Balance Deen with Work

STARTER KIT

By Aimen Saif ullah

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Imagine if you could work and pursue your dream goals without a worry in the world. Because you’re consistently
doing Ibadah, making time for expanding your Islamic knowledge, and spending quality time with your family…
all the while working on your career or business goals. You spend your day as close to the Sunnah way as you can.
And you fall in love with your life every single day. You go to bed every day feeling satisfied and happy with yourself
as a Muslim. You wake up feeling excited, focused on your priorities, and f ull of energy. Can you even imagine that?
Now that’s ‘next level’ awesome! I created this starter kit to help you create that kind of sweet balance in your day
starting TODAY.

I’m f ully confident you can create a beautif ul balance between your work, personal and Islamic goals, no matter how
busy you are. I hope this starter kit gives you a new direction, unshakeable confidence, and an action plan to get you a
step closer to achieving all your dream goals with balance, minus the stress and overwhelm!

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 Getting Started with Your Goals

To get started on your projects with balance, there are three important decisions you need to make. The good news? These
decisions will become very easy to make once you have all the details (which I’m going to give you in this Starter Kit)!

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Decision #1:
What are your top priority goals and habits right now?
What are your priorities at this point in your life? Which of your top priority goals and habits will you start
working on first?

Decision #2:
What does an ideal balance look like to you right now?
What are your current time constraints and responsibilities? What does an ideal balance look like to you
right now between your current roles, responsibilities, and goals?

Decision #3:
What will you stop doing to create a better balance and make more time
for all your top-priority goals?
This will help you create more time for the things that are more important to you and get you started on the
big scary goals with ease - without overworking and burning yourself out!

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The Two Main Types of Behavioral Activities
In order to give yourself the best chance of success at achieving your goals, it’s crucial to
understand the two main types of behavioral activities - Goals/ Projects and Habits/ Routines.
Both types are planned and executed in completely different ways so trying to implement them
in the same way, can keep you stuck. This is a rookie mistake I see a lot of people make and
can easily be avoided once you understand the difference between both of them.

1 GOALS/ PROJECTS:
These include all long-term and short-term projects/ goals. These have a clear beginning and
an ending. Projects/ goals help us grow as human beings - they help us advance in our Deen,
career and personal life. The best part about setting and achieving goals is that they keep
changing. You don’t stay stuck in one goal your entire life. As you complete one project, you
move on to the next. They add spontaneity and excitement in your life (unlike routines).

Examples of projects/ goals:

Working on your research paper
Taking an exam
Taking up a diploma, or a Master’s program
Starting a side-business
Launching a new product to grow your business
Taking an Arabic course
Completing a Brief Summary of the Quran
Studying Tafseer of the Quran
Reading a book on the Seerah of the Prophet SAW
Learning Islamic History through a book or course

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 PRO TIP: Although projects/ goals have an expiry date – meaning, they have a clear
beginning and an ending... you still have to do project-related tasks on a regular basis and
make them a part of your routine (especially if your project is long-term) until you’ve
finished all project-related tasks and hence, completed your project.

2 HABITS/ ROUTINES:
These are the kind of tasks that you do regularly as a part of your daily/ weekly/ monthly
routine. Whether you’re following a routine consciously or subconsciously (such as
brushing your teeth every morning or having coffee in the morning), everyone has some
sort of a routine. Routines and habits keep us in our comfort zone. They give us a feeling of
self-satisfaction and peace. These could be your old good habits that are on auto-pilot
(such as making your bed first thing in the morning) or bad habits you want to leave (for
e.g. stop eating midnight snacks), or these could be habits that you want to build and be
consistent in (for e.g. reading the Quran every day or having weekly halaqa sessions with
your family).

Examples of habits/ routines:

Daily acts of Ibadah such as praying
Salah 5 times
Reading the Quran daily
Daily morning & evening Azkaar
Making your bed every day
Going to work 5 days a week
Working from 9 am to 7 pm every day
Drinking a glass of water every morning
after waking up
Eating salad for lunch instead of a heavy meal
Taking a shower daily
Ironing your clothes for work
Exercising for 30 mins every other day.
To stop overeating at meals or grazing all-day

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 A) Identifying your Priorities
Decision #1: What are your top priority goals and habits?
EXERCISE 1
Get started with Goal-setting and Habit-setting
Start by dumping all the goals and habits you want to build over the year into
a long list. Then place each of them under the most suited category.

IBADAH ISLAMIC KNOWLEDGE

E.g. Praying salah on time, reading the Quran daily, E.g. Taking an Arabic course, completing a brief
reading the daily morning & evening azkaar, etc. summary of the Quran, etc.

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 CAREER BUSINESS
E.g. Delivering your research paper before the E.g. Launching your side-business, launching
deadline, studying for an upcoming exam, taking up a diploma, a new product, app, or website, etc.
or a Master’s program, etc.

FAMILY SELF CARE

E.g. Making the habit of hosting a halaqa session every E.g. Exercising for 30mins 5 days a week, following
week, eating meals with your family, etc. a morning and night skincare routine, etc.

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 PERSONAL GROWTH SERVICE
E.g. Joining a culinary school or a book club, taking an E.g. Doing dawah in your community by starting
online course, developing the habit of reading an in-person halaqa, a WhatsApp group, volunteering or giving
books regularly, etc. a certain amount each month in charity, etc.

PRO TIP: In addition to the goals unique to you, you can also pick some of the common activities
from the balance criteria inspired by the Sunnah of the Prophet SAW.

EXERCISE 2
Label each of your entries. Decide whether it’s a goal or a habit.

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 The Balance Criteria
After studying the Tafseer, psycho-analyzing everything that our Prophet (SAW) did in his day, basically trying to figure out the framework
of a good balance for the 21st Century professional - I’ve learned that there are clear criteria for balancing everything as a Muslim that
Allah SWT has revealed in the Quran and the Prophet SAW has shown us through his Sunnah. I’ve organized it together under the
Balance criteria.

The Balance Criteria is a congregation of all the activities from the life of the Prophet SAW and the roles and responsibilities that Allah has
prescribed for each of us in the Quran. Think of the Prophet’s Sunnah as a set of guidelines – a framework that serves as a guide for all
Muslims. Whether working, not working, scholars, or new Muslims. Everyone. You can pick activities from the Balance criteria when
you’re setting goals and habits to ensure you’re living your days as close to the Sunnah way as possible while pursuing your work
and personal goals.

A IBADAH (RIGHTS OF ALLAH) BEING COMPROMISED

Praying 5 Fard prayers on-time (not missing prayers)
Praying salah with khushoo & in the earliest time
Keeping all fasts in Ramadan
Making dua and reading daily azkaar to remember Allah
Reading the Quran regularly
Nafl Ibadah - Keeping extra fasts/ praying nafl salah (tahajjud, Ishraq etc.)

B FULFILLING ALL YOUR ROLES IN THE FAMILY WITH IHSAN

Taking care of the mandatory responsibilities
Helping them with regular work with kindness and good akhlaq
Having f un & playing with them
Teaching each other and learning Islam together

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C FULFILLING ALL YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES OUTSIDE FAMILY WITH IHSAN
Earning a halal income if you’re working
Giving your best to your job
Doing dawah to the best of your ability in your social circle
If you’ve taken up other responsibilities, doing good service in each of them

D HAVING SOME TIME TO YOURSELF TO RECHARGE AND RELAX

Spending some time (even if little) to recharge yourself so you’re not
sleep-deprived, cranky or irritable most of the time
Spending time on things you love (self -care, productive f un activities etc.)

E IMPROVING YOURSELF AS A MUSLIM

Taking up goals to advance in Islamic learning (Arabic, tajweed, tafseer of Quran...)
Consciously improving your habits, routines, behaviours (akhlaq) etc.

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 Why the Need for the Balance Criteria?
The Balance Criteria can give you a clear idea of whether your priorities are in alignment with the teachings
of our Deen, and if they’re not, it can give you a direction on how you can shift them. It serves as an anchor
that keeps you grounded and focused on your priorities.

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I can understand if it seems like there are so many Sunnah activities in the Balance Criteria that, realistically speaking, you could never
do everything even if you tried. And you don’t have to... at least not all at once! You don’t have to kill yourself trying to do everything all at once.
Read that again. And this isn’t me saying it, it’s the Prophet SAW himself:

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah (S.A.W) said, “Take up good deeds only as much as you are able, for the best
deeds are those done regularly even if they are few.” [Sunan Ibn Ma’jah]

All you and I have to do is spend time on the right things by making time for things in the best order of priority, then try to embody Ihsan
in everything we do and also leave room for being human.
In short, the best approach to following the Balance Criteria is setting goals that are realistically achievable with your current time-constraints
and responsibilities, leaving room for making mistakes and learning from them, and stepping back to rest, recover and unwind.

Think of the Balance Criteria as an ideal set of guidelines to follow. Humans are not perfect. If you’re a human, then let it sink in that you won’t
be able to follow the criteria perfectly all the time even if you try to. Now, if you’re an alien, I don’t know what you’re doing reading this. Also,
you have bigger things to worry about than following the Balance Criteria. The only person who could truly do it all perfectly was Prophet SAW.

Qatadah reported: I said to Aisha, “O mother of the believers, tell me about the character of the Messenger of Allah, peace,
and blessings be upon him.” Aisha said, “Have you not read the Quran?” I said, “O course.” Aisha said, “Verily, the character
of the Prophet of Allah was the Quran.” (Sahih Muslim)

We can only try to do it as well as we can by putting in our best effort. Sometimes even our best effort can fall short and that’s okay. The point
is to consistently put in the best effort because no effort done for Allah is wasted.

“[And it will be said], ‘Indeed, this is for you a reward, and your effort has been appreciated.’” (Qur’an, 76:22)

So we can agree that the only way to practice balance is by getting crystal clear on your priorities and dividing your time between everything
important in the best order of priority.

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 The easier, more rewarding alternative to doing it ‘all’ by going ‘all in’:
Practicing The Art of Prioritization
Prioritization is KEY to taking a balanced approach. Prioritization is selecting a few goals from your list of dream goals and getting focused
on finishing them before starting something else. Prioritization is truly an art because for action-takers, the biggest challenge can be deciding
which goals to pursue first. Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you HAVE to do it at all or you HAVE to do it NOW.

The biggest trap for professionals with limited time and resources can be falling victim to Shiny object syndrome - which is just a fancy way
of saying “Instead of focusing on the big picture and only doing the actions that will create momentum towards your big dream goal, you get
side-tracked by a new project or idea that looks fun and exciting at that moment!”

High performers don’t just say YES to everything which is exactly why they are able to achieve massive goals one after the other without being
overwhelmed and overly stressed. In fact, trying to do ‘all’ by ‘hustling harder’ is a segment from the hustle culture.

Setting fewer goals and achieving them by being consistent in them IS the teaching of Islam. It doesn’t make you a bad Muslim. And if you’re
raising a very skeptical-looking eyebrow at this, read this hadith again:

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah (S.A.W) said, “Take up good deeds only as much as you are able, for the best
deeds are those done regularly even if they are few.” [Sunan Ibn Ma’jah]

And here’s how this beautiful lesson unfolds in your life as you start practicing it: You will achieve goal after goal and stay consistent
in the habits you take up each time. After some time, you’ll come to note that you have truly started to do it all... without being too
hard on yourself!

Prioritization further has to be practiced at three levels: Goals

1) Prioritizing between your goals
2) Prioritizing between day-to-day tasks Day-To-Day Tasks
3) Prioritizing between things you can do for other people [hint: learning the art of saying ‘No’
with compassion and mercy is a necessity for the busy professional]
Things To Do For Other
People

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Here are a few tools to help you prioritize between all your options and decide the projects you’ll work on now:

TOOL 1: PICK THE PROJECTS YOU’VE STARTED BUT LEFT UNFINISHED

Which of the goals that you wrote in the first exercise of goal-setting did you start working on in the past but left unfinished? Which of the
habits have you been trying to build for some time but are inconsistent in? Maybe you should start there. It will give you a greater sense of
satisfaction if you finish something you’ve been trying to achieve for a long time. That achievement will boost your self-esteem and create
momentum that will then make it easier for you to achieve other goals.

TOOL 2: USE PURPOSEFUL PROCRASTINATION TO LIMIT THE NUMBER OF ACTIVE PROJECTS

This tactic is about selecting the best projects that you should start with now and leaving all the rest of the projects on your project list for later,
in other words - purposefully procrastinating on them. Note that if these projects are important, you will be coming back to them when
the time for them is right. ‘Purposeful Procrastination’ is not the same as the bad kind of procrastination that is a result of laziness. In true
procrastination, you are pushing something that needs to be done now for later because you don’t want to do it. When using the procrastination-
on-purpose tool, there is little consideration of the WANT-FACTOR. Consider the ‘Significance’, ‘Urgency’ and ‘ROI’ factors when using this tool.

TOOL 3: RELY HEAVILY ON DELEGATION WHEN YOU’RE STRAPPED FOR TIME

If there’s another worry that’s gnawing away at your brain right now, “What do I do if I have multiple projects with deadlines and deliverables
that I work on simultaneously? What if I don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing my battles and I have to finish all the projects I’ve taken
up within their timelines?” First of all, that’s a lot of worries and I don’t want you getting worry lines.
Second, if you find yourself in such a situation, you have no exit strategy - you’re either stuck in your calendar because of external deadlines
or you really want to finish your projects within the planned time frame, your best option is to rely heavily on delegation. This is the time to
strategize and plan your project properly, to decide which parts of your project have to be done by YOU and which parts can be
outsourced.

Be caref ul to not delegate the most pivotal parts of your project. Oversee the end result without
PRO TIP: micromanaging the tasks that you’ve delegated or else you’ll not really save any significant time and will
only have the added stress of dealing with someone else, having missed the point of delegation.

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 PRO TIP [FOR NEW ENTREPRENEURS AND SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS OWNERS]:

For business owners or new entrepreneurs, the most important decision to make at every point of the business is to decide where to invest your
best resources, including time and money.

Prioritization is a HUGE challenge for entrepreneurs because of the

Shiny Object Syndrome - Too many shiny good-looking
opportunities to pursue and not enough time to execute on all
of them with excellence [Ihsan]. The most successful business
owners know exactly which opportunities to say ‘Yes’ to and then
fully focus on excelling in their top priorities. That’s how startups
turn into profitable businesses, generate growth fast, and sustain it
successfully all the while standing out from their competition.

I’ve learned that the stress-less way to improve performance in

your business and personal life is by prioritizing and planning
your business projects separately from your personal goals.
And yes, this applies to you even if you are totally new to the world
of business and are just thinking of starting a business but
haven’t actually done so. In any case, make sure you create a
separate section in your planning system for choosing between
business opportunities you can pursue right now and then plan
them out, and a separate section for deciding which personal goals
and habits you want to work on in the next 30-90 days.

The bottomline is - Pick only as many goals as you can realistically do with the time and energy available to you. You can apply the
same tactic on deciding between the things you can do for other people. One thing to be wary of is saying yes to someone out of a gush
of emotion and desire to help them, without sitting down and being practical and calculating the numbers. This can easily create a lot of
overwhelm for you if your schedule is already tight and also leave the other person unhappy when you’re unable to follow-through on your promise.
So it ends up being a lose-lose situation and no one is happy because of poor prioritization.

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 EXERCISE 3
Select your Top Priority Goals that you’ll start with Right Now
Which of the goals and habits you wrote at the beginning of the starter kit are you going to work on now
and which of them will you push for later?

Don’t ignore this step!

Remember - if you’re not clear on which opportunities to say yes to among the many opportunities available, your efforts and focus
will be scattered and you’ll perform poorly. Prioritization can either set you up for success or failure from the very start. Because if
you don’t prioritize properly, you’ll end up taking projects that are less important now, leaving you tired and drained with no time to
do projects that are more important to be done right now (possibly because of more serious deadlines or because the ROI would
be higher if you were to do them now).

The next step is to add your most important goals to your calendar! Now you’re getting serious about taking action on your goals!

EXERCISE 4
Set aside time in your calendar for each of your Top Priority Goals
to work on in the next 90 days! Decide on a timeline to finish your goal.
If you’re already working on your top-priority goals but unable to maintain a healthy balance in your days and are feeling overwhelmed,
or you’re not seeing the kind of progress on your goals that you’d planned for, maybe it’s time to shift your approach and make an effort
to start working on them with balance and Ihsan. [In the next step, I’ll show you how to design a balanced routine that’ll help you work
on your goals with balance]

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 CHECKPOINT: Have you added at least one of your top priority goals in your calendar and decided on a
deadline to finish it? If not, do it now before moving forward!

If you are an overachiever like me, you’ll likely want to tackle all
of your goals right away. You shine, friend! However, if you’re

You are
strapped for time, that might be overwhelming. Instead, I suggest you start
with your top-priority goals and spend your best resources on finishing them
with excellence. In fact, let’s put this to ACTION right now.

As they say “Action creates momentum, and momentum creates results”.

Open up your calendar right now, block some time to work on your top
Limitless
within the
priority goals, then design a daily routine to take a balanced approach and
commit to getting your project-related tasks done in the next 90 days.
#exciting!

Limits of
If fear starts to creep in and you find yourself asking,
“Am I even qualified or skilled enough to achieve these big dream goals with
excellence (Ihsan)” don’t let that fear take over!

Remember - You are Limitless within the Limits of Allah!

Allah!
Once you’ve decided which goals to pursue now, the next challenge is taking
action on them. One of the most important lessons in taking action on an
important project is to NOT lose yourself to the project! The opposite
of taking a balanced approach would be either to let your ‘work’ and
‘career goals’ take over your life (in other words, fall victim to Hustle Culture)
or to take the unhealthy ‘All-or-None’ approach to working on your goals.

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Beware Of The All Or None Approach For Working On Your Goals

A lot of people work on their goals by putting in periodic effort. Taking an ALL-OR-NONE approach to doing
anything is a recipe for poor performance. You’re expecting yourself to do something ‘perfectly’ right
off the bat and if that can’t happen, you choose to not do it at all.

You’d go all-in and take big moves only to burnout in some time and realize that big unplanned moves
are not sustainable. You’d move 10 steps forward so fast, and exhaust yourself to the point that you have
to stop to recover. The recovery period takes a substantial amount of time (this depends on the degree of
burnout) that could have been spent in a much better way if you had started and followed-through on the
goals strategically with balance in the first place.

Not to mention your self-esteem will take a hit if you keep working yourself to the ground with every
goal and despite all the hard work, not reach the finish line of your goals on time, or lose consistency
in the habits that you’ve been trying so hard to build - which will happen if you burnout.

Your mind will count each failed attempt as a mini-failure and these mini-failures can pile up over time and
make you lose belief in yourself --- can I even do this? That’s truly the worst place to be in… where you
start doubting your own abilities. You can never reach the finish point of your goals or build consistent
habits if you’re playing a game of steps… Moving back and forth with your goals, like a pendulum
stuck in a sickly rhythm. It’s a really frustrating situation to be in. You feel stuck. Like you’re not
moving forward despite all your efforts and the clock is ticking away.

Not to mention, in the time you’re going ‘all-in’ on one type of goal, you have to go ‘all-out’ on many
others simply because of the element of ‘tradeoff’. So even if you do an excellent job on your goal by
going all-in and manage to reach the finish line on time, you end up ignoring all the other important areas
of your life in that time. You tell yourself, “I’ll make time for everything once I finish this”. But once you finish
that goal, you’re onto the next goal. Same thing happens again. Until it becomes a lifestyle.
Truth is - With the Will of Allah, anyone dedicated enough can achieve a goal by going ‘all-in’. But barakah
runs away when we ignore the other important areas of life. And not just from the time but also from
the results of the effort. Meaning, the outcome (the end result) of the goal will also be stripped off of
barakah. We definitely don’t want that! So the real challenge and reward for Muslims is in achieving your goals
with balance. In order to do that, it’s important to destroy the limiting belief “More is better!”

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The reason why I call it a limiting belief is because MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER. This belief is unhealthy and can push you to do things
obsessively, much like the hustlers swimming deep in the dark waters of hustle culture. We aren’t the only ones who carry this limting belief that
‘More is better’. In fact, it can be traced all the way back to the times of the Prophet S.A.W. Look at this example:

Al-Bukhaari (5063) and Muslim (1401) narrated from Anas that a group of Sahaabah of the Prophet SAW asked the wives
of the Prophet SAW about what he did in private. One of them said: I will not marry women. Another said: I will not eat meat.
Another said: I will not sleep in a bed. He SAW praised and extolled Allah, then he said: “What is the matter with people who
say such and such? I pray and I sleep, I fast and I break the fast, and I marry women. Whoever turns away from my Sunnah
is not of me.”

But let’s dig a little deeper and ask ourselves - Why are our minds tuned to say “More is better”? Maybe it’s because we try to make up for the
time we lost not doing all the things we wanted to do or should have done. Maybe it’s from the guilt of not working towards the goal/
outcome for a long time that we set a really high target for ourselves to reach that particular outcome. So maybe what we’re doing is
setting goals for the past and present- if that makes sense. Whatever the reason, the beautiful teaching of Islam is that too much of anything-
including ‘good’ - too fast can be bad for you. There’s a reason why the Prophet S.A.W forbade the 3 men who were being extreme in their Ibadah.

“Religion is easy, and no one overburdens himself in his religion but he will be unable to continue in that way. So do not be
extremists, but try to be near perfection and receive the good tidings that you will be rewarded. Narrated by al-Bukhaari (39)
and Muslim (2816).

CHECKPOINT: Which of the goals and habits have you been approaching with an all-or-none mindset? Maybe
it’s time to take a more Akhirah-aligned intentional approach to achieving your goals with Ihsan.

But at this point - you must be wondering how can I achieve my pressing goals within the set timelines and without compromising on the quality
of the work if I don’t go ‘all-in’ on them? This brings us to the next step - designing a balanced routine.

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 B) Creating Balance in Your Days
Decision #2: Design Your Dream Balanced Routine
When adding personal goals to your schedule and taking up more work responsibilities, it’s important to recognize when your priorities are
getting misaligned with our purpose in life as Muslims and your time is not being divided among everything in a balanced way. To have any
chance of recognizing misaligned priorities and a poor balance, it’s important to stop hiding behind the ‘I’m too busy to do this or that’ tag
and be candid with ourselves.

What's the best kind of busy - how busy do you have to be to become deserving of the ‘high performing Muslim’ title?
Where do you draw the line between being ‘busy’ and being ‘too busy’ that it starts compromising other areas of your life or your core
responsibilities? Let‘s bust a few myths today.

On the one hand, having too much free time is not seen in the Sunnah of our Prophet SAW. In many places, Allah recommends us
to use our free time in the best way - by doing Ibadah. Ibadah doesn’t just mean spiritual acts of worship. It could be doing any kind of good
deeds for the sake of Allah.

In Surah al-Inshirah (94:7), Allah commands us: ‘So when you are free, toil on [in worship]!” The Arabic is:
“fa iza faraghta fa-nsab”.

On the other hand, being too busy working is also not the Sunnah way. Depending on your career choice, your work time could be more
or less than 40-50 hours per week. Now let's say your work hours have started to take up more of your time, maybe because you’ve also started
working a second part-time job. Where does that time come from? Most of the time, it comes from our Ibadah time, family time or me-time
(sacrificing our sleep, or taking less showers :D). And self-growth easily always gets pushed away to the end of the priority list.

Prophet SAW spent hours doing Ibadah. He took care of his health. He used to spend time taking care of hygiene, spending time with his family,
talking to his wives, visiting the neighbor, the sick, his daughter Fatima, playing with his grandchildren...

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Come to think of it, he did everything. And yet, what was his job again? To make Islam the super-power of the world and build an Islamic
society of leaders from scratch. The most profound job in the entire world from the beginning till the end of time. What the Prophet (S.A.W)
didn’t do was spend his entire day working on political matters, ignoring everything and everyone else. Now think about this- Where does
that place this really busy professional hustling 12+ hours a day, seven days a week? Gives you a perspective on being busy, doesn't it?

But one thing that has been proven to be a fact is - SUCCESSFUL HIGH-PERFORMING MUSLIMS ARE BUSY PEOPLE.
So being busy is actually a good thing - as long as you’re using your time to do good. That’s the kind of “busy” our Muslim scholars and
predecessors were. That’s the kind of ‘busy with barakah’.

That’s our goal here - BUSY WITH BARAKAH.

It means being busy, yet finding time for your responsibilities as well as accomplishing many praise-worthy goals in your life. We don’t want
to be sloths or couch potatoes but we also don’t want to be workaholics - the “modern-kind-of-busy”- the “too-busy-to-breathe” kind of busy,
the “ghafil-in-dunya” kind of busy. Because no matter how busy you are, rest assured that if Prophet Muhammad SAW did not
spend late nights working on the projects for the Muslim ummah on a regular basis (once in a while is understandable), drowning under mugs
of coffee, overstressing himself and becoming a workaholic - then there is no need for you to kill yourself by over-working all the time.

So in a nutshell- somewhere between too busy and too free is where you find a sweet balance.

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To be a successful high-performing Muslim, balance is that sweet spot when you’re busy with barakah - You’re giving time to
all your responsibilities and roles and only taking up goals selectively that add value to your Dunya AND Akhirah.
The mission is to first try and be as close to the sweet spot as realistically possible with your time-constraints
for at least ONE day. And then another. And then repeat that every single day.

Now hopefully these concepts that we’ve discussed till now have given you some clarity and a direction to create change.
To put these concepts into action, it’s time for you to first define what a good balance looks like to you right now and
then design your balanced routine.

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 Implementing the holistic approach of creating balance.
EXERCISE 5
Describe your ideal day. What does a well-balanced day look like to you right NOW?
What does a well-balanced routine look like to you? Define your ideal day (you can add activities from the ‘Balance Criteria’ as well as
add your unique top-priority dream goals to your balanced routine). Make sure your well-balanced routine has goals from all areas
of your life. You can use the example below as a guide.

Example Routine:

THE IDEAL DAY OF SALAMA

This is the ideal routine for ‘Salama’. She is a 32yo registered nurse. She has 2 kids. Currently, she’s working 40 hours a week
while pursuing an online post-graduate diploma in Palliative Care. She has ideas and a deep passion for starting a side-business.

“I wake up early at 4:30 and pray Tahajjud before Fajr. After Fajr prayer, I recite my morning azkar and make duas. I read the Quran
for half an hour. Then I do a little stretching and yoga before planning and organizing my day. I look at my schedule for the day
(that I had planned the night before), have my coffee and use the early morning time to work on my business goals.
At work, I give my best to my job. I keep checking my planner in my work-breaks and try to get other tasks done in the free
time-pockets at work. All throughout the day, I recite the daily azkar whenever I can and actively try to stay in a positive mood.
I eat salad for lunch, pray dhuhr at my workplace during my break and Asr as soon as I reach home after work. Sometimes I
take a quick nap on my couch to freshen up. After I feel recharged, I spend some time with my family with my evening tea before I
prepare dinner for my family. Then I sit down with my kids and oversee their homework (they are being homeschooled by a tutor
online). After I’m done with all the chores, I study materials/ do research work/ take online classes for my diploma.
At the end of the day, after everyone has gone to bed, I breathe a sigh of relief and just cuddle up on the couch to relax and watch TV.
No matter how tired I am, I make sure to do a review of the day and see what I did well that day and what I could’ve done better.
Exhausted, I call it a day and read my Azkaar before going to bed early.”

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 A QUICK TEARDOWN OF SALAMA’S IDEAL DAY:
Notice how Salama has added goals using the ‘Balance Criteria’ from all areas of life to her Ideal Routine. This routine has a good
healthy balance, is focused around Salama‘s unique time-constraints and is achievable. In fact, it’s truly a masterpiece.
(A quick reminder - You want to make sure you add goals to your routine using the ‘Balance Criteria’ so you’re not focusing heavily
on one area of your life (for e.g. setting lots of career-related goals or Islamic goals) while ignoring other areas (for e.g. leaving no
time for family or yourself). Leaving time for self-care and family is a part of the Prophet’s Sunnah. The Prophet’s day had a
beautiful combination of activities in all areas of life.)

After you have designed your ideal routine >:

ASK YOURSELF
Have you ever had this kind of ‘ideal balance’? If yes, for how long?
Do you believe you can bring your definition of an ideal balance in
your days with your current work & family responsibilities?
If no, revisit your ideal routine and make changes so it’s realistic.
If yes, proceed to the next step.

There are two keywords to note here:

YOU and NOW.
Note that you only have to decide what an ideal balance looks like to
YOU.

That’s because the first part of the truth is

BALAN CE LOOKS DIFFER ENT FOR EV ERYO NE.

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 All Muslim professionals have:
A DIFFERENT CAREERS AND WORK HOURS
For e.g. Some are working a 9-to-5, some have to take up 2 jobs to make ends meet, others have irregular work hours and
yet others work only part-time, 2-3 days a week.

B DIFFERENT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

For e.g. Responsibilities change with marriage, children, having to take care of old parents, taking up a volunteer service, doing
dawah, etc.

And because of these two factors, everyone has different time constraints.

And the second part of the truth is that BAL A N C E W I L L LOOK D I FFER EN T FO R YO U AT D I F F E RE NT P H A S E S I N LI F E .

ASK YOURSELF
What does a good balance look like to you TODAY with your present time-constraints & responsibilities?
Your best chance of creating balance and then sustaining it every day is by designing a balanced routine for the PRESENT. Not the future.
This brings me to the rookie mistake that I want you to avoid when setting goals for yourself and creating balance in your day >
Don’t expect yourself to create the kind of balance that’s not REALISTICALLY POSSIBLE in their current circumstances and
responsibilities. An example of that would be a doctor or a nurse aiming to wake up for Tahajjud on the nights when they’re barely sleeping
5 hours because of their draining 12-hour shift at the hospital. Or a mom of 3 toddlers planning to do dawah online every day when she
can barely make time for taking care of her own health.

This mistake of having a futuristic idea of balance and unrealistic expectations from yourself is more common than you think. You might
be doing this too! I know I’ve made this mistake many times in the past.

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And I’ve come to understand that we do this after comparing our lives to the lives of other high-performing Muslims. We see other Muslims
doing all these ‘great’ things and we set that as a goal for ourselves when it can be practically impossible for us to do everything they’re able
to do because of the gross difference in responsibilities or privilege (for e.g. some moms can afford to hire a nanny hence freeing up some
time to achieve their personal and Deen goals, others can’t).

So it’s important to remember that BALANCE LOOKS DIFFERENT FOR EVERYONE.

So that’s a big mistake > people don’t create their own version of balance but compare themselves to others and then believe they can never
get to this IDEAL version of balance so they self-sabotage. They stay stuck, feeling overwhelmed, and guilty thinking - why bother?
“I’ll spend more time learning about Islam and do more Ibadah” or “I’ll spend more time with family” or “I’ll spend more
time on my side-business” WHEN I have fewer responsibilities or WHEN I have more time.

Or they have a moment of epiphany and decide to change EVERYTHING about their life. They get greedy and take up multiple goals to
compensate for the area of their life that was being neglected for a long time. We already talked about the outcome of that ‘all-in’
approach above.

So here’s a thought:
Maybe your dream life ONE DAY is that you want to leave your 9-to-5 and just work from home on your business or maybe it is to decrease
your work hours per week or maybe you would love to just work 3 days a week and spend the rest of your days on your Islamic goals and
with family. You get to decide what your dream life of balancing Deen and Dunya goals looks like. Or maybe you’re pretty close to your dream
life. In any case, one thing to consider is that suppose you reach this ‘level’… You’ll maybe have other responsibilities such as kids or in-laws
to take care of or health issues or financial issues (may Allah protect us all). There’ll always be something to delay you from giving time to the
more neglected areas of your life and creating balance. Or maybe you already have a good balance between everything but you’re not taking
action on those dream goals that you’ve been thinking about for ages (even when you really want to convert them into reality!).

So if you truly want to create change, you gotta start TODAY and work your way up there rather than WAIT for things to change miraculously
someday. If you don’t create the discipline to make the most of your time today and the courage to go after your goals, don’t expect
yourself to do so one day when ‘things are easier’ or when you ‘have more time’.

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 “Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place
for the next moment.” — Oprah Winfrey
Making time for your goals and taking action on them has to start today. It has to become a lifestyle for you to always try to make
the best use of your time REGARDLESS of your time-constraints. That brings me to the 3rd decision you have to make.

Decision #3: Eliminating the Big Time-wasters

EXERCISE 6
What are some time-wasters you can cut back on?
It’s important to take a candid look at how you’re spending your time right now and what are
the time-wasters that you can cut back on in order to make time for your top priority goals.

TIME-WASTERS TO CUT BACK ON

There’s a reason why the Prophet S.A.W says “Good health and spare time are two of the blessings of Allah with
respect to which many people are deceived.” (Al-Bukhari)

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 EXERCISE 7
What are your non-negotiables?
The other thing that is just as important as dreaming and planning your big goals is to look at your non-negotiables:
What are you NOT willing to do or experience to achieve these goals? Going forward, when you need to make a decision
on how you spend your time or what you’ll do, what are your non-negotiables that you won’t give up
no matter how crazy the day gets?

MY NON-NEGOTIABLES

“Certainly the believers have succeeded: They who are during their prayer khâshiʿûn. And they who turn away
from laghw.” [Quran Surah 23: Ayah 1-3]

This is the step where you recognize where your time is going right now and how you can reset your schedule to make time for
your priorities.

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Examples to Inspire You:
I will no longer work nights or weekends.
I will pray no later than 15 mins after the Adhaan, even if I’m in the middle of work.
I will no longer skip reading the Quran every time my day gets crazy busy.
I will no longer put myself on the back burner. I will take care of myself. I’m starting with coffee dates with my friends on the weekends.
I will no longer put my marriage second to work. I’m planning weekly date nights with my partner.
I will no longer take on too many projects at once. I’m only going to work on a maximum of three major projects at a time.
I ref use to start something and not finish it. If I start, I will finish.

Your Turn:
Grab a pen and write down what you will NOT do starting this week!
Letting go is one of the most important things you can do to create the balanced life of your dreams . . . so don’t skip this important step!

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 Listen up go-getter,
you’ve got work to do!
Now tell me - after having the first steps laid out in front of you... does achieving BIG goals with a sweet Sunnah
balance in your life suddenly appear totally achievable? It does, doesn’t it? It’s exciting to know that you can create
a different kind of life even as a busy career Muslim.
Being a high performing balanced Muslim professional working with Akhirah-aligned intentions allows you to achieve
big things others dream of with ease, and confidence. Unlike the ego-driven hustle way of getting things done and
achieving goals, our Deen offers an alternative approach that can be very simple to implement while still producing
life-changing results in work, and personal life because of barakah.

In fact, our Deen teaches us that working towards your goals with intention, balance and Ihsan is the single
most powerful and strategic way to secure an Akhirah while pursuing your dream goals in Dunya.

This approach is perfect for Muslim professionals who are perpetually on the verge of burnout and are ready to
start doing things differently for a more fulfilling, and well-balanced life.

You’re also perfect for stepping into the shoes of a high performing Muslim if you have big goals and ideas that
you’d like to convert to reality in a professional way, and you’d rather achieve them while enjoying a balanced
lifestyle, without the hustle or without compromising on your values as a Muslim.

This way of approaching your goals is the means to truly live life on your own terms while deeply knowing
that you’re pleasing Allah, serving your Deen, and creating the impact you were meant to make.

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In short, it’s so rewarding and fulfilling to be a high performing Muslim professional.
Stick with me and I’ll take you behind-the-scenes into the lives of other busy Muslim
professionals who have successfully achieved their ‘next-level goals’ with ease despite
their many responsibilities. You’ll learn what it really takes to go from being overwhelmed,
stressed, and frustrated to becoming deeply fulfilled and accomplished - This starter kit
is only the ‘start’ of an amazing transformation waiting for you! :)

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