As a male, I was able to increase my attractiveness hugely as soon as I realized this was worth making a serious effort: say, the equivalent of one workday (8 hours) per week in total. From what I've seen, most men can't be bothered to spend even that much, while most women are conditioned to spend more than that.

For many men their actual work days are to some degree part of a serious effort to be attractive to women. The 'traditional' advice to become attractive to women is to develop a good, stable career, achieve a degree of material success and maintain reasonable health, fitness and appearance. The fact that it is not terribly effective advice on its own doesn't mean that lots of men don't put a good deal of effort into following it.