Being a failed version of who you want to be is still infinitely cooler than being a person who never tried because they were afraid of looking stupid.
The anyway mindset means separating your identity from your results. If the work is bad today, it doesn't mean you are bad. It just means the work is bad. So, you do it again. And again.
Breakthroughs are just the logical conclusion of a thousand anyway moments piled on top of each other until the dam finally breaks.
- — the "thousand anyway moments" before the breakthrough are the middle phase: progress you can't see, and process metrics instead of result metrics