the.com/headway

means Forward progress made toward a goal, especially progress that's slow, hard-won, or just enough to notice.

from A nautical term first — a ship's 'headway' was its forward motion through water, the literal distance its head (bow) advanced. It surfaces in the 1300s–1500s as sailing vocabulary, paired with 'sternway' for moving backward. By the 1700s it had drifted ashore into general use, so that any slow, grinding advance — through debt, traffic, or a dense book — could be said to be making headway, even with no ship in sight.