Nana's notes on yesterday's talk on Time management by Shaykh Waleed Abdulhakeem :
1.There are two blessings which a lot of ppl don't pay attention to:
2. How people waste their time?
- By doing something haraam
- Doing something permissible but not beneficial
- Doing something good when there is something more important to be done (Priorities issue)
3. T
ime is like our capital. we have only limited amount of it. And the amount is predetermined.
4. Allah sent a surah in the Quran about this topic, Suratul Asr. Allah named the whole surah as Time. All human beings are losing. Except those who possess the 4 qualities.
- being a believer
- does good deed.
- remind each other of doing good deed
- remind each other of patience
4. What are other nations doing with their time management? We have 2 exemplary nations here:
Japanese-when you take the train, they set not just the hour and minute of when the train will arrive and leave, they even tell you what the specific second is!
- When sheikh was travelling in Japan, he had the chance to watch the Japanese TV specifically the NHK station. On the show, they were celebrating the fact that for the last 20 years, the average delay duration for the trains system has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds. While we think that seconds are insignificant, they multiply the 3 seconds they'd saved with the number of Japanese people. They were celebrating because they know that they are saving multi billion seconds that the Japanese could have lost!
-The Japanese are very successful at economic level. They are honest people too. In Tokyo: they dropped 300 wallets to test the people's honesty. 298 was returned.
Swisswhen you cross the street, there are trams. the trams never slows down. They don't allow delay in their tram transport system.
Etc
5. Now, looking into our religion, does second really matter?
In ramadhan if you broke your fast seconds before the adhan, will your fast be accepted?
If you perform your salah a second after the prayer time ends (without any excuse), will it be accepted?
Our religion teaches us that seconds really matter.
6. Ibn Jawzi when advising his son:
"My son, your life is just a connection of breathes. And every breath will come on the Day of Judgement, When you receives your book, what are you going to find in it? The book itself, you are the author. We are holding the pens. What do we want to write in it?
7. Go travelling as travelling helps you to become less ethnocentric, to not claim that you are the best.
8. Have mission and vision
mission: what we want to achieve and work on now.
vision statement: what we see ourselves in the future.
Whenever you do mistake or things don't work out, go back and check your mission and vision of life
9. Set your daily mission and vision. Look at how disciplined the mufasir of one of the most extensive tafseer, Al-Tabari(? check back),
He set his daily mission: I will not sleep until i write 35 pages a day.
10. Habit stacking: having small habits that helps you to achieve your goal.
- You make a 20 minutes time blog and choose 7-10 habits that you do daily that will maximize productivity
- E.g want to improve relationship? send your greeting to one friend daily
- Want to gain widened insight? Read a powerful quote each day
- Others: habit for increasing knowledge, habit to improve health
Make the mission small (the minimum level in which you can go beyond but not less) or else you get burnt out.
the time not used will be lost.
11. Imam Hasan al Basri (attabiin) said:
You are made of days. When your days are gone, a part of yourself are gone as well.
Umar Abd Aziz ruled for 2 and a half years. That was short in duration but it was a golden era. No one want to accept donation at that time because the economic prosperity was so good. The power of utilising time the best we can, whether as a ruler, as a student, etc.
12. Ammar Ibnu Qais
People stop him when he was walking and said "talk to me"
He said "hold the sun". If you can stop the sun, I can talk to you.
He was not being arrogant. He has goal and he has to work on it.
This implies the importance of avoiding certain distraction to achieve our goal.
13. How do we manage our life through prayer?
Imam abu hanifah
- Wakes up for dawn prayer.
- The successful CEOs in the world wake up 3 hours earlier than the time they go to work. They set what they want to achieve for the day and what are their priorities.
- Reads the quran
- Prepares for the lecture that he'll give
- Pray dhuha when the sky becomes blue (45 after subh), to around 20 minutes before zuhr
- do dhuha prayer becauses we owe charity for all the joints we have, and the life.
- go to work (as merchant)- as 25 y-o, someone senses that he has intelligence, and he should do something more. He starts to take different courses until he found himself being excellent in jurispudence, law. So he later specialised in that.
- Zuhr prayer
- Lunch
- Qailullah (power nap)
- Wake up
- Asr solat
- Teaches his children (he threw questions and his children will be discussing.
- Maghrib prayer
- Sits with his children
- Isya prayer
- Intimate time with his spouse
- Sleep early
- Night prayer (qiyam)
Of course, not all if us can live similar routine like Imam Abu Hanifah as we have different life routines, but we can nevertheless use prayer time to help manage our life routines.
When people don't have balance in their spending of days and nights, their lives will be imbalanced. Our body has its rhythm.
14. What kind of person are you? Night owls or early birds?
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Health management
We don't have to be reminded to breath, or to pump our blood. A lot of the body processes are automated. Why does Allah give us autonomic nervous system? so that we can focus on the reason why we are created- of how to serve for the community and how to go to a Jannah
Okinawa, Japan
California
A town in Greece
In these town, there are many people living over hundred.
There was a study done to investigate the underlying secret behind their long lives. Upon study, they found that:
In Okinawa, the people are very active physically. Women in their hundred dived in the seas to get Oysters. They also love to eat bitter guard, a special type of cucumber.
In Greece, they started to live long after WW2. Their sheeps were taken by the Hitler. They boil grass and drink the water. Most of their diet is vegetarian.
When compared, they found similarities between the three places studied. They eat and stop before they get full. The number one reason of how to increase life duration: to fill your stomach just two-third
the son of adam should have a few bites until they can stand. fill one third for food, one third for drink, one third for the air.
Additional:
-when you learn different languages, you learn different ways of thinking.
