NOVEMBER 13 — I had this thought a long time ago, but it became clearer when I was serving as the Director of Universiti Malaya’s Centre for Corporate Communications in 2022-2023. Life, I realised then, is a bit like advertising.
In advertising, you can plan campaigns down to the smallest detail. You can study your audience, craft your message, and track your AVEs and ROIs. But at the end of the day, you still cannot predict which one will work. Sometimes the campaign that took months to prepare disappears without a ripple. Other times, something you did almost casually becomes the one people remember.
It is humbling, really. You can give your best effort and still not control the result.
That, I think, is the quiet truth about both communication and life. You never truly know which effort will pay off. Which Facebook post will become viral. Which conversation will spark an idea. Which moment of kindness will return to you years later in ways you could not have planned. And so, the only sensible thing to do is:
To give your best every time.
That was something my team and I learned the hard way. Some press releases were picked up by every major outlet, while others, which we thought were just as good, sank without a trace. Some social media posts took hours to plan, only to be ignored. Others went viral by accident. The pattern was impossible to predict.
It reminded me that results are never guaranteed, no matter how careful the planning. But that does not mean effort is wasted. Because effort, when done sincerely, is never wasted.
Rumi wrote, “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” I have come to think that this joy is what keeps effort meaningful, especially when the outcome remains uncertain.
In many ways, that is how life works. We do not get to know which seeds will grow. Some fall on fertile ground. Some never sprout at all. But if we stop planting altogether, we lose the chance for anything to bloom.
So yes, we need to put in the full 100 per cent, not because success is guaranteed, but because it is the only way to live with integrity.
When I think about it now, I realise that most of what matters in life starts the same way, that is without certainty. Relationships, careers, ideas, even small acts of kindness. You cannot predict which will grow into something lasting. All you can do is show up daily, do the work, and trust that something good will come from it, even if you do not see it right away.
We live in a time that measures success in numbers: followers, likes, shares, views. But real impact is not always visible. Sometimes it lives quietly in the trust you build, in the credibility you earn, in the steady rhythm of showing up. Day in, day out.
It took me decades to appreciate that not every act needs a visible payoff. Sometimes we do things simply for the joy of doing them well. A well-written article, even if few read it. A kind gesture, even if it goes unnoticed. A lecture prepared carefully, even if only a handful of students truly listen.
When you start to think this way, the world becomes less transactional. Effort feels lighter. You begin to enjoy the process again, like a craftsman who carves wood not for the sale, but for the love of shaping something beautiful. Something meaningful.
Khaled Hosseini once wrote that writing stories is a way of “giving form to human experience.” I think the same applies to how we live. Each action, each attempt, each small kindness is a line in the larger story of who we are. The point is not to have every post or writing go viral, but to keep posting and writing anyway.
Life, I think, works best when we learn to do things for that reason: not just for the outcomes or rewards, but for the craft of doing them well. So, if you ever find yourself wondering whether your effort matters, remember this: you will never know which one will pay off. That is not a flaw in the system; it is the beauty of it.
Because the world, much like advertising, works in mysterious ways. Sometimes the quietest message reaches the farthest.
* Ir Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, and the Principal of Ibnu Sina and Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College, Universiti Malaya. He may be reached at [email protected]
