What a low point on the way to something you want tells you, and what it doesn't
Most long, hard stretches reach a point where things look worse than they did at the start. It might be a project, a business, years in a job you dislike while you work toward something else, or a stretch where the next step isn't clear. The first energy has gone. The problems are visible and the way out isn't, and whatever felt certain at the beginning now has to be defended against your own doubts.
The popular version says this is the darkest hour before the turn, the storm before the calm. Sometimes it is. But the feeling that it is failing says little about which way things will go. What it does reliably is change the person who gets through it, whatever the outcome.
Why the middle looks like failure
Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter named this stage: "Everything can look like a failure in the middle." Long efforts start with energy and a clear picture of the end. Then progress slows, critics show up, and the plan that made sense on paper needs redesigning. Because it happens so predictably, its arrival says little about the outcome.
Ed Catmull, who co-founded Pixar, put it bluntly in Creativity, Inc.: "Early on, all of our movies suck." He chose the harsh word on purpose, since a gentler one would understate how rough first versions are. The studio's method followed from that. Rework the film repeatedly, take candid notes from people willing to say what isn't working, and give an unfinished story time to find its shape. Even the Pixar films audiences remember went through that stage.
The stories we hear
The trouble with the darkest-hour story is who tells it. The founder who nearly ran out of money and then landed the contract tells it. So does the musician who almost quit and then found her sound, and the person who spent years in a job they hated while building something on the side, and then got out. People who hit the same wall and didn't come out the other side are rarely asked, and the ones who stopped a month before the turn never find out it was coming.
Abraham Wald, a statistician with Columbia's Statistical Research Group during the Second World War, is usually credited with spotting the same problem in bomber armour. Analysts had mapped the bullet holes on planes that returned from missions and wanted to reinforce those areas. Wald pointed out that they were only looking at planes that had made it back. Aircraft hit elsewhere hadn't returned to be counted, so the areas with no holes were the ones that mattered.
On that evidence alone, a low point can't be read as a sign that things are about to turn, because the people who tell us about turning points are the ones it turned for.
The part that is true
That doesn't make the usual story wrong. Most people have had a stretch where they couldn't see a way through, and many can point to the moment it changed. The shape is familiar because many people have lived it.
But a story is told from the end, and the teller decides where the end is. Sometimes the thing that worked out was not the thing the person was fighting for. A first business folds and a second one holds. Someone spends years working toward one goal and ends up with a different one they hadn't planned. Told afterwards, each sounds like a single comeback.
What to check instead
If the feeling of failure isn't evidence, something else has to be. Part of Kanter's advice for the middle was to regroup to remove specific roadblocks and keep supporters close. Both are actions, taken while it still looks bad.
The questions are plain ones. Is anything improving in ways you can point to, even if it feels worse? Is the problem in the direction you chose, or in how you're pursuing it? Has anything changed since the last time it felt like this, or is the same approach being repeated with more stubbornness? Persistence that adjusts is a different thing from persistence that repeats.
When the difficulty is not knowing what to do next, the same logic applies in smaller form. Pick something small enough to try this week, and pay attention to what it shows.
If you're putting up with something now for the sake of something later, the question is whether it's still worth it. Look for something you can point to that says so.
Outside feedback helps, from someone who understands your situation well enough to follow it and sits far enough away to be candid. Catmull built Pixar's reviews of films in development around that role, in a group called the Braintrust.
What the stretch leaves behind
Whether it turns around is the part nobody can promise. What the stretch does to the person is more dependable. A long, hard stretch shows someone how they behave when it isn't going well, whether they ask for help and what they do with feedback that stings. An easy stretch rarely shows that, and what they learn goes with them into whatever comes next, which may or may not be what they were aiming at.
The next time the middle looks like failure, write down what has changed since the last time it felt this way. If the list is empty, that is worth knowing before deciding anything.
