As someone who’s been working from home for over 10 years now, these tips can be life-savers – they took me many years to realise, but whenever I follow them, I’m more productive, relaxed and focused than ever. They’re all covered in the Productive From Fajr program in much more depth, but here’s a quick list:  

  1. Create Your Perfect Morning Success Ritual – this is the optimal way to start your day. It usually includes prayer, Quran and working out. It’s even better if you wake up early, but you can gain a lot by giving the first hour of your day to this, no matter what time you wake up.
  2. Separate Out Spaces – digital and physical. Ideally, don’t work from the same computer that you watch entertainment. Have a specific place where you make all your prayers, zikr & Quran reading. Don’t eat in the same place you work. And, if possible, don’t try to do your morning ritual or professional work anywhere near your bed. 
  3. Prime Time Sessions – have set times & spaces in the day without any digital interference where you focus all your energy, single-mindedly on the long-term highest-value tasks. For me that’s writing these emails, and creating program content. I tend to pick a weird length of time (47 minutes), set a countdown timer and dive in. 
  4. Install the 5x prayer rituals – they’re the perfect work-breaks and can pace your day. And now that all your habits have been interrupted by Brother Corona, it’s the perfect time to install this habit. At the very least mark 15 minutes into your calendar for each prayer. The ideal thing is to make the 5 prayers the focus on your day, and plan everything around them. (eg. work until zuhr; family & social until Asr; dinner before Maghreb, sleep right after Isha, etc). 
  5. Eat 3 meals a day, at set times – this works perfectly with the prayer times. If the only change you make is being militant about eating times and having absolutely no calorie intake in between meals, your day will automatically structure itself and you’ll like lose weight (even if you dont intend to). 
  6. Raise your computer for meetings – it seems like everyone has caught-on to the superiority of Zoom over all other video-conference software. Quick tip: I put my laptop on a box, so that the camera is at eye-height. That way I don’t spend the whole day looking down, which after a few weeks can really mash up your neck. (I eventually had to go to a chiropractor to get mine sorted, because I wasn’t doing this).
  7. Learn GTD (This is now included as a bonus in PFF) – Getting Things Done by David Allen is the most simple, yet comprehensive way to manage your tasks. Get the book – or if you want the concise version, get Productive From Fajr & watch the bonus module that explains his system. 
  8. Handle messages in set blocks of time – For example, 2x 30 minute sessions to handle all Email, Slack and Whatsapp messages. Don’t even look at them outside of those dedicated blocks of time. (People might think you’re rude for not instantly responding to them. But, they’ll probably respect your time more too. Plus, the productivity you’ll gain is totally worth it.) 
  9. Set strict work hours – do not deviate no matter what. If you decide to work from 8am to 1pm (5 hours is the ideal amount of time for work, if you’re *actually* working the whole time), then have a hard-stop at 1pm, even if you didn’t get as much done as you wanted. The fact that there’s more to do makes it more likely you’ll use your time more effectively the next day. This is how one of my friends built a million-dollar business from his laptop, working only 20 hours per week. 
  10. Start Up & Shut Down Rituals – It might seem strange, but create an actual, deliberate ‘ritual’ that you before you roll into work, and as soon as you finish work, to really re-inforce to yourself the boundary between work and play. This is especially important when you don’t physically enter and leave a work-place. It could be as simple as starting and ending with a short, scripted prayer for productivity and baraka. 
  11. Eat dinner before it gets dark (before Maghreb) –  Otherwise you’ll sleep late, wake late and probably miss Fajr. 
  12. Wake up before it’s light (before Fajr) – This is, of course the essence of the Productive From Fajr system, but note that installing this habit does not have to co-incide with installing the morning success ritual. In other words, if you’re not up for waking up at 5am each day, you can wake up at any time, but make sure the 1st hour is spent doing the morning success ritual. Soon, you’ll love your mornings so much, you’ll want to wake up earlier just to spend more time on your rituals. 

This is a lot to try and do all at once, but each ritual & habit very quickly pays itself off in terms of the enjoyment you get from having it. And, this isolation thing probably interrupted all of your habits anyway, so now’s a great time to focus on installing habits that will serve your for the rest of your life. I’d recommend going for one habit at a time, sticking with it for at least 1-2 weeks, then moving on to the next one. 

The best way to structure these habits, the best order to do them in and my best advice on developing a new habit are all included in the Productive From Fajr program. 

Perhaps most importantly, it includes advice from an Inside-Out perspective on how to make consistent progress on these habits without beating yourself up when (not if) you mess up while trying to install them, so you can have guilt-free productivity all day long, starting from Fajr (the pre-dawn prayer). 

Want to know how to create your personal Quran plan to connect with Allah in just 11 minutes a day? Please click on the below-mentioned link:

https://www.quranforbusypeople.com/plan

See All Posts