Just in time
You may have noticed that when you eventually find something, it’s in the last place you looked. Mostly because after that, you stop looking.
And when a long-awaited moment finally arrives, the respite comes just in time, when we’re at the end of our rope. That’s largely because if we give up before then, it never arrives, and because we can probably stick things out longer than we’d like to believe.
Waiting for the hero to save us just in time isn’t nearly as productive as realizing that we have agency. We have the agency to quit when it makes sense to quit (ignoring sunk costs) and we have the agency to dig in deeper when it really matters (acknowledging that it might not work).
When help does arrive, just in time, it’s worth celebrating.