'sustain engagement' means to continue pursuing a demanding intellectual, academic, or professional endeavour consistently and without interruption, particularly in the face of difficulty, fatigue, or uncertainty. It implies a deliberate, sustained effort to persevere through challenges rather than withdrawing or reducing effort.
Type
Transitive verb phrase
Collocations
sustain engagement with [noun phrase] — used to specify the object or domain of continued effort, e.g. 'sustain engagement with the literature'
struggle to sustain engagement — signals difficulty in maintaining effort, often used in analysis of learner behaviour
capacity to sustain engagement — refers to an individual's or institution's ability to maintain perseverance over time
fail to sustain engagement — describes withdrawal or disengagement, common in evaluative academic discourse
designed to sustain engagement — used in methodology sections to describe intentional interventions or pedagogical structures
⚠️ Watch out
Writers should avoid using 'sustain engagement' in ways that conflate perseverance with mere participation or interest, as the phrase specifically implies continued effort under difficulty rather than general enthusiasm. Additionally, overuse within a single text can feel formulaic; synonymous constructions such as 'maintain scholarly momentum' or 'persist with the inquiry' should be employed for stylistic variation.
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Dr. Okonkwo had been working on her systematic review for eleven months. The sheer volume of contradictory evidence she encountered in the literature threatened to derail her entirely. There were weeks when she questioned the value of continuing. Her supervisor reminded her that the ability to sustain engagement through ambiguity was, in itself, a form of scholarly contribution — a demonstration that the problem was genuinely complex. Slowly, a framework began to emerge from the chaos. By the time she submitted to the journal, she understood that her capacity to sustain engagement with the uncomfortable gaps in the field had been precisely what gave her findings their depth and credibility.
The relationship between academic difficulty and intellectual growth has long been a subject of philosophical and pedagogical inquiry. From Dewey's conception of productive struggle to contemporary frameworks in educational psychology, scholars have consistently argued that learning of lasting significance rarely occurs in the absence of challenge. What remains undertheorised, however, is the precise nature of the conditions — internal and external — that allow individuals to sustain engagement when the difficulty of a task begins to outpace their immediate capacity to resolve it.
This question has become particularly urgent in the context of postgraduate education, where the demands placed on researchers are not only cognitive but emotional and existential. A doctoral project requires its author to inhabit uncertainty for years at a time, to revise convictions repeatedly, and to remain intellectually present even when progress is imperceptible. Institutional responses to this challenge have too often focused on structural interventions — deadlines, milestone reviews, training workshops — while neglecting the relational and psychological scaffolding that enables researchers to sustain engagement at the level of lived, daily practice. If higher education is serious about producing resilient scholars capable of contributing to complex, long-term problems, it must begin by asking not only what we teach, but what conditions we create for perseverance to flourish.