The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

Progress rarely announces itself. The distance between not working and working is usually much narrower than it feels from inside the effort, and you can be standing on it while still counting yourself a failure. That is the hard part: the sense of being far away is not evidence of how far away you are. People often stop at the place where a little more would have carried them over.

If something is not working yet, hold your sense of the distance loosely. Rather than judging by feel on a bad day, decide in advance how many attempts or weeks you will give it, and let that decide.