Time Management

January 13, 2013

Time in the Life of a Believer

Regret for wasted time should be deep, for time passes quickly and it is difficult to make up what you have missed.

Time for the worshiper is a time for worship and reciting awraad, and for the devoted Muslim it is time for turning to Allah and focusing on Him with all his heart.

Time is the dearest thing to him and he would feel very sad if time passes without him doing what he is meant to do. If he misses time, he can never make it up, because a second time has its own duties. So if he misses time, there is no way he can bring it back.

—Ibn al-Qayyim [d. 751H/1350CE]


(Madaarij al-Saalikeen 3/49)

November 19, 2012

Lamenting Over Wealth, Yet Heedless of Time

If a dirham slips off the hand of one of them, you will find him lamenting for the whole day, ‘My dirham is gone.’  But when he wastes hours of his life he will never say, ‘O my life is gone!’  But there were people who preserved their time and used it in righteous deeds.

—Abu Bakr b. ‘Ayyash

(Read on pg 198, Salaahud-Deen ibn ‘Alee ibn ‘Abdul-Mawjood, Imam Sa’eed bin Al-Musayyab (Biography). Darussalam Publishers. Riyadh:2006.)

October 21, 2012

Use Spare Time for Good Deeds

Earn virtues in your spare time, because,

Your death might come upon a sudden,

Many healthy people I have seen who were free of disease,

But then their soul parted upon a sudden.

—Muhammad b. Ismaa’eel al-Bukhari

(Read on pg 137-138, Salaahud-Deen ibn ‘Alee ibn ‘Abdul-Maujood, The Biography of Imam Bukhaaree. Darussalam. Riyadh: 2005.)

April 24, 2012

Signs of a Pure & Healthy Heart

  • One considers himself as belonging to the next world and not this world.  He is a stranger in this world anxious to reach his abode in the Hereafter
  • One continues to be upset with himself anytime he commits a sin until he finally and completely repents to Allah
  • One is more upset and unhappy if he misses his daily recitation of the Qur’an and dhikr, than if he had lost his wealth
  • One finds greater pleasure worshiping Allah than any pleasure in eating and drinking
  • One’s worries and concerns about this world leave him whenever he begins his formal prayers
  • One’s only concern and worries are about Allah and doing deeds only for His sake
  • One is more concerned and stingy about wasting time than a greedy person is with respect to his wealth
  • One is more concerned about the correctness of his deeds than with the performance of the deeds themselves

—Ibn al-Qayyim [d. 751H/1350CE]

[Ighaatha al-Lahfaa, vol. 1, pp.70-73.  Quoted in Commentary on the Forty Hadith of al-Nawawi, vol 1, pp. 471-472]

(Read on pg 61-62. Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, A Commentary on Ibn Taymiyyah’s Essay on the Heart. Dalwah Corner Bookstore. Kuala Lampur: 2008.)