Daily Reading

Please read Day 15: to die with beauty and Day 9: What is your true purpose from Boot Camp 2008 first. Today’s task is relevant to these posts as we are going to budget our time.

Daily Task

Have you heard of the trade-off principle in economics? Something is sacrificed to get something of worth. Consumers judge the value of something according to the gratification it will give them and will pay accordingly. So if something is not going to deliver personal gratification for the right price they will not purchase. In life, we are not this discerning (seems time has less value than money hey?).We often trade-off time for things that are not worthy for us long term. Let’s do some basic economics on our time spent.

Look at the following example and do the same for every Free Time block on your time-table from yesterday’s task. A Free Time block on your time-table reads:

‘browsed through Heat Magazine’, now on a blank page write, ‘It is worth spending my time reading Heat magazine because I get the latest gossip from Hollywood, it’s important for me to know h$ow many more orphans Angelina is adopting because …’ or another example, ‘It is worth going for a 1 hour Arabic class because it is the language of the Quran and will make it easier for me to understand it. Now answer the following question for each sentence you wrote. Is the trade-off good enough or not? What am I really getting out of my time spent on this? Write down your answer next to each sentence. You need to be extremely hard here. Yes, we all need to relax, laugh, have fun but we should also remember our true purpose in life and practice moderation. Begin by listing all the free time activities you would like to keep and those you would like to keep but cut down the time you spend on them. Example, Read fashion magazines,continue but spend half the current time I spend. Now make another 1-week time-table.

Start by filling in all the fixed things that you do in each relevant time block, eg. work 8-5, lunch and zohr 1-2, travel 7am-8am. Look at the time you have left after all your fixed activities. Now allocate time during your day or week for all the free time activities you decided to keep as well as regular conscious remembrance, time before each salaat to close your mind to everything but worshiping Allah (swt), time to make shukr, learn something new, read quran mindfully, make personal dua and duas before every activity (eating, sleeping, waking up …). Add anything else you think will help you spiritually.

Stick your time-table somewhere that is convenient and consult it every morning and evening and re-commit to your schedule for the next day or for the rest of the day. Reminding yourself every day to remember Allah or to read your salaat mindfully may seem unnecessary, but by doing this we consciously prioritize our spiritual growth over anything else, so that even during the busiest of times we will not find ourselves slipping and forgetting what is most important.