Islamic Self Help Hadith 8 – Health and Free Time Part 2

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This is a Salaam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh you listening to loving Islam on radio. I'm your host smile calm coming to you live from the Durban studio as we continue our discussion on the topic of time management from an Islamic perspective. Now for those of you who are joining us for the first time, a bit about myself and about the show, my name is Mike Condor. I am the faculty manager of the Islamic online university, the founder of Islamic self help.com, and the author of multiple publications, two of which this show is based on those are my books getting the Baraka and Islamic guide to time management, and 10 self help tips from 10 authentic hadith says both of these ebooks

are available for download via my website, Islamic self help.com. Now this show living Islam is based on these books, and it's based on a practical application of Islam, to our lives, where we take the principles of Islam and show how to incorporate it into your daily life, your personal life, your family life, your work life, your development as an individual in this world, because Islam is not just about the rituals is not just about belief. It's also about how you live every single aspect of your life. And so in Islam, you will find guidance on different aspects of your life, including personal development and life skills. So we are talking about time management and

this is the third and final episode on this topic. As next week, we will move on to a different hobbies and discuss the topic of patience and the topic of self confidence. So just a brief recap for those of you who missed the last two episodes, we are discussing the Hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam stated that there are two gifts, which people

are, the people lose their two blessings, which many people lose, these blessings are held, and free time for doing good deeds. So in the first episode, we discussed the part of the Hadees, which talks about health, the importance of the believer, keeping themselves healthy, keeping themselves foot and making sure they avoid unhealthy habits. In the second part of the series, we spoke about having free time for doing good deeds, and how to prioritize before we spoke about the things that should be priorities in our life, examples given praying five times a day, or spending time with your family, any tasks that you've been given at work and your own development and growth and time to

relax and to recharge. So continuing on from there. The next topic that needs to be covered when it comes to Time management is the issue of building good habits. Because essentially, that is what time management is all about. It is about habits. It is about replacing the bad habits in your life with better habits. And so the question that comes to the mind of many people is how do I change my habits? How do I change when I know something that I do every single day? I know it's bad for me, but it's a habit. And on this point, you know, we go back to the great scholar of Islam, even a female Josie Rahim Allah who stated about bad habits, he stated, stand firm against evil thoughts,

because if you do not do so, those thoughts will become ideas. And if you do not find your evil ideas, those ideas will become your desires. And if you do not find your desires, then you will get determination and intention to fulfill them. And if you do not find the determination to fulfill your desires, then those desires will transform into evil actions. And if you do not follow up those evil actions with Toba with repentance and good deeds, then they will become habits that will be difficult to quit. So definitely bad habits as stated by the scholars of the past and the people of the present. Bad habits are hard to quit. But and this is a big one, they are not impossible to

change. If you have a good motive, if you have strong willpower. If you have a genuine reason to change, then you can replace a bad habit with a good habit. And this is what it comes down to. Getting rid of a bad habit comes down to having something to replace it with. Because if you do not have something to replace it with you will be you will find yourself with a void a void that needs to be filled. And if you can't find something halaal to fill that void, you end up going back to the heroin. If you can't find something good to fill the void you end up going back to the bed. So for example, someone who's used to

Spending a certain time of the day doing a haraam act, if he does not find something helpful to do at that point in time, at that time of the day, then he ends up wasting their time and thinking about the wrong thing and eventually falling right back into it. So replacing your bad habits with good habits. How do you do that? Well, to do that, you need Father, you need sugar. Now you may be thinking rate sobor as inpatients isn't that something we do when bad things are happening to us? Well, that is one meaning of the word sober. And the word sober is a deep, deep word is a word. If you open the dictionary, go and check it out. Right now, if you have an Arabic to English dictionary

in your home, open up the word server, you will see it has at least five to 10 different meanings, the meaning of patience, which is its most common meaning in our community. That is one of the meanings of cyber, that is the meaning of the word sober, when it is used in the context of bad things that happen to us. But there are other meanings as well, a lot helps us to have sober when it comes to staying away from sin, the sober, of doing good deeds, the server of building good habits, or in all of these cases, the word sober has a different meaning, what the sober mean, in each of these cases, sober means to persist. sober means to be consistent, sober means to hold on to your

determination to persevere, sober means to control yourself. These are all different meanings of the word sober. And so to build a good habit, you need persistence, you need motivation, you need determination, you need consistency, this is how good habits are formed. So whenever I teach people time management, and I do teach workshops on this topic, but whenever I teach it,

I generally inform people that don't try to change everything in one day. Rather, focus on one habit, and unchanging that one habit, and focus on making that habit a part of your life, once that habit is changed, and once that is over, then you move on to changing something else. So for example, if you are not praying five times a day, focus on that for now, make the prayer five times a day on time, a part of who you are, once that becomes a habit, once that becomes a part of who you are, then you focus on something else, like reciting Quran, or making time to read books, or something else, because you now have this habit intact. So one of the keys of replacing a bad habit

with a good habit is to focus on one thing at a time, and to just focus on that one thing for an entire month. So you tell yourself for this month, I am going to pray every seller on time. Now you can stick to that for one month, it can become a habit, and it can become something that you'll be able to stick to for the rest of your life. Right. So you will tell yourself for example, this month, I will make every every day I will make time to spend time with my children, every day, I will make the time to spend time with my children. Once you do that, it becomes a habit to make time every day to spend time with your children. But in but the first month is going to be difficult,

because it's not a habit yet, your habit is to do the opposite. So you may feel resistance, you may feel lazy, you may feel like doing whatever you've done before. This is where the sovereign comes in that consistency and persistence and doing the right thing, even when you don't want to do it. Because you know, it's the right thing to do. That's what it comes down to, you know, what's the right thing to do. So you're going to do it, even when you don't feel like doing it. And understand when it comes to Dean or dunya whether we talking about this world or your religion and afterlife. In both cases, the only way to succeed is to do the right thing, even when you don't feel like doing

it. Even when you're too lazy to do it. Even when you're not motivated to do it. You still go ahead and you do the right thing. Because you know, it's the right thing to do. It's the people who do that, who get ahead in life. It's the people who do that, who get things done. It's the people who do debt who are able to build good habits by replacing their bad ones with with deadly ones. And by being persistent in doing the right thing, no matter how they are feeling. Understand this. Many of us, many of us are driven and controlled by our emotions. When we feel like doing something, we do it. When we don't feel like doing something. We don't do it. So we don't feel like studying. We

don't be like praying. We don't feel like doing work. And we just go with how we feel. Understand. If you live your life like that like that. You are not going to accomplish anything because they are definitely gonna be days in your life where you don't feel like doing anything. They are definitely going to be days in your life where you lose motivation. They're going to be days in your life where you want

Quit your job, there's going to be days in your life where you are feeling weak, there are going to be days in your life where you don't feel like praying, you need to build the habit of doing the right thing every day, whether you feel like it or not, you need to build the habit of doing what's right. Regardless of how you feel, separating emotion from the issue, knowing I've got to get it done, it doesn't matter how I feel. That's how you get work done. That's how you become a better Muslim. That's how you become a better person. By always doing the right thing, no matter how you are feeling. So this is the issue of building habits. Now, here's a few tips on how you can build

your habits, right, just three things you can do to help yourself build a good habit during those first 30 days. One of the things is to set a daily reminder. So understand, if you are introducing yourself to a new habit, you need to give yourself a daily reminder. So Otherwise, you'll forget and pour back into your old habits. So for example, just say you have now been in the habit of reciting Quran every day. So have a reminder, whether it's on your computer, on your phone, in a diary on your wall, on your fridge, whatever it is, have a reminder, they're saying, did you read Quran today? Did you recycle today have reminded you every day, so that when you look at it, you remember,

and you recycle that and keep that reminded there, but it becomes a habit. Once it becomes a habit, you don't need the reminder anymore, because your brain knows it needs to recycle and today, but for the first 30 days of building the habit, you need reminders. And so this is one of the things you can do is to set for yourself daily reminders for what you need to do for that day.

The second thing you can do is to get family and friends to help you right now, of course, this only works if your family and friends are not gonna forget themselves. So if you're hanging out with forgetful people, then telling him to remind you, well, they might need you to remind him to remind you. So you want to find somebody more reliable to do this. Now.

When it comes to family and friends, how can they play a role in helping you to build good habits? Well, you can sit down with them and say, Listen, this is what I'm doing. This is what I want to change, I need your help, would you be able to help me? And if they say yes, then you explain to them what exactly you need them to do in order to help you. So for example, if you if you are letting go of a bad habit, just say for example, you are in the habit of smoking, and you want to stop smoking. So you will tell your family and friends, listen, I want to give up this bad habit of smoking. So if you ever see me going near a cigarette, remind me remind me that I am trying to stop.

Right. So what you do now is you build for yourself a support system, you're not in it alone anymore. There are people there with you, there are people helping you to give up that bad deed. There are people who are helping you to gain a better habit, there are people there who are supporting you. So even when you are weak, there's somebody helping you Be strong. Even when you feel like giving up, there's somebody to hold on. And this is why it's so important to have good friends, it's really important to have good company, it's so important to hang out with people who will be there for you, and will help you to become a better person rather than pulling you back down

into your bad company. So make sure that you get your family and friends on board to help you out. And another example of how you can do that is if you want to get into the habit of praying for slacker budget on time,

getting in contact with a family member or friend who already does this. So for example, you know, one of your cousin's or your uncle, or your parents or your spouse, or your best friend, they play the budget on time every day. Tell them what you didn't tell them. Listen, I'm really serious about starting to pray. So that will budget on time every day. I know it's compulsory, and we have to do it, I really want to do it. But for the first month at least until it becomes a habit, I need you to give me a call every morning at budget time and make sure I'm awake, not a missed call, not an SMS, call me and make sure I'm awake. And I'm and I'm putting a lot of budget every day. Right? So you

now have a support system. So just say you didn't hear the alarm, or you hit the snooze button and fell back to sleep or something else happened. Right? You know that person's there to help you stick to your good habit, you know, that person is there to give you a call and remind you that you've got a good habit to build. So this is why it's so important to have a support network. You have a network of people around you to help you to replace your bad habits with good habits. The third thing that you can do to help you to replace your bad habits with good habits is to think about and analyze your actions and choices every day. One of the greatest qualities that Allah subhanho wa

Taala has given people that no other creature has is the ability to think about our own thoughts and actions and analyze them. We can use

The skill daily to our advantage when training ourselves to think before we act, we need to take our first break now when we return, we'll continue talking about building good habits Don't go away. We'll be right back after this radio

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Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. You listening to loving Islam on radio. And sir I'm your host smile calm coming to you live from the Durban studios. And someone just asked that, how can you get in contact with us? With me? Well, you can contact me via my FaceBook page or my Twitter account. My Facebook page is Amaya is my calm down. And my Twitter account is at is Mike calm. So I'm available on Facebook and Twitter. And generally I don't give up my phone number because I'm most of the time either in meetings or teaching or writing. So I prefer not to take phone calls unless completely necessary. Right. So those are the ways you can get in contact with me. For those

who wanted to know, going back to our topic that we had before the break, we were talking about time management, and we're talking about building good habits. And we said that one of the ways to build a good habit is every day just to think about everything you do and ask yourself why? Why do I do what I do? Is it productive? Is it beneficial? Is it? is it helping me in any ways? Is it making me a better person in any way? Right? You need to you need to really introspect. So for example, if you get a strong urge to do something wrong, you need to ask yourself, why am I doing this? Is he benefiting me? Is it harming me? Is it making me a better person? Is he wasting my time, what what's

going to happen because of it. You see when you think about this about your actions, you will be more likely to make good choices in life you will be you will more likely be able to build better habits in life. Because you're not just going through life on autopilot, you are now you are now thinking and critically analyzing your own choices and actions. Therefore developing for yourself a better system or lack of live a better lifestyle. So those are three things that we can do in order to build good habits that we can make sure we have reminders, we have a support network, and that we analyze our actions and ask ourselves why we do what we do. Moving on to the final topic that we

wanted to discuss in

time management. And this is a question I get asked very often that is how do we deal with distractions

you've all been there right?

You have your to do list you have something you know you need to do you got to get it done. And you just end up getting distracted. So you know it's study time and you told yourself for the next one hour I'm going to study and five minutes later you on Facebook after Facebook you on YouTube and after YouTube on WhatsApp and after WhatsApp, you you on Twitter and before you know it the one I was going and you haven't done any studying. So the question is how do we deal with

With distractions, and that's what we're going to discuss now in the second half of the program, I'm going to divide distractions into a variety of sub topics, things that distract us when it comes to email, phone calls, people around us, how we set up our work environment, how we schedule our day. And finally, social media items leaving social media for last because that's, that's the big one, right? That's the one everyone's waiting to hear about how to deal with the social media distraction. So before we go into distractions, yes, some interesting quotations from early scholars on time management, and avoiding distractions. So looking at Eben Josie Rahim Allah, who has agreed

scholar who wrote many books of Hadith and tafsir. And he also wrote a book called time is valuable. And in this book, he states that time is a precious asset, it must be put to pious views. He says, I tried to keep away from people, but it's not possible to always be away from people. So I cut down my conversation when they are with me. And at the same time, I prepare my writing material and clean up the house and do things like that. So that you can see that these things get done without distraction, while talking to people. So it's a really interesting example it gives us this, this kind of thing has to be done, and it doesn't take concentration. So why not just do it while talking

to people. So even Josie is given an example of productive multitasking, where he knows he needs to clean the house, he needs to sharpen his pencils, he needs to gather his paper for writing. And at the same time, people need to talk to him. So why not do both at the same time, because he can do those things were paying full attention to what the people are saying. And instead of spending half an hour talking to people and then another half an hour in the house, by doing both at the same time, they both get done within half an hour, giving him half an hour more to write to understand just how powerful this system of time management was. But you've been Josie. Just look at the amount

of books he has written. You know, he has written dozens of volumes on tafsir and Hades. And where did he get the time to write so much. It's because he had this system. He had this methodology where he would

not allow any time to be wasted in his day. So he was very strict about avoiding any forms of distraction. And even if a majority of rahimullah another Greek scholar who avoided distractions, he stated that wasting time is worse than debt, because debt separates you from this dunya but wasting time separates you from Allah subhanho wa Taala powerful statement when you waste time, he said this is worse than death. Because when you die you live in this world. If you did good deeds, that's that's our problem. If you lived a good life, that's not going to be a problem. But if you wasting time, time that could be spent obeying a law, time that could be spent building your good deeds,

then we spent building your architecture, it's gone. You separating yourself from Allah. Therefore, a believer cannot cannot afford to waste any time. So let's get down to the practical, nitty gritty of it. How do we avoid the distractions in our lives? Let's start with a common one write emails, emails in the past or something, people would just log into the computer once or twice a day to check the inbox. I do remember the old Internet's where you had to dial up and connected to the phone lines and you couldn't use the phone and while while on the internet, and it took a long while to download one email. Those days are long gone. Now the emails are consistently popping up on our

cell phones 24 hours a day. Right? We all know that feeling you working you in a meeting, night you presenting something. And while you're doing that, you see the red light flicking on your phone. And you know you've got an email. And so what many people do it many people stop whatever they're doing, pick up their phone, and check the email. In doing so, by checking your pc or your PDA or your phone or tablet and every notification, you are wasting a lot of time. Now there's two problems here. The first is time is being wasted. The other is you are not going to be able to do a really good job. Why? Because you're distracting yourself. Just say for example, you're concentrating on a project.

And then you stop step away. Or you stop for a second to check your phone notifications. Now your mind is distracted from the project. You have to think about the whole thing all over again, to get back to where you were. This wastes a lot of time it slows down your productivity and you make sure you get less than in a day impossible. Now if you look around the world and you actually had to check with the world, productivity experts about email, you'll find something very interesting. Most people around the world who get a lot of things done. They check the emails in batches, meaning they check the email

meals twice or thrice a day, at specific times. Not only that, but they never check the email first thing in the morning. Why? number of reasons. Just say you have a really nasty email from someone. And that's the first thing you read in the morning, your whole mood is spoiled for the entire day, because of the one email, or what if you have a really technical work email, and you read that first thing in the morning, you know, it completely drains your energy before you get any creative work done. So what a lot of people people do is when they wake up in the morning, they put the email in the social media side. And they focus primarily on the high concentration tasks. So for example, you

wake up, you please go out to pasture. And then you do something productive. So if you are a writer, use the time to write if you're a student, you learn the time to study, if you're doing gives you the time to memorize the Quran, if you are working on a project or a new business idea, use that time for the creative aspect of working on their project and business idea. And then after doing that, around 8am 10am. Now you check your email and start answering your emails, you will find that you have got a lot of work done in the morning. Why? Because your mind was not bogged down by the contents of that email. Because you were focusing primarily on the creative task. And you did not

check the email before it. They were no distractions in your mind. But had you woken up. And the first thing you had done was check your email, and then you went to the local version. I guarantee you while paying for local budget, you're not thinking about Allah, you're thinking about that email and how you're going to respond to it. So this becomes a distraction. Therefore, two tips when it comes to answering emails, do it in batches. And don't do it first thing in the morning. And add one more tip. Tip number three is don't check your email at every notification you don't need to do so it's sometimes good to just leave it for later and not have to look at every email as soon as they

come in. So these are three tips for dealing with the distraction of emails, if you do these three things, inshallah you will find more Baraka in your time. And you will find that you are not being distracted. Similar to emails is the cell phone. Right? We know thing when somebody phones, whatever we are doing, we stop and we answer and we take the call. And I've seen this so many times, I give you one very frustrating example. You sitting in the class, the teacher walks in and starts teaching. Five minutes later, his phone rings, he says, Give me a minute to answer the phone, he steps out of the class. And he only pops back in 15 to 20 minutes later and apologizes because he

was on a call. And guess what your class as a student gets cut down, time gets wasted. Because that teacher treated that phone call is more important than his students. So I myself am very strict. When it when I am teaching. Or if I'm in a meeting, or even if I'm writing, my phone is on silent, it's on silent and is put away and concentrating on that task. If I'm counseling someone, the phone is put away, and I'm focusing on that person and paying full attention to that person. Why? Because whatever's in front of you right now, whether it's a meeting, whether it's a class, whether it's a project, whether it's a person, especially if it's a person, that's more important than the phone

call. If that phone call is an emergency, they'll find another way to contact you your phone, your spouse, their phone, your secretary, the phone, your neighbor, if it's an emergency, 99% of the time, it's not an emergency, it's just somebody who wants to chat. The other thing to do with phone calls. And this is something I'm very strict about a lot of people find it strange, but I'm really strict about this. When people phone me, I tell them listen, I'm very busy. I'll give you five minutes to talk. And then I need to get back to work. And people get used to it. People can use to begin to understand that you're a busy person, you can't chat with them on the phone all day long.

And so many people are too shy or too polite to do this. So what happens, they're working and somebody phones and they do want to say no. So is I talking to that person. And sometimes half an hour goes on the phone with someone talking about something absolutely not related to your work. Time that could have been spent working is now wasted away. So you have to be strict and you have to have your you have to be principled and you have to tell someone, listen, I am busy, right? And I can give you five minutes, I can give you 10 minutes, but not longer than that. Now, when you say this, the person gets straight to the point. And they talk about what they want you to talk about.

Because sometimes someone phoned you for something important. You know, maybe they need a number for you from you. Maybe they needed to ask you about a business deal. You know, whatever it was, but because they think you have a lot of times they may ask you about your family about your holiday about when you go in for holiday next and where you going how much you're paying for your trip, you can cut all of that out by simply telling them that I only have five minutes, you know, what do you need, and they will tell you what they need. And the phone call may last one or two minutes and you've saved yourself a lot of time. Now the third thing that I do, and again, I don't think

everybody will do this, but this is what I do personally it helped me a lot is actually something I did at the beginning of this broadcast.

That is I tell people that I don't deal with phone calls in a hurry. Right? when people try to contact me always inform them that my preferred medium of communication is email, I prefer an email to a phone call. I check my emails multiple times a day. So if you email me, I will respond. And I will respond in details. Because when I sit down to answer emails, I answer each email in details, right? But if you try calling me I might not answer because I'll be in a class. Or if I answer I may give you just one or two minutes to speak. So email works out better. Because I'm not in a hurry. You're not in a hurry. You send me the question with as much details as possible. And I answered at

a time, we have enough time to go through an answer to details. And this really helps with Islamic topics. I go, sometimes somebody phoned you, and they're like, I need a fatwa right now, you know, what's the answer to this? And what's the proof? And what's the difference, and you can just give something like that on the spot. So it's better for them to email you the question, you can read all the books, you can type out the evidences, you can type out the references, and you can give them a data documented reply, which they can show to other people with their references and evidences. So therefore, when it comes to phones, my personal way of dealing with them is to tell people that I

prefer emails to phone calls, and only for me when it's a necessity, and when, when when it really is that important. So that's something I do personally. But for most people, I would say that if you if you don't answer your phone rings when you when you when you're doing something more important. And if you will limit your conversations to five or 10 minutes, you will save a lot of time, that can now go into actually doing something more productive. So that is on when it comes to phone calls as a distraction. It the type of distraction is your own workspace environment. And I just refer to two things right, there's your physical workspace and your virtual workspace, the physical workspace

being your desk, your chair, and everything around you, your bookshelves, your filing cabinets, all of that. And your virtual workspace is your computer, desktop and your files and folders there, these things can become a distraction, what do I mean?

Well just say you have a really

an organized desk, and line right on top of it. magazines and books, which are completely not related to your work today. So you may sit down to do work, and you must look at a magazine or book and start reading it. Now you are distracted simply because you do not organize yourself properly, or your computer is the same. You know, if you open your computer and write it on your desktop as links to funny videos, and you know, funny emails, and so you might get distracted from your work by all those links. Therefore, it's very important that you minimize your workspace that you only have on your desk, that which is needed to get your work done, that you only have in your office that

which is needed to get work done, that you only have on your desktop on your computer, that which is needed for work.

Now, of course on the computer, you can have other files, but you can have it stored away where it's not writing on your desktop, it's only when you need it when you need it. It's the same with your office, you know, things like books and magazines that may distract you from work, you can put them in a cupboard or in a cabinet where they only do when you need them for referencing or, you know, for your personal reading time. So these are

some ways in which you can improve your workspace. Now.

Moving on from workspace another area where people tend to get distracted, is dealing with other people. I think this is really perhaps the hardest one. Right? Many of us due to politeness mainly, we don't like to tell people No, we don't like to, to make people committed to, you know, to decline any requests from other people. And so for many of us, our biggest distraction becomes people that you really need to study. But your friend told you how can you say no. So you end up speaking with your friend on the phone, instead of you know, studying, or you're getting ready to work on a really important project and one of your co workers walks into your office and starts chatting. And you

don't want to be impolite to your co worker. So use continue chatting with him and time gets wasted in this way. chatting and dealing with people becomes one of the biggest distractions in the workplace. And many people, you know, they do not really realize just how dangerous this is to your to your time management and to getting things done. You know, sometimes the entire workday goes in just talking to coworkers without doing anything productive. So

how do you deal with this? Well, again, it really depends on your workspace, where you're working and how it's designed. So let's give it a few different scenarios. If you have

Your own office in Alhamdulillah, you know, you have a potential solution, right? If you have your own office, but then you have your a potential solution, in that when you are working on high concentration tasks, you can close the door, you can close the door and inform people, you'll be busy for the next half an hour, no disturbances. And you can get a personal assistant or someone else to handle phone calls and stuff while you're working. But this will save you a lot of time. And this will help you to get things done without distractions from people that I myself do this, I work from home, I have a home office. And when I have something high concentration to do like to teach or

to have an online meeting, or to write a book or write an article, or inform my family that listen for the next half an hour to one hour, I'm going to be busy, nobody come in the office, nobody knock on the door. And if somebody tries to call, you answer the call and take a message for me, in this way, there's no distractions from people and things get done. Now can be much trickier if you work in a open plan office, with people all around, you know, sitting right next to you. And they want to yap and chat all day long. So, you know, if you have stronger, you can tell people straight and listen I'm working out, we can talk about later. And you can have, you know, a meeting with them,

where you inform them of you know how to improve productivity and that you will help each other to be more productive. And if all else fails, you know, the old goto way of allowing people of letting people let you work in an open plan office is we appeal earphones, right? For some reason when you have earphones in your ears, nobody wants nobody talks to you, because they assume you are busy, right? So even if you've got nothing on those earphones, at least muffle the sounds around you. And it gives people the idea that you're busy listening to something or you're busy concentrating on something and so they're less likely to disturb you. So that's become you know, a last resort, where

nothing else is happening to nothing else is working to stop people from being distractions. So we need to take another break now. When we return, we will conclude on how to deal with your distractions don't go We'll be right back after this break the uninstalled foundation dialogue, therapy and education establishing the foundations of Islamic civilization in South Africa from the history of the rightly guided Hollings to the wisdom of the family of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam from the A to Zed of the noble companions to the glory of the omiya dynasty, from the enemies in the Sierra to the gems and pearls of the Quran. Join share below is smile every Wednesday

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Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh you listening to the living Islam on a radio Alan Stern, I'm your host smile calm. Coming to you live from the Durban studio. As we come to the final segment of this episode, the final of three episodes on the topic of time management from an Islamic perspective, and we've been discussing the Hadees which is Hudis. Number eight in my book 10 self help tips from 10 authentic adhesives, which is available as a free download from my website, Islamic self help.com. and expanding on the topic we are discussing a chapter from my tip from my other book, getting the Baraka and Islamic guide to time management, which is available at the

bookstore and also as a download by my website Islamic self help.com. And we were talking about distractions how to deal with distractions when it comes to time management. You can have your goals you can have your priorities, you can have your systems in place, but when they are distractions, they're nothing gets done. So you have to be able to learn how to work around distractions and here before we went for the

abrigos talking about earphones, as a way of blocking out noise when you work in open office. And you I work from home. So the Oval Office thing doesn't apply to me, but my kids are okay, and I have four kids so they can get quite noisy. So that's when the earphones come in handy for me that if the kids are making noise, and you're going to be killed, so you have that can be kids, whether I'm working, putting the earphones, and I can't hear anything, I can just concentrate on work. So this becomes, you know, a nice way to help to block out the noise when you have to concentrate on high concentration tasks. Now, on this issue of distractions, I want to talk about multitasking.

Multitasking, this this was led

a very popular thing when I was a teenager, that people felt that if they multitask, then they look busy, they look intelligent, they look important. So everybody was into multitasking right? Did you find somebody that did the tabbing order report while watching the news while drinking coffee, they'd be driving the car while talking the phone while drinking while listening to the radio all at the same time. And you know, people tend to boast about how much they multitask. Now, here's the thing. Research has shown that most of the time, multitasking leads to show the results, multitasking stops you from concentrating on the task at hand. As a result, it actually slows down

productivity and causes sloppy work. When you multitask. Our brains are unable to give full attention to any of the tasks. As a result, none of them end up being our best possible work. This is why the modern time management experts have all agreed that focusing on one task at a time gets things done faster, with better quality compared to multitasking. So if you are talking to someone, give them your full attention. If you are writing a book, give it your full attention. If you are working on a project idea, give it your full attention. Whatever you are doing, give it your full attention. In doing so you will do a much better job compared to somebody who is multitasking. So

let me give you an example of this right? Just say that you need to somebody needs to talk to you, they need your advice, they need some counseling. Now there's two situations is the one who's multitasking and the one who is giving the person attention. Now, if you are talking to that person, while chatting to somebody else on your phone, you're not paying attention to what the person is saying. And that person is going to realize it and they're going to be frustrated. And it's going to affect your relationship with them. And so this is something very serious. If somebody needs your time and attention

between husband and wife, this is very important. If your spouse needs to talk to you put your phone away, look that person in the eyes and pay attention to what they are saying they will appreciate it, especially with your wife, your kids, with your family, give them the time, don't look at your phone while they are talking to you. And they are more important than your phone, they are more important, whoever else is on your phone, put it away and give them your attention. So multitasking, it distracts you, you cannot listen and read at the same time. You cannot

type you know, and you know teach at the same time, you have to do one or the other. Because if you're doing both, you will do a poor quality job. Now, having said that there are times when multitasking is beneficial. And personally, I found them to be two situations where it's good to do two things at once.

The first is when I'm doing a really mundane task, which doesn't require any concentration. So for example, if you're doing admin work, and for myself other than admin work today do doesn't require concentration from me. It's basically autopilot habits that I'm used to doing every single day. So while I'm doing that admin work, I may listen to a lecture or a podcast or an audiobook. So my brain is being stimulated while I am doing something with my hands. So this becomes a way of doing two things at once. And again, when I'm gonna have a high concentration task, did I don't listen to something while doing it, because I won't be able to concentrate on it or when you have a task which

is habitual and which is not considered a lot of brainpower does not take up a lot of brainpower, then I will do that while listening to something at the same time. The second time when multitasking becomes beneficial is when you are waiting. So traffic or sitting in a queue. Instead of sitting in a queue and wasting time or standing and sitting in traffic and wasting time. Why not find a way to make the time beneficial. So for example, if I'm going to give the quality common example if you're going to Home Affairs, hide, you know you're going to be sitting in a queue for a long time. So whenever I go will always take a book with me. I sit and read a book and before I know it My name is

called he says

dingy and getting frustrated and complaining to the person next to you, and getting angry, you know, you're gonna wait, find a way to make the time productive. So you are now waiting in the queue and reading at the same time. It's the same with chapter, you know, every single day, on the way to work this traffic, it's the same thing every day, what's the point of getting angry? What's the point of getting frustrated? What's the point of starting your day in a bad mood, it's a part of your life, you just have to get used to it. So why not find a way to make the traffic productive? How play an important play an interesting lecture, or podcast or audio book in your car. So now you're sitting

in traffic and listening to something beneficial, that time is being used beneficially. Or while sitting in traffic, if you have important phone calls to make, why not make it, you know, from your hands free Bluetooth keyboard or whatever you have in your car to assist you in this way. So you're sitting in traffic, and you're getting work done by making these phone calls. So by the time you get to the office, some works already done. You see these are ways in which you can multitask, where time which would otherwise be wasted is now being put to beneficial usage. So this is something I do if I'm sitting in traffic, I listen to a podcast or lecture. If I am sitting in a queue or read a

book. If I'm working on something, which doesn't require too much brainpower, I will listen to something beneficial at the same time. So again, you know, when it comes to multitasking, there's two things if you're working on something that requires your attention, then focus on one thing at a time, don't try to do two things at the same time, you will not do a good job of adopting. that's point number one point number two is

that if you are working on on something, which does not require a lot of attention, then you can focus on two things at once. Now, coming to the final aspect of dealing with distractions, the big one, social media, how do we deal with social media? Well, here's the thing. Social media doesn't have to be a distraction. Social media can actually be a tool. For me, if you go to my Facebook page, or my Twitter account, or my LinkedIn account, or my Google Plus account, you'll notice all of these things have become tools for dour and for business. Right? Then you can use these as business tools, you can use this for dow you can use it for education, you can use this for uplifting the

community, all of these tools can be put to productive usage. All of these social media platforms are not good or bad enough themselves. It's how you use it that matters. So I don't feel guilty to use Facebook, because I use Facebook to do dour and to do business. And there's nothing wrong with either of those two things. But what you need to do is learn how to manage your time on facebook, how to manage your time on Twitter. And again, it goes back to what I said earlier, you don't have to check your phone. Every time you get a notification. You don't have to check every single like every single comment. Every single, you know now we don't just have like every single love and Haha,

right? The Facebook's been upgraded to include these new emotions. But you don't have to check every single time. You can schedule a time you can tell us that, okay, I'm working on this project right now. I'm shooting all my social media off, I'm putting my phone on silent. I'll check it in 45 minutes time, discipline yourself to that, I guarantee you'll get work done. If you don't discipline yourself to do that, you know what's gonna happen, I know what's gonna happen. It's happened to all of us, you sit, I'm going to work on this project for the next 45 minutes, you start five minutes in, that red light starts flashing on your phone, you pick it up, somebody liked your status. So you

like one of their status back, they send you a message, you send them a message batteries are chatting with them, they send you a link to some funny cat video on YouTube, you end up watching that video from your you get a link to another YouTube video. And before you know it 45 minutes is over, and you are still on the internet. So best thing to do, you've got something important to do. You've got some studying, you've got some writing, you've got some research, you've got some work, whatever it is, put your phone on silent, put it away, avoid social media, the world's not going to come to an end. If you have Facebook for an hour, the world's not gonna fall apart. If people don't

reach you on WhatsApp for an hour. That's not the way the world works. You need to learn to just let it go and check it when you need to check it once an hour once every half an hour, something like that. Another thing when it comes to social media is that I personally prefer to schedule my posts. So what I do is I go online once every two days. And I type out all of my posts for Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on the on that day and schedule it to go out at two or three times a day over the next three or four days. So as a result, you know I can be talking right now on radio and something might go up on my FaceBook page or my Twitter account. I'm not tweeting while talking. I'm

not

On Facebook, when I'm talking, I'm concentrating on you, I'm concentrating what I'm saying. But those things were scheduled two days ago to go out today at that time. So in this way you save a lot of time, instead of going on Facebook and typing something out every single time, you know, this takes up a lot of time. That's it. That's it together. So for me, it's just three times a week, I go online, I tap on everything for the next two or three days, and I and I put it into my feed into the schedule system. And it goes out over the next two or three days at the optimal times. In this way, you save a lot of time on social media that is normally wasted. So as you can see, social media can

be a tool for doing a lot of good things. It's all about, you know, being self disciplined, checking it out when you need to, and not every not compulsively, you don't need to be obsessive compulsive about it. And, you know, doing things that like scheduling instead of posting straightaway, these things can help you to use your social media productively to be productive. It doesn't mean you have to get rid of Facebook, or some people believe you have to do these things. But I don't believe you can do that you can actually use these things productively, you can use these things to benefit and change people's lives. You can use these things to grow your business, you can use these things to

stay in contact with family and friends who live on the other side of the world. And this is beneficial usages. Understand that these tools that we have in this world, Allah will reward you or punish you according to how you use them. If you are using Facebook to stay in contact with your sister, or your brother or your mother who lives on the other end of the world, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're using it to talk to non Muslims, who you know and start up haram relationships, then you are sinful for that, not for using Facebook but for who you are contacting them and why you are contacting them. So look at your intentions, look at how you do things. And

this will help you to find a productive way to use your social media. So just to recap, as we come to the end of this episode, the past three episodes have focused on time management from an Islamic perspective. Again, all of this is taken from my book, getting the Baraka and Islamic guide to time management, which is available at the bookstore, and also via my website, Islamic self help.com. In fact, I also launched a time management course on my website earlier this week. So you can check that out all the courses the course is taught in video format, and it's based on this book. So if you want to learn more about time management, check out my website Islamic self help.com, which has

lots of free articles on this topic, as well as the E book and video course. So we spoke about distractions, how to deal with them, we spoke about how to build good habits, we spoke about priorities and how to set them and how to take care of your health. These are a variety of aspects related to time management that we have covered across three episodes of loving Islam. Next week we'll move on to Heidi's number nine in the book 10 self help tips from 10 authentic Heidi says and Holly's number nine deals with the very interesting topic of patience, right of patience and perseverance and from the confidence how to build your confidence as a believer and we will talk

about that that that topic over three weeks based on another book that I have written which is also available at the answer bookstore, best of creation and Islamic guide to self confidence. So inshallah we will begin discussing self confidence from Islamic perspective. Next week. right you're wondering Islam every Tuesday night from 930 to 10:30pm. This has been a spellcaster signing up. I will see you next week Zaha Hadid, was Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh