This Will Change How You Use Your Time ⏱️

Don't Let It Slip Away...

Special Dua request for the flood victims of Maidguri . May Allah grant them ease, protection, provision, and restoration. Please pray that He replaces all they have lost with that which is better, Ameen. Please see a list of charities to donate to here.

Asalam Alaekum Waramatullahi Wabarakatu,

Trust you are well, striving and thriving, In shaa Allah.

This email was supposed to hit your inbox last week. Even though I wish you had received it sooner, I’m glad it had time to marinate in my drafts. Now that it’s out, I’ve experienced something that makes it feel real for me.

Recently, I completed Iqbal Nassim’s Last Day Leader course with a clearer vision, a more intentional mission, and direction on how to revisit a project I hope will help me strive in God’s cause. The project has come with a sense of urgency, reminding me how incredibly short life is and how we must use our time wisely.

Knowing that I haven’t been making the best use of my time (my greatest resource) has kept me up at night, and this project brought it to the forefront. Sadly, if I were to die today and was asked whether working on it was the best use of my time, the answer would not be very pleasing. Alhamdulillah, there is still hope—I’m still alive, and I will keep trying to do better, God willing.

With this as the backdrop, I’d like to share these incredibly strengthening notes by my dear Sister R, who kindly gave me permission to share them. Please make dua for her and for Anse, who have now made me extra conscious of exactly how my time is spent.

---

28 July 2024 - Rabata Malaysia Tahajjud Lights talk with Anse Rydanah Dahman

📆 Alhamdulillah we’ve started a new hijri year. Like Rasulullah SAW and his companions, we have to make the best of the situations we’re in and grab every opportunity to use it as a reminder or as a checkpoint to stop, evaluate and plan.

⏳ Rasulullah SAW said that time is a type of blessing that many people take for granted. Time is capital. It’s like we are employed for a project on this earth. Our boss is habibi Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. Our trainer is Nabi Muhammad SAW. Our capital is the time that He allows us to be in this dunya—every hour, every minute, every second. And in the end there is an audit on where this capital was spent 🫣

🔎 If we look at our Deen, so many things are tied to time. Tied to age, time of the year, time of the day, etc. Time is so important in our faith.

💼 Anything worthwhile requires planning. Any project we’re doing requires a plan. A project without a plan is going to fail. You can’t take an important project and just “wing it”.

♾️ What could be more important than planning our eternity? This is an important project that is worth planning for.

⚒️ Other than having a plan, we also need a work plan or a plan of action. Now, every time we make a plan, we are full of hope, not wishes. When you wish for something, it means in normal circumstances, that thing won’t happen. There is no precedence leading to the outcome we are wishing for. Hoping for something means that there are introductory things that have been done; there are certain things that make you trust that this thing is going to happen.

🌏 Take the time to make a plan of goals and ask yourself what is it you want to do. Have realistic ambitions. And with these goals comes a work plan. These goals are going to be for every aspect of your life. You’re not just a mother, a teacher, a daughter, a worshipper… you are everything! Have a goal and plan how you’re going to execute it.

🕰️ CHARACTERISTICS OF TIME

1️⃣ Once it’s gone, you can’t make it up. Understand that a chunk of us also goes when hours pass us by. We can’t recover this capital.

2️⃣ It’s really quick. As we get older we see how time passes so quickly. When people are about to die, they say that their lives flash in front of them in fractions of a second. That’s because they have a foot in akhirah. That unique and short moment is when the true speed of dunya becomes obvious when it gets compared to infinity.

[Quran 23:112-113] He will ask ˹them˺ (the people in Jannah), “How many years did you remain on earth?” They will reply, “We remained ˹only˺ a day or part of a day. But ask those who kept count.”

SubhanAllah, they can’t even remember a day! So what is the worth of what we are spending time on? Things we do only have worth when Allah is in it. Everything else we do is worthless. And without Allah in our time, we are going to regret.

3️⃣ Nothing has changed since Nabi Adam AS’s time. The sun rises and sets and the earth continues to revolve around the sun. The major difference however is the barakah of time. There are so many beautiful and accomplished Companions and scholars who only lived for 25 years. The oldest of them was maybe 60 years old, yet produced so many books. Allah had a hand in their time. Time is a creature of Allah like anything else. Allah can stretch it. It’s not how long we live but what we do in our lives.

🎯 What we are aiming for: a list of goals and a plan of action. Don’t let Shaytan trick you into thinking that you’re okay if you haven’t fallen back from last Ramadan. Since everything is moving forward, we are actually falling behind if we are still in the same place as before. In your plan, include everything we’re going to be questioned for. Knowledge. Children. Family. Work. Income. Entertainment. Health.

🤚 Be patient with goals. We’re going to stick to our goals even though it takes time to achieve them. We live in a culture of instant gratification. We have to fight this in our life, in our habits, in our children’s habits. There is no instant in anything that is worth having. Work is needed for things worth having.

🦾 HOW TO PUT TIME TO GOOD USE

[Quran 99:7-8] So whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.

⭐ Realise how much your time can contain. How many atoms (of goodness) can you fit in?

⭐ Abandon what doesn’t concern you. Not just being nosey about other people. “What doesn’t concern me is what doesn’t benefit me.” Anything that Allah can give you points for, benefits you. Anything that takes you away from Allah has no benefit. (This means half of what we do should be dropped.)

⭐ Whoever turns his worries into one worry, Allah will take care of his worries. “In every aspect of life, my concern is one: Is Allah ok with me on this? When I deal with my husband, is Allah ok with that?” Please people to the point of pleasing Allah. Trying to please everyone is murder. If we please Allah, He will take care of people being pleased with you.

⭐ Daily review. Have a schedule for your days and weeks. And bear in mind that one of Shaytan’s tricks is to enlarge the good things you do so you don’t do more (e.g. you read 1 juzuk of Quran 10 days ago but it will feel like it was just yesterday, hence you don’t need to do anymore today) and minimise the booboos that you do by making them feel very distant.

⭐ Keep in mind the deadline. Deadlines are not a joke: they can mean your job, your passing grade, etc. We know there’s a deadline but we don’t know when it is. When it comes, it’s going to be a sudden announcement.

🧠 Remembering all of this will help us make the best of our time, even if you have a thousand things to do. Start with yourself before helping your brother or sister. The one who is missing something cannot give it to others. If we do not have goals, we cannot ask our children to have goals. Establish a structure then aspire and work hard.

🤲🏻 InshaAllah Allah makes this a year of production, a year where we reach our goals. A year where we get closer to Allah set and to Prophet Muhammad SAW. When we speak to Allah, we tear 😢 and when we selawat, we feel more love for Prophet Muhammad SAW ❤️.

May Allah grant us all the blessing of our time so that it will fit what we fit into it. Time is good. Time is enough. We just don’t realise how much we’re wasting.

We leave you in Allah's care,

One Of Us at Ibadahplug.