Keep your nose to the grindstone

Meaning

To work hard and stay consistently focused on a task. It implies a long period of diligent, perhaps tedious, labor.

Industrious, demanding

Used in a sentence

• If you keep your nose to the grindstone, you will finish that project by Friday.
• He kept his nose to the grindstone all through college to earn his degree.
• Success rarely happens unless you keep your nose to the grindstone.