Between The Lines: Progress Doesn’t Always Look Like Progress

When you read a story in Inc. Arabia, you’re seeing it in the neatest version that we in the editorial team have worked on to present to you. The narrative flows, the themes make sense, and the takeaways are clear—or so we hope!

However, what you are not seeing is the process—which, by the way, is often chaotic—that gets us there. The prep for interviews. The outlines that collapse halfway. The hours spent over transcripts. The paragraphs we kill during the edit. But without all of that, there is no story—at least not one worth reading.

That’s the thing about doing meaningful work—most of it stays out of sight; what people tend to see is only ever the surface. A founder’s success story, for instance, often hides the false starts. A viral moment is usually built on the countless ones that never caught on. A hit product neatly covers up the prototypes that went unnoticed.

Of course, the problem here is that we live in a culture that’s practically obsessed with what shows. News cycles and social feeds are designed to spotlight the finish, and rarely the road that made it possible. And that can make those of us in the messy middle feel like we’re falling behind, when, in fact, we simply happen to be in the thick of it.

So, here’s a reminder I say as much to myself as to anyone else: the work that gets you to eventually move the needle rarely looks glamorous while you’re doing it. It looks ordinary, it looks repetitive, it looks like effort that doesn’t add up—until, suddenly, it does. After all, it’s the drafts that no one notices that make the polished version possible.

What all of this means is that if your effort doesn’t appear to be “visible” yet, don’t confuse silence for failure. The absence of applause isn’t the absence of progress—it just means you’re in the middle of your journey. And what feels invisible now is often what shapes what comes next.

This article first appeared in the August 2025 issue of Inc. Arabia. To read the full issue online, click here.