Quote of the Day: Charles F. Kettering on Time & Perspective

There is a specific kind of relief that arrives when you stop treating the first miss as a verdict and start seeing it as part of the route. You adjust the angle, run the test again, and the problem that felt personal becomes simply mechanical, solvable. In that clear-headed moment, perseverance turns from pressure into permission. “The only time you mustn't fail is the last time you try.”

Kettering’s line isn’t an invitation to grind yourself into dust; it’s a reframing of what failure is for. Most attempts are prototypes. They’re allowed to be imperfect because their real job is to teach you what to do next. When you view effort this way, setbacks stop stealing your confidence and start supplying your data.

Practically, this means separating “trying” from “finishing.” Your only non-negotiable is not perfection today, it’s continuing long enough to earn the final iteration. Make your work smaller and repeatable: one more call, one more draft, one more rep. Track what changed after each attempt, and you’ll notice momentum returning. That’s how resilience becomes a skill, not a personality trait.

Charles F. Kettering earned the right to say this: he helped transform modern transportation by inventing the electric starter and later shaped industrial innovation as Vice President of General Motors. His career was built on experiments that worked because many others didn’t, until they did.

Today, pick one stalled goal and define the “next try” so clearly you can do it in 20 minutes: write the opening paragraph, sketch the outline, send the first email, take the first walk. Then decide, quietly, firmly, that you’re not judging yourself by today’s result, only by today’s return to the work. Let success be the byproduct of staying in the game long enough to reach your last try, and may you meet it ready.