I've heard that people often give up on solving problems sooner than they should. Does this apply to all types of problems?

In particular, I'm curious about personal problems such as becoming happier (since "hard problems" seems to refer more to scientific research and building things around here), and trying to solve any sort of problem on another person's behalf (I suspect social instincts would make giving up on a single other person's problem harder than giving up on general problems or one's own problems).