On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Effort spent trying to understand something does not come back empty. Either you end the day knowing more than you did, or you have strengthened whatever it is that lets you know things: attention, patience, the tolerance for being confused. The second kind of gain is invisible on the day it happens, which is why hard study feels wasted while you are doing it. It is being stored somewhere you cannot check.

When you finish a stretch of work with nothing to show, resist the accounting that calls it a loss. Ask instead what got easier. Then go back tomorrow.