1. An apparatus, comprising: a plurality of non-volatile memory cells configured to store data in a plurality of programmed states; and one or more control circuits in communication with the memory cells, the one or more control circuits configured to perform a programming process that programs the memory cells into the programmed states, based on programming performance the one or more control circuits configured to distinguish between different groups of memory cells for the programmed state independently for each program state of at least a subset of the plurality of programmed states, based on the distinguishing the one or more control circuits configured to narrow threshold voltage distributions of the memory cells during the programming process.