Bismillahirahman niraheem

Asalamualykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu my dear respected sisters and friends.

Jazakalllah for attending virtually today – I hope you all are well

Introduction

Structure of the sessions Interactivity – if any of you have attended my classes/workshops before you know

that they are interactive, I would like you 100% attention and contributions inshallah So as I cant see you, I need to know a little bit about my audience before I start Mentimeter polls

Lets start by defining what is productivity? This fancy buzz word – we need to know what it means in order to achieve it. Is it the same as being busy?

Being productive or productivity is being able to efficiently manage our lives so we actually have enough time/more time to do the things we want. It’s not being busy - piles of work to do – running behind, stressed out, struggling to manage but rather it is making certain choices in certain ways (which we will discuss today) to move us from being ‘BUZY’ to ‘Productive’. Tony Robbins says is ‘to work smarter, not harder’. Not about doing more things, but rather about working effectively and making the most of your time. Refer to Slide 3

So as Muslimah why do we need to be productive?

You need to have a drive? What’s driving us to want to be productive? – As Muslims this shouldn’t be a career, money, house, status, materialistic goals but rather we have a bigger vision/goal/aims/ image in mind.

As Muslims we believe that this world is a preparation, an exam a test and the outcome will be shown to us in the next life. We have given a fixed amount of time in this world, which we are not aware of. Only Allah knows how long we will live. We need to live a life that allows us to maximise our efforts and put as much as possible into our bank account for the akhirah as quick as we can because we don’t know when our time will be up – time is limited in this world, we have to use it best as possible to achieve eternal success. We all have 24 hrs in a day and a productive Muslims is able to make the most of them and submit maximum reward into his bank account for tomorrow.

Let’s turn to our book of guidance – Quran - There’s a whole Surah in the Quran on time – it doesn’t matter if it’s one of the shortest surah in the Quran but there’s a Surah which Allah takes oath by time. Allah only takes oath in the Qur’an on things that he is serious about, which are important to him and things he wants us to pay attention to. The fact that Allah takes oath by time – shows us the intense importance of time in the first place. Does anyone know which Surah? WAIT

Recite Surah and translation ….

How is time linked to loss? Time is a capital (worthy/income) that every human is born with. You can either use this capital wisely and invest it or continue losing it, and then loose in the hereafter too. It has been already pre-destined how long we will live – maybe 30 years, maybe 50 years, maybe 60. But day by day what are we loosing? Time – we are in constant loss with time. It is slipping by our hand’s day by day, minute by minute, second by second and it’s up to us to grab it.

It can be likened to someone who sells ice/ice cream – ice cream is his capital it’s what he sells to make an earning. If he is not careful, by making sure it’s in the freezer, out of the sun, it will melt and he will lose not just his capital but his profit too. Or on the other hand he can be careful, look after his stock and sell it to his customers and make a profit – an income. We are like the ice cream man – what’s our capital, not ice cream but time.

What is our profit – if we use our time carefully, we can add good deeds to our bank

Time is like ice cream a melting capital and the only way to escape loss is to make use of every moment of our lives as valuable as possible.

So, as we know time is always slipping, we need to ensure we use it in the most effective way possible to be most productive in completing our tasks, chores and investing as much as we can in the akhirah.

Looking into hadith, the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessing upon him) gave us advice and warned up, told us to be productive because 5 things will be replaced by 5 other things before, we know it. hadith – I feel like in these unprecedented times some hadith and Quran verses we have been reading our whole life – feels like I’ve read them for the first time ever. Because alhamdulillah most of us live such comfortable lives we haven’t experienced these tests before. carnage, warfare, famine, oppression or poverty.

o Your Youth before your old age – o Your health before you fall sick – Subhanallah we can all so relate to

that right now, will this invisible yet deadly disease. We or our families may have experienced the Covid – 19 illness. This hadeeth is just shining and speaking out to us right now. Alhamdulullah we didn’t have it too bad, but still it was debilitating not being able to do anything and get on with your normal day. And having people around you getting the same disease, so much more severe than you, not being able to breathe and end up in hospital and even lose their lives – alhamdulillah we have lots to be grateful for

o Your wealth before you become poor – So many people losing their jobs, getting pay cuts, no income coming in, food prices going up we don’t even know what financial state we will be in when we come out of the pandemic. Holidays?

o Your free time before you become busy – So we have been busy all our lives, and now many of us are tasting free time – how does it feel? Are you able to use it well? Very soon you will become busy again, so how did you make use of it. Were you productive in using your time?

o Your life before death – Many have gone, many more will go not make it to Ramadan, Eid, Summer – may Allah protect us and our families.

The Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessing upon him) gave us advance warning that not only will these things leave you before you make the most of them, but you will also be questioned and asked about how we spent our time? Time is an amanah (trust) from Allah. The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The feet of a servant will not touch the ground until he asked about his life and how he spent it; his knowledge and how he acted upon it; his wealth and how he acquired it and spent it and his body and how it was used.” [Tirmidhi] how did you make the most of the lock down? How did you use the time that was given to you as a blessing – its one of Allah’s many blessings upon us.

There are many other benefits of keeping productive such as it k keeps your mind away from shaytaan – idle mind is a shaytans workshop - Imam Shafi’i who famously expounded two principles of time management: “Time is like a sword: if you don’t cut it, it will cut you. Second is yourself: if you don’t busy it with right, it will busy you with wrong.

SO………Have you gained time in this lock down? What time have you gained e.g. Commuting, working at all, visiting family and friends…. Maybe you have gained 2-3 hours in a time. This is time which is not to be wasted sleeping or netflixing but rather be productive and use this time to achieve things you have always wanted too.

What can I do with my time?

o What’s the book you always wanted to read by never did – or like me what’s the book I always bought but never got time to read and now my book shelf is full of books I need to read - well this is your time to read them

o What’s the dish you always wanted to try out but never did get around to it – knows the time (conditional that you can find all the ingredient that you need)

o With Ramadan less than 2 weeks away all those surahs you have memorized but may have forgotten it’s a great idea to polish them up and strengthen your memorization of them to be able to read them in your tarawih at home

o Revisit an old hobby / start a new one o Home DIY projects – spring clean-up – declutter o Think about all the things you may have wanted to do with your family, children,

parents, siblings (whoever is in your house) your whole life but never got round to doing it, DO IT NOW.

o Ramadan preparations = what ever that means to you – your batch cooking, frozen spring rolls, decorating your house – try to get all those things done and completed that will get in your way in Ramadan. All tasks that don’t need to be done in Ramadan, get them done now so it can free you up for more worship

o Exercise – so important for your immune system, physical and mental health. Choose an appropriate video routine from YouTube and follow it

o Create a masjid space in your house o Schedule time for extra nawafils which you don’t usually pray – Salatul Duha,

Sunnahs of asr ect….o Family study circle o Compile a collection of your favourite duas = ready for Ramadan o Help others however you can = ‘Allah will be in the help of those who help others’ o Work on a project you always wanted to o Any other ideas?

Use our new profound time in a productive manner -

Now with all these ideas, some of you may be feeling overwhelmed how do I get them done? It all sounds so lovely to be doing the above but I just can’t do it? Day goes so fast, so many distractions, somethings not in my control? How do I organise my tasks?

Methods to increase in productivity: There so many to share but I have just chosen a few to share which have worked wonders for me and others around me.

1. Plan every day in advance -If you don’t even know what you want to achieve in a day then productivity is zero. You have no zeal/motivation for the day – to even do anything.

• The night before or the beginning of the week or in the morning when you wake up – whatever suits you. You need to set out what you want to achieve. Whatever works for you write the bare minimal down.

• Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance - Planning saves you two hours in wasted time e.g. Meal planning – could think every day what shall I cook and then go to the shops and buy or plan entire week and get all shopping at once – saves so much time. If we can limit the amount of decision, we make in a day it will allow us to spend more time on other things – be more productive.

• Now – when you planning your tasks – in order to productive you need to ensure you DO NOT have too many tasks – that’s the problems with some of us ladies – sisters – That we set ourselves this long list of things to do, then by the end of the day we you have more than half of the to do list left to do and feel like we haven’t achieved anything, demoralised and exhausted. Burn out, I’m sure we have been there and don’t want to go there again!

• We have too high unrealistic expectations of ourselves. It would be nice to cook fresh meals, do exercise, read Quran, memorize, listen to a talk, speak to family, read a hadeeth, join an online class, clean the house all in one day etc….But it’s impossible and I needed someone to scream that me to make me realise that too. Unrealistic – reduced self-confidence – unnecessary stress and anxiety.

• Every day but we need to work out what are our MIT’s of the day of the day so MIT’s – most important task of the day 3-5 no more than that. They need to relate to our bigger goal and aim in life.

2. To do lists – It could be time table. Bullet journal or other form of writing down – but I love love love my To Do lists – I use them daily and have separate ones for home, work, meals, holidays etc…

• The power of writing things down – it’s a form of confirmation – from your thoughts / mind to a piece of paper. It also takes the stress off your mind and all the anxiety. The tension moves from your mind to piece of paper. E.g. Yesterday I needed to take chicken out the freezer to defrost and knowing me id forget when I wake up and rather than stressing about it and prevents you from falling asleep peacefully – I left a note on my table a reminder to take the chicken out. So, I now when I wake up and sit down on my table for breakfast ill see the note and remember to do the task – these are called triggers they remind us to do the actual tasks. We as women manage so much already as have to set up things to make us more productive. Triggers – reminders on phones, notes, checklists to help us remember to do the actual task. Not super human

• How to set up your to do list …. ABCDE – order your to do list in order of importance of tasks or either in the order they will be completed in the day.

• A – Must do (Salah’s, cook dinner, bath, etc)

• B – Should do (Do the hoover, Recite Quran, call family)

• C – Nice to do (Call a friend, write up my notes)

• D – Delegate – niece laminate, bake etc…

• E – Eliminate – you need to cut cut cut off things from your list otherwise it’ll be long as ever and you’ll end up in that burn out stage again – what can you get rid of?

• Then that feeling ok ticking off or marking off the item as done! Feels so good – it drives you to complete the task. Relieves stress and helps without mental health – that feeling when you have achieved something, ticked it off your list is sweet! Automatically releases endorphins. happy hormones. Unnecessary stress – if you haven’t tried it try it tomorrow

• I pray this tip in itself helps you to make you the most productive version of yourself that you can be

3. Break down tasks- Ask question – if I gave you 4 oil barrels and asked you to take them to the bottom of the road, with no transport how would you do it? Wait

Another thing which can feel overwhelming is the size of the task –

The whole Quran to recite in Ramadan

The entire Surah to memorize

The whole house to clean

The whole module to study

The whole garden to clean

It’s a matter of perception – mind game – need to slice the task – into more manageable bitesize pieces. Ninja slice –

E.g. – break the Quran down into how much you want to recite each day – then how are you going to reach that day’s recitation, break it down further e.g. 2 pages per salah – more manageable, again you can tick it off and get that good feeling.

Cleaning whole house - into rooms- into tasks – you can tick off – Try this during the week with one of your big tasks.

4. Routines

Much of being more productive comes from self – evaluation. Its not about being productive for one day/ one week and that’s it – but to creative a continuous productive culture within our lives it needs us to re-evaluate ourselves regularly. Check what is working for us and what isn’t. The only reason I wrote myself a note to defrost the chicken is because I forgot to take something out to defrost the day before. So constantly you need to be evaluating your habits and routines. You not going to wake up one morning with this amazingly perfect to do list. Did I set my self too many targets yesterday that I didn’t complete, why didn’t I complete them, how can I do better, am I setting too high targets?

So, these are some questions to help you reflect on your current routine. Routines:

o Islam is a religion which is built on routines – we naturally have a few things fixed already for us and we can work our daily lives around that

o 5 Daily prayers o Morning / evening duas o Surah Mulk before we sleep o It doesn’t need to be so prescriptive that every hour you have something

booked to doo But at least think about key questions – What time do I want to be awake by? o Routines change depending on your circumstance – Work routine/holiday

routine/ Ramadan routine, lets stalk about lock down routine……

Morning –

o Barakah in the morning o Enough of being in our pyjamas all day! As the lock downs started! But now

we owe it to ourselves and maybe our families for us to get dressed into some decent clothes when we wake up in the morning, do your hair, put some make up on…. It makes the worlds difference to how you feel. It’s the first step in having a productive day

Midday –

o Lunch o Salah Dhur o What kind of tasks do you get done in the morning – maybe your cooking

Evening –

o Working hours / sleep / what do you do after work?

Conclusion:

Recap of session – 4 things There no point in listening to talk about productivity and saying yh that was so true

and waking up tomorrow morning and being the same you. To be more productive change needs to start NOW = so….

I want you to choose one thing you want to incorporate into your daily routine and do it every day for the next 7 days till Wednesday and then feedback to us all what that was and if you managed it for 7 days. It can be as small as you like, something simple but I want you to be regular in and and decide now which part of the day your going to do it in. e.g. Im going to pray salatul Duha every day……

If you have any questions please post them in the comments box and I will try my best to address them in my two sessions.

Please forgive me if I had said anything wrong or offended any one to you and please remember me, my family, our community, our masjid our scholars and the ummah in your humble duas and I pray that Allah allows us to become more productive servants only for his pleasure alone and accepts our efforts. Ameen