Productivity

08
Dec
2015

New Podcast Interview – Overcoming Procrastination

Overcoming Procrastination

Interview on overcoming procrastination

This is a link to a Muslim Life Hackers podcast about overcoming procrastination.

I was the guest on this episode, and we discussed many tips on overcoming procrastination, taken from my e-book Getting The Barakah.

“If you are afraid that it is going to take you 5 or 10 years to achieve a goal understand that those years are going to pass anyway and what will you show for it?” – Abu Muawiyah

Questions Asked:

  • Why should our listeners care about time management and in turn being productive?
  • Do you think that because time is not a tangible form of rizq we do not consider it as valuable?
  • So for those of us who have also grown up in the 80s and 90s and have this notion of killing time, overhauling their habbits and starting to think long term sounds very intimidating. Where do we start with that process?
  • How can someone tell if a decision is potentially harmful for them in the future or just an easy short cut? What is the difference?
  • In your book you talk about how not all hours of the day have the same value. How can we use this to our advantage to get more done?
  • The 7 day planner or the To-Do list? Can you explain these two systems and how they suit different lifestyles?
  • What would you say to someone who says they are a procrastinator?
  • Is having managed our time having a full calendar and always being busy? Where does relaxation and fun fit into the equation?

Getting The Barakah – Time Management E-Book

Be sure to check out our Time Management e-book, which contains over 150 pages of tips and techniques, and is available for purchase for only $8.99. That’s 150 pages of Time Management Training for under $10!

Time Management Training

Time Management E-Book

Posted by Ismail Kamdar in Books, Productivity, Time Management
09
Oct
2015

20 Time Management Tips in 6 minutes

As mentioned in the title, here is a short 6 minute podcast summarizing 20 Time Management Tips!

You can listen to the audio podcast about Time Management tips here, or read the transcript below:

  1. Avoid multi-tasking as it splits your attention between two things and you end up making mistakes in both tasks.
  2. Have a means of measuring your long term goals, so that you know how close you are to completing the goal and can plan accordingly.
  3. When working on a high concentration task, put your phone on silent, close all social media and concentrate on the task at hand.
  4. Study in bursts of 20 minutes, with five minute breaks in between. The five minute break allows your mind to store the information in your long term memory, which leads to increased understanding and longer retention of information.
  5. Start your day with Fajr and work on one High concentration task immediately after Fajr, like studying, memorizing Qur’an or writing an article. You will get the task done in less time with stronger results.
  6. Getting sufficient sleep (6 to 8 hours) is crucial for remaining alert and productive.
  7. Keep reminders of important tasks where you can see them. Add them to your phone calendar, or stick notes on your wall so that you remember important events for important days.
  8. Learn shortcut keys on your computer, it will lead to you completing your work in record time, eg: CTRL + C for copying and CTRL + V for pasting, instead of copying and pasting the long way.
  9. Keep a neat uncluttered work environment and you will find yourself more motivated to work.
  10. The above applies to your PC’s desktop as well, keep it uncluttered and organized.
  11. Learn to speed read and speed listen, these save time and help you remember things long term.
  12. Learn the shortest (and least congested) route to frequent destinations to save time on the road.
  13. Utilize time waiting in queues to read an e-book or listen to a podcast on your phone.
  14. Eat healthily and exercise daily to maintain energy and productivity
  15. When working, take a five minute break every 55 minutes to refresh your mind. You will end up storing energy and getting more done compared to someone who works without breaks.
  16. On your day off, avoid thinking of work and focus on recharging yourself through Halal fun.
  17. Take a family vacation at least for one week a year in order to completely recharge.
  18. If something will take less than two minutes to get done, do it straight away.
  19. When someone wants to speak to you, inform them that you have just five or ten minutes to speak before you have to move on to your next task. This will help keep conversations short and to the point.
  20. Delegate whatever you can to someone else who can do a good or better job of it.

All points extracted from my book Getting The Barakah: An Islamic Guide to Time Management, click the link below for purchase details.

Learn Time Management the Islamic Way

Learn Time Management the Islamic Way

Posted by Ismail Kamdar in Productivity, Time Management
07
Oct
2015

Six tips for gaining Barakah in your life

Barakah refers to blessings that Allah puts into our time, health, wealth, and other resources helping us get more out of these than we would have thought is possible. Many people complain about the lack of Barakah in their time, but that can be avoided. Here are 6 things you can do to earn some Barakah:

1. Establish the Five Daily Prayers

If you are not praying five time a day, you cannot expect Barakah in your time. Praying five times a day is the primary act of worship required from us as servants of Allah, and if we neglect this duty, we should not expect Barakah in other aspects of our lives.

2. Pray for Barakah

If you want Barakah is your time, then just like any other gift from Allah, you need to ask Allah for it. Ask Allah daily in your private duas for Barakah in your time, effort, wealth, health and efforts. A sincere dua does not go unheard.

3. Utilize the early morning hours

The last one third of the night and the early hours of the morning are times which are full of Barakah. Try it out one day, wake up for Tahajjud and then work on some of your most important tasks after Tahajjud and Fajr. You will notice that you will be able to get more done in less time due to the blessings that Allah has placed in this time.

4. Keep your earnings, spending, food and goals Halal

For any prayer to be answered, it must be made by someone who has not tainted his wealth or food with that which Allah has prohibited. Strive your best to earn Halal wealth, spend it properly, purchase only Halal food, and set noble goals. If you do so, you will earn Barakah from Allah.

5. Give a lot of Charity (Sadaqah)

Many of us know that the way to increase the Barakah in our wealth is to spend it on others. The same applies to our time. Volunteer your time for noble causes and you will find yourself with extra time to chase your goals. As the more wealth you give others, the more Allah gives you. Likewise, the more time you spend on others, the more Allah blesses your time.

6. Be grateful for what you have

Allah tells us in the Qur’an:

وَإِذْ تَأَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ لَئِنْ شَكَرْتُمْ لَأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ ۖ وَلَئِنْ كَفَرْتُمْ إِنَّ عَذَابِي لَشَدِيدٌ

“And remember when your Lord proclaimed, if you are grateful, I shall give you more, and if you are ungrateful then my punishment is severe,”[1]

This means that increase in anything is linked to how grateful we are to Allah for granting us that thing. So if we want Barakah in our time, we must be grateful to Allah for the time He has already blessed us with, instead of complaining about what we don’t have. The formula is simple and applies to any area of life: gratitude leads to increase, and complaints lead to decrease.

[1] Surah Ibrahim 14:07

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Posted by Ismail Kamdar in Productivity, Time Management
28
Aug
2015
My 8 favorite Productivity Apps – Part 2

My 8 favorite Productivity Apps – Part 2

This is Part Two of this series on favorite productivity apps. Part One is available here.

So I’m not going to waste your time with a second introduction to my favorite productivity apps. Let’s jump right back into it!

5. One Drive/Dropbox/Google Drive

Pick one! I use all three for different reasons. For my personal files, I use One Drive because it synchronizes most easily with Windows (although Dropbox synchronizes quite easily too) and I find it most convenient. I use Dropbox mostly for sharing files with friends, family, and others as it is most commonly used by them, and I use Google Drive for sharing work-files because that is the norm at our workplace.

I have all my devices linked to my One Drive, Dropbox and Google Drive accounts and save all my files there, so that I have access to my files wherever I go and whichever device I use. This saves a lot of time as I can be writing a book on my PC, save the file, then open the same file later on my Tablet or Laptop for editing. In this age of cloud storage, everybody should have at least one of these and utilize them to save time that is normally spent in file transfers and searching for files.

6. Goodreads

I only started using Goodreads recently when I was looking for new author platforms for promoting my books. I ended up using it daily because it is an excellent tool for keeping track of what books I read, when I read them, what books I am currently reading, what page I am at in every book I am currently reading, what books I plan to read in the future, and what books my friends have read/are reading.

Goodreads is awesome in that I no longer need to carry around book-lists or look for my old book-lists, everything is available online and structured well. Check out what I’m currently reading here, for example.

7 & 8. Kindle & Googlebooks

Another App which I only started using this year. I was a bit slow to join the e-book craze, as I thought that e-books would never substitute for the real thing. (I still think so, by the way)

If you only experienced reading an e-book via Adobe Reader in PDF format, then like the old me, you probably think that e-books are difficult to read and inconvenient. However, Amazon Kindle and Googlebooks are really fun to use, easy to read from, and have great feature that make e-book reading really enjoyable.

I still prefer physical books, but there are many titles not available locally which I can download from the Google Play store or the Kindle store, so I use these Apps to access such books. I also like having some reading material on either of these two Apps, so that if I’m ever stuck in a queue and bored, I know I have a good book sitting in my pocket waiting to be read on my phone.

So there you have it. Currently, these are the Apps I use daily to stay productive, and this list is constantly changing as I try out and discover new Apps and tools.

Let us know in the comments section which are your favorite productivity apps that you use daily!

Posted by Ismail Kamdar in Creativity, Productivity, Time Management