An effective and productive daily routine ensures personal, social, professional, and spiritual success for an individual, transforming one from ordinary into an extraordinary Muslim.
If you wake up without a productive daily routine, fit for a Muslim lifestyle, then it should not be surprising that you end up complaining about having too few hours in the day. A complete routine is a combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and social components.
There are several helpful personal management strategies and tools that can be used to support a productive routine. We’ll discuss some tools in this part.
Handy Tools for Productive Planning
Successful planning cannot be done mentally unless you are Merlin the Wizard. However, you can use a mix of traditional and contemporary tools to become a productive planner.
- Daily and weekly planners are available as paperback notebooks, mobile phone applications, and computer desktop gadgets for you to track your daily, weekly, and monthly routine conveniently.
- To-do lists should be made on paper or a mobile phone/computer notepad to plan each day’s activities.
- Calendars help track short-term and long-term deadlines and important events. You should have convenient access to a wall/table calendar, a desktop/mobile calendar application, or a pocket calendar for your purse.
- Reminders can be set via traditional means such as post-its on your desktop or refrigerator, or alarm clocks. Technology has gifted us mobile phones and e-mail that can be set to ping us for scheduled reminders. Personally, I also have a bulletin board (magnetic/chipboard) on the wall above my work desk where I pin up important notes.
In Part 2, we will look at effective planning advice and secrets to a productive daily routine Insha Allah.
