The Secret Life of Effort

I was scrolling on YouTube the other day, half distracted, looking for a podcast clip with Kevin Hart, when I ran into something I wasn’t looking for at all.

It was just a guy in a workshop, no intro, no hook, no explanation, slowly building a chair.

That’s it. No voiceover. No rush. Just wood, tools, and time.

It stopped me immediately, and I think part of the reason is that I love design. My background in architecture wired me to notice craft, proportion, and the quiet beauty of something being made well. So I sat there and watched as this man turned a few ordinary 2x4s into something genuinely beautiful.

He cut. He sanded. He glued. He stitched leather cushions by hand.

You could tell this wasn’t a one-afternoon project. This was days of effort, maybe longer. Revisions. Small mistakes corrected quietly. The kind of work that only looks simple when someone has done it enough times to make it look that way.

I ended up watching for almost twenty minutes without realizing it, which felt grounding in a way I didn’t expect. No urgency. No payoff promised. Just someone fully inside his craft.

And it made me think about how often this happens to me.

Do you ever come across someone working on their craft like that? Maybe they’re making a pair of shoes, painting quietly in a studio, or writing alone in a small space with no audience in mind. I do, and every time it happens, something in me wakes up.

It doesn’t make me want to consume more. It makes me want to return to my own work. To sit down. To keep going. To remember why I cared about the craft in the first place.

There’s something deeply human about watching effort unfold in real time. Seeing someone in flow doesn’t pressure us. It nudges us forward.

That’s when it hit me.

It wasn’t the chair that stopped me mid-scroll. It was the effort.

Lately, it feels more important than ever to lean into effort, and I don’t mean that as a slogan or a productivity talking point. I mean it in the most human sense possible. Effort has become one of the few remaining signals that there’s a real person on the other side of the work.

Not a system. Not a shortcut. Not something assembled just because it could be.

But a person who stayed with an idea long enough for it to leave a mark.

When someone truly embodies their message, it almost never looks efficient. It looks slower than it should. It looks scenic. It looks like a series of decisions that don’t make sense unless you actually care about the thing itself. That slowness isn’t laziness. It’s depth.

The art we love carries that weight. You can feel it immediately. You know it took time, energy, and probably a fair amount of frustration. We trust the artist not because of one perfect piece, but because the work stretches across years, sometimes decades, and shows evolution, contradiction, and growth.

We don’t fall in love with outcomes. We fall in love with bodies of work.

What’s relatively new is the belief that obscurity can be escaped overnight through social media. And yes, sometimes it looks that way. Someone appears in your feed, the work hits, the voice is clear, and it feels sudden.

But almost every time it actually resonates, you end up doing the same thing I did with that chair. You scroll back. You trace the trail. And what you usually find isn’t luck. It’s evidence. Years of thinking out loud. Ideas that weren’t ready yet. Experiments that only make sense in hindsight.

It’s never actually sudden. It just finally became visible.

What makes it feel cohesive isn’t a perfectly executed plan. It’s an obsession. Obsession organizes chaos over time. When someone can’t stop thinking about a thing, it starts bleeding into how they write, what they notice, what they return to again and again.

Being known for something isn’t about boxing yourself in. It’s about letting the thing you care about shape your decisions long enough that other people can feel it without you having to explain it.

This season of my life has made that clearer than any strategy ever could.

I’ve loved leaning into my newsletter. Not because it’s a growth channel, but because it’s one of the few places where I still let myself think in full sentences. Where ideas can stretch. Where nuance isn’t punished. Where I can explore something honestly instead of compressing it into something consumable.

At the same time, becoming a father has rearranged everything.

Some things have moved to the back burner. The RAE Van included. Not abandoned. Not forgotten. Just paused. And that pause has taught me something important.

Some things can wait. Some things should wait. And choosing that isn’t failure. It’s alignment.

Being with my son right now is teaching me more than any book or business ever has. I adore him. Watching him exist without urgency or performance has softened parts of me that ambition hardened over time. He’s reminding me that presence is effort too, that choosing where to put your attention is a discipline.

I have a series of children’s books I want to write for him. Not to publish. Not to pitch. Just to create. I’ve been slowly sketching them with no deadline and no pressure, and merely being interested in that feels like something worth protecting.

He’s pulling me back toward writing for expression, toward painting simply to be together, toward creating without needing permission or payoff.

I used to sit on my father’s lap while he painted.

That memory lives in my body. And the urge to do the same with my son feels instinctual. I return to my father’s paintings now not as accomplishments, but as reminders of who he was. Of his care. Of his discipline. Of his refusal to waste expression.

This is why documenting effort matters.

We love seeing the gardener gardening. The dirt. The sweat. The repetition. Not because it’s impressive, but because it mirrors something inside us. We know how hard it is to do anything worthwhile.

All of this matters even more in the world we’re living in now.

We’re surrounded by fast, abundant, oddly empty content. Writing is cheaper than care. Output is everywhere, but meaning feels thinner. You can feel it when you scroll. The words are fine, but nothing sticks.

That’s not because AI exists. It’s because effort has been removed from the equation.

And that’s why effort has quietly become a marketing advantage.

Not in a manipulative way. In a human one.

To market yourself authentically now isn’t about telling people you’re real. It’s about leaving evidence that you are. Evidence accumulates slowly. It contradicts itself. It matures in public.

Effort leaves fingerprints.

When you share the work while it’s still forming, when you talk about the chapter you’re wrestling with instead of the finished book, when you share questions before conclusions, you opt out of performance. And in a world drowning in performance, that alone makes you visible.

AI can generate output. It can’t generate context. It can’t generate lineage.

People feel this even if they can’t articulate it. Trust is built through continuity, through watching someone stay in relationship with their work long enough for it to change them.

That’s what authentic marketing looks like now.

Not funnels. Not formulas. Not polish.

A body of evidence.

In a sloppy, overproduced world, the people who shine aren’t the ones who optimize first. They’re the ones who stay human longest. The ones who let effort remain visible. The ones who allow the work to look unfinished in public.

That isn’t sloppy. That’s brave.

And over time, bravery compounds.

People don’t follow perfection. They follow permission. Permission to take the scenic route. Permission to evolve. Permission to let life interrupt the plan without abandoning the work.

I hope this newsletter nudges you back into your flow, back into your work, and back into sharing it, even if only to some degree.

If you need support building your author brand and are not sure how to move along a path that feels natural to you, message me. I would love to support.

Smile more, see you next week!

Hussein