Time Management

Bismillah R Rahman Rahim Al hamdu lillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah Obeida cinema alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Welcome back to prophetic habits, the podcast about the daily habits of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in order for us to live optimally in the 21st century. And from the late today we have a special guest. A seek His guidance family member, and a dear brother and colleague here in Cape Town, South Africa, CD jamaludin Can Assam Monica Hello Africa TCT welcome Salam, I'm so happy to be hamdulillah Baraka lofi come and see jamaludin has agreed to come on to this particular episode with myself. In order for us to really get into time management, I see

myself without explaining. So this is an audio and video podcast. If shad siddik seek His guidance, the Global Islamic seminary and we are going to look at this topic in amazing detail today both at the micro level as well as at the macro level. So don't go away. And stately Indian shallow to island there's much benefit to be taken particle of them.

So there's a hadith

that's relating in urban merger with the Prophet alayhi salat wa salam said,

Oh, Allah bless my nation in the early mornings. Right now.

The early mornings is a time of Baraka. Right? Time of blessings. So I've been I've been fortunate to spend a lot of time with scholars from both locally and and scholars from other countries. And I've never seen a scholar sleep after fajr. Before the sunrises, right. I'd always actually see them in Ibadah during that time, right, so.

So someone, actually, the son of a scholar actually said to me,

even if you don't do ibadah, right, even if you're actually doing your work, your professional work, that's fine, but don't sleep during that time. Because it's a time of Baraka. So this is a spiritual, spiritual dimension. And for people to maybe to help people get this point, it's the same when we look at sadaqa right. So when we give charity, if you have 100 Rand $100 And you give one Rand $1 away, we don't believe we have 99 left, we believe we have more than 100 right because of this spiritual dimension. So, so, these two dimensions is in my perspective, a fundamental in understanding you first have to get that right and then you move from there. So, but inshallah will

will,

will

converse now and you can I will respond in short to your, your cues. Now I'm just in another in another sense of this Baraka aspect, what I what I find important about, again, that this this what we would refer to as time management, is that we kind of have a structure given to us already divinely ordained in the form of the five daily prayers. So, Allah subhanaw taala is very, very clear and explicit about the fact that we must be on time in Masada, Attica and Alan macmini Nikita Baba Makuta. Sada is fixed at prescribed times for believers. So it's not just about the fact that we must pray, or the fact that we must pray as in a certain way, it's also that it must be in that

particular time. And what this does, if you take up seriously, right, and when I say this, I mean, it's not just that I need to pray on time, I need to pray like, I'm waiting for the adhan, I'm, I'm, you know, I want to be at the masjid or, for example, I want to just like, I know, my parents and

the parents and people back when I was growing up, were always punctual for Salah, like, they are waiting for the agenda radio is on, you know, five minutes before and they're waiting for the island. So, they will play at the beginning with work. Now, what that does, on a very practical level. And I suppose I can only assume at the, at the baraka level as well is regulate one's life. So you start, you start building your life around that. Now I'm not saying we do it, but I've seen it being done and I've seen it working very well. So often for people who are punctual like that. They now they now govern the day from one workout to the next so they know okay between Fajr and

Dora the

Tell my energy levels are, that's how I generally feel at that time. Usually I am able to get so much work done,

I have to make sure that I'm the by that time if I don't think I'm falling behind. And they also know the same thing about between Vahana and acid, they know that okay, at that time of the day, I feel this way I need to eat. Like, they just have this, this pattern, and it just works for them. And that was so important to them. That often, I recall my grandfather Rahimullah often asking before leaving the home before agreeing to go somewhere with someone he didn't drive. So he would jump in somebody else's car before agreeing, he would first ask, how long is it gonna take us to get there? Because he wanted to know, am I going to? Am I going to be able to pay on time? Yeah, you

know, that type of thing? Yeah. Which is just crazy, like, and that's how they lived. And they were very productive. They were very effective. They were they were spiritual people. Right. So I think this is a built in system of quality management, quality time, whatever you want to call it, but is a system of regulation that has sort of been given to us. What's What's your take on this. And really using the five side as beyond just okay, you need to play at that time, but also as sort of markers during your day. So, so I have a lot to emulate what you what you just said. So firstly, yes, I agree that the

the five daily prayers should be a sort of compass for our day,

to determine how we manage our day. Now, this is not unique. Other people do this with other things in their life, sometimes they do it, they manage the entire day around the business, some people would manage the entire day around the family. Right?

So

another thing I've witnessed with scholars visiting South Africa from overseas,

you know, it's, it's, it's very different when a visiting scholar comes and you go to the masjid to a lecture, right? Because that's the public, quote, unquote, performance, right. But when you spend personal time with them, you get to see their habits, and you get to notice trends. And one thing I've noticed is that when a scholar arrives, the first thing that they want, is the play times. So initially, when I was quite young, I would see this happening, but I wasn't sure what was going on, because I just see a piece of paper. And then you see the chef actually studying the piece of paper. Right? They never realize it's the salah times for that day, in that week. Right? So I like the word

that you use the regulate, right? So so we regulate our day, based on the pray times, right, so.

And another point beyond that is that you mentioned about

noting how you feel and how productive you are at different times of the day. Right? So they are people in the Western world. So there's something for example, called the 5am Club,

initiated by an author who I've met, who's who I respect, but I don't necessarily feel that

that's for everyone. Right? And but I say that with with sort of a caveat that as Muslims, the morning is important for the spiritual dimension, right.

So that time you should not be asleep, I believe for productivity and physical productivity and spiritual Baraka. But I don't believe you should follow any necessary routine in your worldly affairs. You should actually do

things on a schedule that is most productive to you when you when you're in a state of flow.

And then, you know, what you mentioned about

the Salah times and the people you know, our grandparents, etc. I remember in my my 20s I was studying Quran with Imam Kashif pastored in North Kensington

and he was seen in your in your 20s, so five years ago.

So

actually, it might have been in my late teens, but anyway, so he was telling us about his aunt, and Antonis who, throughout his life, he

saw that should

be on her Musala when the other one was shot, they would never be any time that you heard the other one. And she was not sitting already Cha, right. So.

So early on, I talked about this nexus, right? Where

Islamic sciences and our Islamic teachings meet with behavioral science and psychology, etc. Now, I met someone in the army once, right? Sorry, I met him in business, but he was ex army. So we had come from the army world. And he said to me, in the army, there's a philosophy that if you're on time, you're late. And if you're early, then you're on time. And that's what that lady was doing.

So, Inshallah, before we go on, I'll just mention one, small yet important thing. That beyond time management, I believe that the rituals and rules in Islam are more than what we see on the surface. Right? Right, there's much more meaning that we can extract. So just quickly, I mentioned that, for example, the pray, it's, we have to pray five times a day. Right? And that's a very important thing. But the Times change,

right? It's not the same time every single day, right? So we can take from that a principle and a lesson, that

even things that are the most important, sometimes change and we need some flexibility in things. Then in they are, you know, the,

the rules for traveling for example, right. So when you traveling,

according to which mother you follow, you can shorten and combine prayers.

So that teaches us that in normal life, we should understand that when certain conditions are met, sometimes things can change. They don't need to always stay the same. And so this is, you know, beyond the time management subject, but this is something that I've, I'm really interested in, in looking at what are the possible deeper meanings of the injunctions of Islam to help us in everyday life? Because, you know, we're, most of us are not scholars, so we're not in the scholar world. And most of us, and all of us in South Africa, at least are not in an Islamic land. Right. So So we're, you know, we're living a quote unquote, normal life outside of, you know,

an Islamic, you know, per se environment. So how do we use what Islam offers us to a relevant extent in our lives?

Sadie so we you speaking about time management and self management and you know, baraka and so on, let's get into the tactics, let's get into the the actual action plan that we can set for ourselves that we can improve on the measurables Bismillah. Okay, so my first advice for anyone listening is

take a pin on your device, mobile or laptop device, and write down your roles. What roles do you have, right? So you might be a father might be a wife, a daughter, whatever your roles are in life, and we all have several roles, alright? You might be a cousin, you might be a nephew, you might be an uncle. So write down all your roles.

And then

write down next to each role, what your current priorities are.

Right? What are the most important things that you need to do or attend to

in each of those roles? Right. So

let's take one step back. Why is this important?

It's important because we, we have to live a balanced life, right? And balance doesn't mean that you have to spend 50% of time on one thing and 50% of time on another thing balanced means that

you know, I'll use the definition of wisdom which the scholars you

As they say, wisdom is giving everything due. Right? In proportion. So

when we look at all our roles, we'll see that we have priorities in some of them, but not in all of them. So maybe as a nephew, right, so you might have an uncle, right? So you the nephew, as your nephew role, you might not have anything that you really need to do right now. So there's no real priorities now. So that's fine, right. But as an uncle, because you might have a niece and a nephew, as an uncle, you might have certain priorities that you need to take care of.

So

if you do not do it this way, you will focus only on priorities that come

that seems urgent to you that are top of mind. But you might mean, you might be neglecting other roles in your life. Right? So you first start with the roles, then you look at your priorities per role. And then you schedule your priorities. Right. So you can't do everything

at once. And there's also

your daily routines that you need to do. So for example, you know, shuffling shirt, if I if I can show you my laptop, right now, I have in my calendar,

an hour for Iftar, scheduled and gym, and two hours for taraweeh scheduled, because that block time, there's nothing else I can do in that time. So I have to block it, I have to schedule it. Alright. So

when we know what our priorities are, visa vie the roles that we have, now we can schedule what we need to do as well. Right now,

on a day to day basis, things come up, right? So things that we don't expect. So we cannot really evaluate productivity on a day to day basis, simply because of the nature of life.

So a day is too short. And a month is too long. Right? So the sweet spot for what is called a weekly review is based on a seven day cycle. Right? So, so my advice to people is no euros,

understand your priorities per role.

And then schedule your priorities. Right, right. So like I said, as a nephew, you might not have any priorities, are you there's nothing to schedule, there's nothing to do. Right.

But as Uncle you might have a priority, and you might have to schedule that. Right. And, and then each week, you review. Okay, how did I do the past week? And what do I need to do? For the coming week? Right? So in that way, we'll feel like we're on top of things. So what I find is that most people have anxiety about things they need to do. Yeah. Right. So but it's it's it's an anxiety, those important those important nagging things that we want that we know we procrastinate and those things? Yes, yes. And so people walk around with a during the day, they go to bed with that anxiety, and they wake up with that anxiety, right?

And it's not laziness. Right.

So, the challenge is that we, we don't have a system, we don't have a plan, and we don't have a

clean look at what all needs to be done in a realistic fashion. Right. So it's all in our head. We know we need to do a whole lot of stuff, but it's all in our head. And and that's why people often struggle and and it causes actual anxiety. And and many times and I've experienced this personally myself, many times we delay something for months, and it ends up taking us 12 minutes sometimes to do or it takes us two hours. But it took us months to get to actually doing right and that's that's really not necessary. So So planning and and then executing on your plan is is the way out

So, I want to jump in here. This is a few things that sort of leapt out at me. The one is, I really like this book called make time. I'm sure you've heard of it. But there's, there's a number of strategies that it's actually, it's actually a collection of strategies. It's not, it's not like this one framework of ideas, it's a collection of strategies. And then you get to choose like, which one makes sense, you. But the one thing that sort of my highlight in the is the idea of a highlight of the day. And when times are chaotic, and I don't feel like this is actually my Shiro book. Yeah, I don't feel like you know, writing a to do list or something of that sort. I just sort of default

back to this idea that I need to have one highlight of the day, it just one thing that I know, if I if I accomplish that thing, I would feel

or

delude myself into feeling that I did well, for that day. It could be anything, it could be, okay. we infer my 5k Run, for example. Or it could be that I spent 30 minutes playing with my daughter, it doesn't matter. It's your highlight of the day. And it's not that that's the only thing you're going to do for the day. But usually, we have this bunch of things that we need to get done, we never get through all of them.

And then the end of the day, we look back and say like if you don't feel like you did anything. Whereas if you have this highlight of the day, and you did that one thing, then the stuff that you actually don't get down to doesn't even matter anymore. Because you know, you know, what were your day went, Oh, that's the day I spent. Yeah, again. So that's a really cool one. And another one that that sort of stands out for me is

Steven Pressfield do the work. He also writes the The War of Art, very, very interesting, I must say, in all of these books,

The New York Times bestsellers, and these things, they tend to be very accessible ways of understanding things that many of us scholars have written about,

for centuries, and that is basically understanding the nafs that's what it comes down to. It's really understanding the laughs, the ins and outs of it, how it works, how it can work for you, and how it will work against you. And it's really the same thing like Imam Ghazali, he often speaks about how we should manage ourselves during the day, and how we should have a regular pattern and all these things.

But yeah, in Steven Pressfield book, he really his handler, you articulated so well, he speaks about this, this difficulty that lies between ourselves and the important tasks in our lives. And it's generally the creative stuff, you know, the writing that that piece or recording that video or finishing that article, you know, they you find what he terms as a resistance. And the more important the the particular activity, the more resistance. And he does a brilliant job with analyzing the resistance, and he describes it, but more importantly teaches you that you should just go for the resistance, like understand that whenever you feel resistance, that's the thing you

should do first, that's the thing, we're going to get the most growth, that's the thing that you're going to feel the base that's the thing that's going to relieve you of the most anxiety. Yeah, exactly. Go straight with it. So I really liked that. And I just thought that she that. So Hamdulillah. So Steven Pressfield work is actually came

across it through Seth Godin. Okay, so Seth Godin himself is a prolific author, but he's a big fan of Chris fields work. And

what you just mentioned about facing the resistance.

And before I go ahead, let me just say to people, I'm not a scholar.

So, you know, if I'm making it, it's all on me. But I do believe there's a saying of Sedna, Ali. We said,

face fear head on. Right? So the resistance is the thing that you fear the most, even if it's just the thing that you fear the most for that day, right.

And so, so you face that head on, and you get it out the way and you always realize that it wasn't so bad after all.

Right.

And another thing is that

you spoke about one highlight for the day right now,

if it's something that you enjoyed,

but it wasn't the biggest priority or a

Didn't matter for the day, you will still feel like it was a good day. Right? But that is why

your weekly review should be done on a weekly basis. Because your priorities for that they still need to get done. Even if you didn't do it, but you just did you highlight, you may be waiting for your annotator. See maybe we'll catch up and you do it the next day. Right? So this concept of catching up is also founding myths. Right? So you shouldn't miss the praise of one, one scholar. He was asked about this. And he said there's no such thing as kadar. Right. But there is, but he was he was, you know, being slightly dramatic to express that you shouldn't really miss the prey, right. But if you do miss the prey, you can make it up if you miss the fast you can make it up, right.

So, so this Weekly Review allows us to make up what we've missed. But we still need to get things done. Right. And I think that's important.

So, but this is short term. So I'd like to switch gears a bit to summon right.

And what we're talking about is our day to day time management and day to day productivity practices. Right.

So those are important.

However, we should, as a Muslim community, think about long term achievements, right,

as a community, but also in our individual lives and our family lives. Rightly. So. Yours is something that that I want to read, that is very important to think about. And it's also from a book, the book is called the long view by Matthew Kelly.

And it says most people overestimate what they can do in a day.

And underestimate what they can do in a month. Right. And then he goes further. And he says we overestimate what we can do in a year.

And underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.

Right. So this is so true, man. Yeah, yeah. So I've got this under the heading of slow productivity, right.

So so I'm busy compiling data in research on this topic at the moment. And it's about

working towards something that's not urgent. But it's it will have high impact when accomplished.

Right.

So, you know, sometimes

people take years to write a book, for example, yes. All right. And I just listened to a podcast recently of an author

who took what, six years to write a book because she had, she had two kids in in the same time as well. So

so what I would advise, you know, our dear listeners to think about is

what have you and estimated that you can do in a month, in a year, and in a decade?

Right? Because we often don't think that far ahead.

So don't say so. So we're very used to cramming. So what it says is, we overestimate what we can, what we can do in a day, how many people if you ask them in the morning to show to show you the To Do lists, it's a very long list. And it's highly, highly, highly unlikely that we'll get through that list during that one day, of course, because that's what we do, we overestimate what we can do in a day. Right? But

if you look at what you can do this month,

big items that you can accomplish in this month, and then have a schedule plan across the month of how to achieve that. And same for the decade. Well, first name for the year, and then also same for the decade. And I think few of us think about this slow productivity and what we really want to achieve. So I have a friend who you know, he's he's a businessman. And, but he he enjoys DIY stuff, right? So he made

you know, he didn't call it this, but he had a slow productivity goal.

Oh, to build a garden. Alright, but what it did was, and this was pre COVID. So he used to work in his office, and then you would arrive home. And his routine was that before he does anything at home before he changes his clothing before he eat before he does anything, you will work for only 15 minutes in his garden. So he did that every day consistently, for one year, and after one year, he had a very big, very beautiful garden hygiene, right. That's low productivity. So and you know, again, so you should you should and then if he's willing to share with you should share some photos to be like, nicely mentioned. I should I should I should ask him he posted them online. So our

electoral asked me be as, you know, a step by step to victory. Yeah, I'll ask him. I'll ask him inshallah. So this is in line with what the Prophet alayhi salat wa salam spoke about consistency, right, the Hadith that, you know, even if a deed is small, a, if it's done consistently, that's better. Right? So many of us

want to do a big thing, but we do it once. And never again. Yeah, right. Yeah. So this slow productivity, as the consistency is important. It's, it's really tight. I recently submitted my masters, I think it took four years to submit the masters. There were times like, there were literally months where I did nothing, months and months and months went by, and it was just this looming thing, this anxiety that you spoke about, you go to sleep, you wake up, you go to the bathroom, you go back to the bathroom, you go to holiday, you come home,

you're always sitting stat about it, because it's the thing that you're supposed to do, but you don't feel like doing it and you don't want to do it, but you have to do it. And you're gonna have to do it and it's gonna, and you're running out of time. It's terrible.

And what I found was that

when I was working,

I decided enough of this now.

I'm going to forget about the, the actual Masters. I'm going to forget about the quality of the Masters I'm going to forget about the the achievements I'm gonna forget about my external examiner's because I had like really high profile external examiner's and I was worried about what they were gonna say, I'm gonna forget about my supervisors. I'm just gonna forget about everything. All I'm doing is I'm dedicating

one hour a day, every single day, to the masters. And even if I sit the end, I do nothing. But I'm just looking at words, but I'm not doing something else. You know, I'm not, I'm not deliberately procrastinating by doing something else. As long as I do that. I'm good. And I finished my masters.

So it was it was just crazy, as it almost is almost silly. How simple it was to do that. But yet, it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. So So, so a few things here.

When you were procrastinating, and it was not scheduled that itself brought anxiety. Yes. So, so at the moment,

you and I are not worried. We do not have anxiety about the assert pray.

Because we know it has a schedule. It'll arrive at a certain time. Yes, right. Now, when we have things to do,

and we have no schedule and no plan for them, that in itself causes anxiety. But once it's in the schedule, the anxiety drops because we know

when that time comes, it will get done. Right. And then the only thing we need is the discipline to execute. Yeah, right. And then what you mentioned about with your masters spending one hour a day, right, this was actually

the habit of a prolific author Neil Gaiman, by way you would, it would was more than one hour a day, but he would

force himself to sit at the place where he wrote I think it was at the back of his house and he could do nothing during that time. Or Right. Right. So if he chose not to write, he would, you could sit and do nothing. Yeah, but he was not allowed to do anything else. Yes, she could not read. He could not fidget with anything. You just have to sit there. Alright. And he said that you he would very quickly come to the conclusion that the writing is more enjoyable than not doing anything so he would write and and it's this structured

discipline of knowing that that time is for that thing. Right? So,

you know, when so, you know, all of us I myself have forgotten, you know,

at one stage or another to put my phone off before going into the masjid, right. But these are actually opportunities to disconnect. So we have so so that, you know, one and a half, two hours for taraweeh. Right now, as we are in Ramadan, we have actually an opportunity to disconnect from everything else. So now we know so even at two o'clock, three o'clock in the day, we very busy. And you know, you might be working and have a live stream playing on YouTube from Marco Medina. And you wish you were there. Right? But at least you know That tonight from, you know, eight to 10 I'll have my spiritual time, right? I'll be in the masjid. I'll be, you know, with the GEMA. And I will be

totally disconnected from anything else. It's to be

found, we segment our time, right, so. So there's

no you.

You very well know the Hadith about the presence in the prayer. Right. And now, there's a whole lot of talk about mindfulness. And this has been in Islam forever, right. So everything that we do with each work or, you know, exercise or our pray, we should be present in that, right. There's actually an entire book written about this one subject called The Power of Now. Right? So,

so Islam has all these ingredients, but we have to take the practical meanings of how we will use it in our lives. Right. And,

you know, and, you know, you mentioned earlier a quote by Mama khazali, you know, so the famous quote, Obi Wan masala is a very long one. And what I normally do with students is I deconstruct each line, right? So we, because reading it sounds good and feels good. But you actually have to deconstruct it to actually look at what he's actually saying, and how can we actually practically use it. And I normally deconstruct every line. And essentially, what he's saying is that you have to have a schedule,

you have to have a schedule, and you have to be disciplined. And what he says is that, if you're disciplined in one thing, there will be Baraka in your time for the rest of the day.

Right? So, now, I believe that this, you know, morning time, you know, before the sun rises, that's a Baraka time. So if you engage in something good

during that time, and it's in your discipline, in that you will have Baraka during the rest of the day.

Alright, so,

you know, these are the spiritual dimension, so, so we have to take both, right.

And why I say take both, I'll give you an unrelated but extreme example, right.

A friend of mine was in high school with me.

But we hadn't seen each other for many years. And I

ran into a with this p COVID. At a business function. And she said to me that she just came out of a clinic for depression. Right? And so she was telling me, you know, about the experience, etc. But she said my mother would not visit me there. Right? And she says, My mother said to me that you just have to make sure Jude and ask Allah to help you right? Now. This is this is someone who has a lot of faith who says that, but they're, they don't have a they don't have both dimensions. So

yes, you have to make the schedule. You have to ask Allah but you also have to seek help, right? Same thing you know, your ceiling

is leaking, right or your roof is leaking.

You're going to pray to ask Allah to help you but you're going to call you know the what we call the garden because the handyman

right? So so you're going to do both speaking standing and

and these leak

taking exactly to make it is that so I mean

In this from the Quran, where Allah says Ask those who know right? So, the the handyman knows what roofs and you know. So, my point is that you have to have both right.

So, like with today's complex lives, technology helps, right using Apps helps using a digital calendar helps. So, so use those things, but but also understand the spiritual dimension so for example

you can inculcate little habits so before you

do anything in your work like before you do a podcast before you make a call before you send an email recited to write, you can bring the Islamic dimension into everything that you do, because you seeking Baraka

Schiff is my lungs.

Many people from Cape Town will know he always makes that to our Oh Allah, Baraka in our time, right? Because he understands there is a difference.

Like a from 1pm to 2pm. Without Baraka, it's just 60 minutes, or 1pm to 2pm with Baraka is maybe 10 hours now, so, so I think that's inshallah important. Sadie, I've taken a lot of benefit from this podcast. And I'm sincerely hoping that we can do this again, I'm sure. I'm sure the listeners will, will agree with me.

I just want to, I just want to sort of summarize what you've what you've dealt with, we looked at the idea of time management, and like the fallacy of time management, what is it really self management? Okay, fine. We've looked at that, and the definition of that the importance they have and so forth. Then we looked at individualistic strategies, so atomistic strategies of how we manage our own day to day things, and so on. And then we went into a sort of a macro time management and don't forget about the long term, the end game, right.

And invest into into that as well. So it's really been a Obeah general, but quite a holistic overview of this idea of time management. I think it's only fit. You know, the profits are interesting, actually, that the sooner is before biting ways to actually recite Surah Al Asad. Yes, yes. Yeah. Which is, which is a profound surah. As far as time management is concerned, well, as far as time is concerned, I think anyone who wants to know Islams position on time time management, these things, study that I've seen or that Surah it's a beautiful, incredible Surah of the Quran, just the very, very first word or two words while acid. It's an oath that God takes by time. But the

word that that is utilized for timely, is an asset as opposed to walk, or Zemon. Or, you know, the number of other words that could have been used. The nature of that word, specifically is that it's squeezing out, like juice in Arabic is our seed. Because it's squeezed out, right? So when you say, while acid by time, it's not just by time, it's by time that's running out. You don't have an infinite supply. It's limited. You don't know. When it's, it's like it gave down not too long ago, maybe two, three years ago, we had. We had some tryouts. And we were approaching what they refer to as de zero. Nice. Yes. And this was like, added, oh, it was like a thing. You know, everybody's

talking about Day Zero. And suddenly, we had this new phenomenon that someday we are going to reach a point where there's absolutely no water left. And that was very scary. And it forced us all to implement certain strategies. Some of them were ridiculous. I think the number of liters we had per day was like 50 liters per day per person per household. Yeah, for a Muslim. Yeah. That's incredible. Because we'll do who's damn

esteemed Jan. So all of these things require water. Yeah. Anyway, so that's Daisy. Now, the same thing with time Allah is telling us that your time will be it for you as an individual or for you as a species is running out. Gamma is coming? Yes, we all know that. And your camera, your own personal day of departure, right, is also coming.

So does anything also make sense that as we did for Day Zero, put in very, very strict

rituals and strategies in order to kind of

serve that which we had, we do should do the same thing. And it's scary. The older you get, the more you realize this, you know, how much time do I really have left, actually wrote down in my own personal journal

based on the World Health Organization estimate of people like me, would die at a certain date, how many days I've left, how many years I've lived, and I check it every now and then, as it reminded myself that look, this is this is it? This is all you have? What are you doing with it? Yeah, just today, what do you on the day of the hammer when you have to answer for the life that Allah gave you for the gifts that he had given you? For the mind that for the health for everything that He has given you? And you need an answer for it?

You know, you repeat. Yeah. Anyway, Sadie, your thoughts on that in closing remarks, and then we can conclude Inshallah, so I agree with what you said about and I liked the analogy with day zero, which was, you know, impending drought in, in Cape Town, South Africa.

So,

you know, based or in alignment with that,

in general, things that are abundant, or undervalued, and things that are scarce or valued. Right. So

water became very scarce in Cape Town during that time, you know, and just a few short years ago, so we valued water much more. Right? So even even, you know,

if you take a shampoo bottle, right? So,

the shampoo bottle, when it's full, it's abundant, right? So most people waste the first, you know, few times they use it, or when it comes to the last quarter, then you use it sparingly, because now it's scarce. Right? So, so the same applies with water. Same applies with time, if we actually see time, as a scarcity, we'll be more prudent with how we use it now. Right? And,

you know,

we talked earlier about Allah, I'm taking an oath by time, we talked about

time being a creation of Allah, right.

But what's also important to remember is that we will be accountable for our time, so it becomes a responsibility. All right, this same

with how we spent our wealth, right, we'll be accountable for that.

Equally our time, we will be held accountable for how we spent all right, so now it becomes a responsibility. And now we have to really look at how we actually use our time. Right? Because

Allah wants everything. Good for us. Right? And Allah wants us to use our time.

productively right, I would even say that time was created for us to use, right. So so I think, you know,

we, we have spoken about a few tactics about scheduling in about roles, etc. But

in my talks, my primary focus is to give people a new perspective and a new way of thinking, Alright, so my first request to people is, is for people to actually just think about these things, and let it sink in. Yeah, right. And then look at your own life and see how you can apply it. And then you look at

how you can

be productive and have less anxiety in your day to day life. But how you can also achieve great things. So you know, we look at people like Imam nawawi was a Sharpie scholar who did not live very long, but he achieved much right.

And then you know,

apart from the work you put out there is also Baraka in what he achieved. Right? So, so when people talk about the Arbaeen, we think of the work of Imam nawawi, right, but many scholars,

probably like 1000s of other intellectuals. So so, you know, so so, you know, a few years ago, roughly about 2006 or seven. I was at Habibi a masjid and as I walked out, there was a, you know, a few booklets that people could take and it was Arbaeen right so I took it

assuming it was the RBE No, no, no. I just took it and I got home and I look at it and I see it's a different color and I'm confused. Yeah, right. And then I learned that many, many scholars have compiled a collection of 40 Hadith based on the Hadith of the Prophet so awesome. Yes. And but Imam nawawi is what we read, what we attach our buy into, that's the baraka right? So, he did something different, right. So for example, so, I have no clue, but for example, hypothetically, maybe he wrote his herba in during the tahajjud time right. So, so, he produced physically produce the work but he also had the extra bulk of the actual time he did it. So, so these things are inshallah

important than then look at what you can achieve in a month, and in a year and in a decade, for yourself and also for your community.

I think Inshallah, those are useful things to think about and then plan towards inshallah. Now, have you just heard and it is, it is a real pleasure to have you on our podcast Hamdulillah I hope it's not the last Inshallah, and I think inshallah I think I enjoyed it as well. So, so we'll make this absolutely. And also, I like, I like the synergy of, you know, sometimes I could perhaps have been exposed to a bit more of the Islamic sciences and so forth that I could also bring to the conversation and somehow it just always seems to work from the dealer. Anyway, may Allah subhana dat accept and for my brothers and sisters who are eagerly wanting to improve the time, appreciation,

the self management, the time understanding the time,

investment, you know, these these are all important things. I hope that you've taken a lot of benefit from this discussion as I have. And I pray that Allah Subhana Allah facilitate ease in your goals, dreams and endeavors. And we hope and pray that you can join us next time particle of eco city to Zakka hydrous and I'm only gonna huddle over to get it like I'm Solana Ottawa.