I don't want to generalize to others, because a PhD can be a really painful experience, but you got me spot on. I wasn't willing to iterate and try enough paths

I don't want to generalize to others, because a PhD can be a really painful experience, but you got me spot on. I wasn't willing to iterate and try enough paths forward until one stuck. I'm still not sure why that was, because it seems obvious now and I saw others doing it right, but there was a lot of wasted time.