A Near-Perfect Day of a Muslim Professional

2016-05-10T00:00:00+06:00

Life is all about the choices we make. We go through new experiences every single day. Each of our decisions make or break the path for the next opportunity or disaster. Be it for our worldly life or the life-after.

As a somewhat-practicing Muslim guy, who happened to be a software engineer, I feel that my schedule or planning of daily life or work cannot be the same of a non-practicing colleague whose life-plan is somewhat undefined. Just can’t.

So, in light of my current understanding of Islam, and the sunnah of Muhammad (ﷺ: peace be upon him), as well as all my gathered life-hacks, I planned to design a optimal timeline or schedule of my 24H daily life which enhances both my dun’yaa and akhiraat fulfilling all my physical & spiritual needs. This also should boost your career, nonetheless, due to cutting out the slack and distractions from our working time.

Please note¶

Though this is designed keeping Muslim values in center, readers from any other religions or beliefs can benefit from this schedule as well.
Just replace Islam-specific mentions(prayer, dua, salat, tilawaat, tahajjud, prayer etc.) with your spiritual activities or self-realization related engagement, just remember to keep your gadgets away.
People from other professions can also benefit from this, but may or may not require some his domain-specific tuning.
Though I used the terms “he”, “him”, “his” etc. but this post is agnostic about sexual orientation.
Remember that this is far from being perfect. Actually, I didn’t write it up to make it so. Rather, it’s a basic structure about what perfection may look like. So, please read or use it with quite a bit of salt. :)
This post itself is not complete. Rather, it’s in very-very-draft stage (take v.0.1.4). Each of the timing decision which i described below should or will have reference/source/direction to back its reasoning or legitimacy.

Ok, without further ado, here is the sketch-up for a ideal working day.

The Schedule¶

At home¶

4.00 AM : Leave the bed, doing some basic stretching, then wash-up.

4.25 AM : Tahajjud. zikr. Dua’ especially if you got something critical coming up today.

5.00 AM : Light snacks, e.g. cookies, eggs, milk, fruits

5.15 AM : Fajr salat, then daily dua’s, and recitation from al-Quran

6.00 AM : some serious(that makes sweat) exercise. e.g. running, biking, gym etc. Remember, sweat have to be there.

6.30 AM : Shower & clean-ups.

6.45 AM : Serious breakfast. Need to be protein-rich. Also enough carbohydrate.

7.00 AM : Prepare kids for school. Have a coffee with wife, and discuss today’s family concerns; specifically of today. Kind of scrum standup meeting. But with wife. While seating.

7.30 AM : Start for work. Dropping kids on their school. Remember to kiss them good-bye.

At work¶

8.00 AM : Entering workplace. Don’t go for coffee, chit-chat or Facebook. Don’t even check work email. Start your working hours with your most difficult/critical task at hand while it’s still quiet in the office. If you have any difficult concept to grasp or painstaking bug you need to fix, start that now. This is your golden moment.

09:30 AM : Open work email. Answer emails that needs no discussion. Postpone discussion-needing emails for the next slot.

10:00 AM : Now put your team-player hat on. Complete stand-up or whatever your team’s to sync-up on today’s plan. Then, address any issue that your teammate is stuck on. Give your teammate time from this slot.

11:00 AM : Have a coffee. Have some chit-chat with colleagues around. Attend inter-team issues. Sync-up with other departments.

12:00 PM : Lunch time. Focus on vitamins, and fiber-rich foods. Avoid oil, sugar, salt-rich foods. Eat less than full stomach. Call wife, sync up with her during lunch. Sometimes lunch with team-mates, sometimes with peers from other departments. Listen more, talk less.

12:40 PM : Zuhr salat. Keep zikr and dua’ at minimal.

01:00 PM : Back to work. People are still at lunch, so relatively quite there. Start your next-most-important thing at hand.

02.30 PM : Have a coffee-break with teammates off-desk. No work-related discussion. Discuss about their outside-work related “projects” or hobbies.

03.00 PM : Attend any necessary inter-department things. Sync-up with boss. Else, go for a quick walk around office.

4.00 PM : Back to desk. Check mail. Look out for any critical task, mail, issue. Solve it.

4.30 PM : Go for a final checkup with team. Gather up all status or concerns.

4.45 PM : Prepare daily-status-report or update all issues, task on your work’s task-management system (e.g. Jira, Asana etc.). Make sure your boss gets copy. If it’s in mail, make sure it’s concise but easy to see key-points.

5.00 PM : Finish up working.

5.15 PM : ‘Asr salat. Some zikr.

5.30 PM : Leave workplace.

At Home¶

6.15 PM : catchup with kids. What happened in school. What new thing they learned. What’s for dinner. Some light sports with kids.

6.45 PM : Have some snacks/tea with wife. Sync-up. Listen, appreciate.

7.00 PM : Maghrib prayer. zikr. Reciting from al-Quran.

7.45 PM : Have a Islamic session with whole family. Focus on al-Quran and ahadith. Your own thoughts are not that interesting. Keep those yourself. For now, at least.

8.00 PM : Dinner time. Remember who is the real provider and sustainer of the whole world.

8.30 PM : Come to your desk. Check personal email. Social happenings. Avoid long discussions.

9.00 PM : Learn something new. Light reading about upcoming technology or personal improvement. Avoid newspaper or any serious reading.

9.30 PM : I’sha salat. al-Quran recite. daily jikr.

10.15 PM : Go to bed. Pillow talk with wife. Avoid arguments. Rather thank Allah ta’ala for this awesome day.

10.30 PM : Go to sleep. Remember you need to wake up at 4:00 AM ?

Reference / Sources / Discussion¶

TODO

TODO

[p.s. Thanks for reading. However, please remember that this post is in very-very-draft stage.
Please suggest a change via the comments section below, or by editing it on Github as the source for this post lives on Github. ]