What's central is the fact that do hard work well, you need to temporarily tear apart the solution-forming systems that have served you adequately so far -- and put them back together in a different way. In the midst of this, there's genuine discomfort and nausea. Even if you know you'll eventually get it right, having everything in pieces on the floor is very jarring.
Finding your way through a lot of missteps, near misses and roadblocks takes a special sort of perseverance. I've done this long enough in my work that I get mordant joy from tracking the misses. Versions 2, 2A, 2B and 2C were dead-ends. It's on to Versions 3, 3A, etc.
Usually version 4E or so gets the job done. And it's elegant and I'm happy again. I had one epic struggle that went into the 7s. I ended up cracking it in a borrowed lab in Arizona, because the usual settings in NYC and CT were not getting me there.
Being patient and persistent at times like that is hard.