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Effort frequently fails to initiate despite explicit intentions and incentives, a phenomenon not fully explained by prevailing motivational or cognitive control models. Cognitive Drive Architecture (CDA) conceptualises effort as conditionally available, governed by structural system states rather than continuous motivational strength. Here, we formally derive Lagun’s Law as a canonical structural relation for effort emergence and examine its empirical tractability using a secondary educational dataset of 480 students. CDA components were operationalised using behavioural, attendance, and contextual proxies and evaluated via multinomial ordinal regression of academic performance. Ignition readiness (Primode) exhibited the largest effects (β = 3.05–6.02, p < .001), followed by motivational amplification (Cognitive Activation Potential; β = 2.55–3.60, p < .001), while resistance-related factors (Grain) showed stable suppressive associations (β = −1.16 to −2.00, p ≤ .002). Stabilisation effects were smaller, and adaptability and entropy components were not robustly detected. These findings do not establish causality but demonstrate that the core structural terms of Lagun’s Law are empirically anchorable in naturalistic data.