Fatima Barkatulla – How Do You Stay on Top of Everything

			Just is asking how do you stay on top of everything?
		

			The answer to that is I don't?
		

			That's the honest answer. I am not on top of everything at all, you know, I have lost hundreds that
help all of us. You know, we're all we all struggling with keeping the balance, making sure we're
not overdoing something or under doing something, making sure everyone's rights fulfilled, that your
responsibilities are fulfilled, you know, you, we just do our best. I think that's the truth of it.
You know, sometimes you look at somebody, maybe you're looking at me, and you're thinking, sister,
Fatima, you know, she's got it all sorted, you might think that, it might look like that, I might
make it look like that, you know, to be perfectly honest, because, you know, a lot of the time when
		

			we're posting things online, etc, we're only posting the best bits, right, or some of the best bits
of our lives. So the truth is, I'm not on top of everything. It's something that I work on and
struggle with. And I'm constantly trying to improve, you know, and adapt to. So I'm literally every
single year doing it, I'm thinking, you know, what went well, this year? What was not good this
year? What did I get the balance wrong on. So one year, for example, I realized, you know, one of my
key habits that I really need to fix is my sleep, I cannot do without X hours of sleep, the more
hours I have, the better it will be. And so I found my sweet spot, which was like, six to seven
		

			hours, I think, for me, and what I found is if I go under five hours, it's just not worth it. It's
just not worth it, it's gonna ruin my day, it's gonna affect my mood, it's gonna. So I'm just giving
you a little insight into like, how I sometimes how I sometimes assess, you know, what needs
adjusting, really, in my own day, in my own life. And so every year, I think, pretty much I'm
looking at, you know, what went well, what's not going well, what needs to be fixed, I have a family
meeting with my family every year, at least every year to talk about, you know, what, what did we
achieve this year? What did everyone do? What does everyone need to do in the next year? You know,
		

			just get your kids into that goal setting mode. And I literally ask my kids and my family members,
my husband, in other words, what are you not liking in the way we're doing things and what's going
well, and what's not going well, and we, we just have it out, we have that discussion openly. And
sometimes you hear stuff that you don't want to hear. But you see, I'd rather I'd rather my children
told me What's upsetting them or what's not working for them, or what they think we're getting
wrong. Now, I'd rather they tell me now. And we try to fix it, rather than them kind of suffering or
having some some difficult thing happen and some traumatic long term experience that then they as
		

			adults are suffering from. And, you know, it's something that if we had talked about as children,
when they were children, and when they were younger, we could have worked on or fixed. So I really
don't believe in brushing things under the carpet, I believe in facing up to whatever challenges
your family is having. And as I said, Make family your finest project. Your family is a project. If
you're running any other project, what would you do? You have annual appraisals, you know, you have
key performance indicators, right. And you have goals, you have debriefs after every kind of
milestone, you know, like, what went well, what didn't go, well? Whose responsibility was it? Et
		

			cetera, et cetera? If you do that, for a company, what is a company, a company is a collection of
people, right? That's what a family is even even more important than a company, right? So I do
actually, I know that for some people that might sound very corporate. But I just believe that, you
know, failure to plan is a plan to fail as they say, you know, if you don't, if you're not
deliberate about these things, if you're just winging it, if you're just always trying to like wing
it, basically, you're more likely to miss important things. You know, at the end of the day, even if
you do this, even if you do treat your family as your project, you might fall short. And that's
		

			where the art comes in. That's where constantly asking Allah subhanaw taala to guide and protect and
help you and keep you on the straight path. Keep your family on the straight path to help you to not
neglect anyone. That's why all of that is important, right? But yeah, I don't have it figured out.
It's something that I'm constantly figuring out. But some good books, I think that really helped me
are things like atomic habits. Everyone talks about that book. There's a very good book, atomic
habits. Also the one thing there's a book called The one thing that really helped
		

			I think attending
		

			Some kind of leadership programs also helped me, you know, to help me get the balance right too,
because I think anytime you're thinking about these things or thinking about all the various roles
that you have, you can become more deliberate about each of those roles. Right? It's when you become
single minded about something and that you start neglecting, neglecting other areas right?