by Nasmira Firdous on January 27, 2012
Do you constantly feel lazy and worn out at work or at home? If this occurs even after you consume your daily meals and have adequate sleep, then it may simply mean your diet is lacking in energy rich foods.
Energy foods as the name suggests are specialists that give your body and brain a constant dose of calories throughout the day, helping you stay focused and energetic on your work. This automatically improves your work output, in turn boosting your productivity in personal and professional lives.
What Happens When You Do Not Have Energy Foods?
Although you may be eating regularly, if you still feel weak and tired, it means you are not eating the “right type” of foods. High-energy foods will give your body energy by releasing glucose molecules throughout the day.
Saturated foods, refined foods and junk foods on the other hand will provide instant glucose molecules, making you feel energized but unfortunately, this feeling will last only a few minutes or hours. A decrease in glucose molecules will automatically shut your brain slowly, making your feel sleepy because your brain cells do not have enough fuel (glucose molecules) to run for the day.
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by Azim Kidwai on January 25, 2012
Allah created many males, but very few men. At this point today there are over 750 million males who testify to la ilaha ilAllah, but how many are true men? How many are men of purpose that live lives that will leave behind legacies for others to emulate? How many will be the most productive creatures of their time?
Is it a true man who walks with his trousers half way down his buttocks, has a big car and big house, yet sleeps through Fajr? Is it a true man that has 50 employees, a Ferrari and a wife, two even, yet when Allah calls him to pray 5 times a day, he cannot hear him? Is it Manhood to have the world and to forget who created it?
He, Subhanahu, said;
Men who are not distracted from the remembrance of Allah by trade and commerce and buying and selling, who stand by their devotional obligations and pay Zakah, who fear the day when hearts and eyes would flutter in trepidation.(24:37)
Allah makes it very clear who true men are here. Chromosomes make males and it is obedience to Allah that makes men of males! And this has always been the case; from the men around the messenger to the most productive men of our time.
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by Amal Stapley on January 23, 2012
Do you have a massive To-Do List that keeps getting longer and longer, and, although you run around like crazy, ticking things off it, you never feel as if you’re achieving anything productive?
There is a solution, alhamdulillah, and you’ve probably heard it before, you need to prioritize! But how do you do 
that? To work out your priorities, you’ll need to have a system. This will require you taking some time out of your busy routine just to sit down and work out, but insha’Allah, the end result will be worth it.
Allah’s Priority List
What better model to use than one that is in alignment with the model given by our Creator? We all know that when Allah created us, he did so giving us a specific mission in life:
“And I (Allah) created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me (Alone).” (al-Dhariyaat, 51:56)
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by Abu Productive on January 20, 2012
There’s a sneaky type of procrastination that’s especially common among productive people, I call it: Productive Procrastination!
This is where productive people would engage in productive pursuits in order not to tackle their very important tasks for the day. For example, you may have an important assignment to complete, but instead of focusing on that important assignment, you start doing lots of other ‘productive’ tasks instead, e.g. Answering e-mails, setting up meetings, organizing your house, going to the gym, reading important reports..etc (Sound familiar?).
It’s quite easy to fall into productive procrastination mode, because you feel less guilty about not doing your important task since you’re engaged in supposedly productive tasks (even though deep inside you know that you’re only simply procrastinating on the BIG task ahead).
So how do you tackle productive procrastination mode?
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by admin on January 18, 2012
1. Sr Suma, we’re interested in finding out how began your journey on writing?
Ever since primary school, writing has been a personal habit of filling pages of home-made diaries. In secondary school when I thought 12 was a sophisticated enough age to have nice stationary, I bought pretty covered blank books and kept a daily diary. I now have a stash of roughly 25 years worth of daily musings to cringe at.
Formal writing began with student magazines at University and other Muslim youth articles in the 90’s. When my three children were quite young I decided to compile a selection of hadith and Qur’an verses to motivate women using Islamic sources and photographs. The idea evolved into more than a compilation and I wrote sections for each chapter, the result was Turning the Tide, Reawakening the Woman’s Heart and Soul. All the writing I started off with and continue to do today is borne from needs that I see going unfulfilled.
2. What kind of impact are you seeing your books have on the Muslims and non-Muslims who read them?
Over the years, many women have got back to me about
Turning the Tide saying they found it uplifting and motivating. Recently a Christian woman’s spiritual reading group chose Turning the Tide for their group and found it helped them explore their spirituality from a female perspective. The school books and resources, from what teachers & RE coordinators have said, helps them access accurate information from a global dimension. It’s still hard to believe how much misconception there is out there. I wanted to give children an up-to-date presentation of what it means to be a Muslim today. So sarees, samosas and ‘70’s wall paper don’t feature highly in the latest primary school series on world faiths I devised called Special Times, for which I wrote A Journey through Life in Islam.
3. You’ve got a new exciting series on ‘Muslims in the Modern World’ which starts with a biography of the Founder of Islamic Relief, Dr Hany El-Banne, tell us a bit about the aims of this series?
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by Abu Productive on January 16, 2012
The Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) said: ”He whose two days (of life) are the same (making no spiritual progress) is at loss.” Whenever you read this hadeeth, you realize the importance of tracking your progress and how well you’re advancing spiritually each day to becoming a better Muslim. Such a tracking exercise can be tedious, and we tend to rely on our memories which unfortunately can be truly bias in making us feel that we’re doing far better than we actually are.
Well, today I want to show you a beautiful iPhone app that helps you achieve just that. The app allows you to record 
your prayers, Quran reading, charity and fasting and visualize your progress in a beautiful intuitive user interface. Oh, and it’s FREE!
BatoulApps one of the pioneers of useful and beautiful Islamic apps on the Apple Store have come up with Qamar Deen. An Islamic personal development app that every Muslim should download.
What does QamarDeen do?
The concept behind QamarDeen is simple but the impact on your spiritual life is amazing. The app allows you to record your prayers, Quran reading, charity and fasting. It also allows you to visualize your progress and see how well you’re developing each day to becoming a better Muslim in those areas. This powerful ability to record and see your progress is a powerful booster to constantly improving yourself and not falling behind.
The beauty of this app is the level of detail it tries to capture in your spiritual development, e.g. For your prayers, not only does it capture your 5 daily prayers, but it even captures how ‘complete’ your prayers are, e.g. It’ll ask you if you prayed Jama’ah + Sunnahs for each prayer or simply prayed at home. You can even record when you prayed extra prayers like Dhuha or Qiyam. The app caters for sisters as well and does not penalize their spiritual progress in terms of Salah during their ‘off days’.
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by Abu Productive on January 13, 2012
You’ve had a long day at work/school, you’re pretty tired, you just got home and realize that you’ll probably need to work later on in the evening to finish off some work or homework, or even work on a community project you’ve volunteered for. You’ve a few hours (or maybe few minutes) to rest and now you’re wondering how can you invest those crucial hours/minutes in order to rejuvenate yourself and attentively tackle the evening work you have to do.
There are a number of things you can do to unwind and relax and here are some. Print this list and place it somewhere in the house so each day you can have a menu of things to do when you just need to unwind/relax:
1. Shower/Wudu
The first thing you should do when you arrive back from outside work is to take a shower or at least make wudhu and simply refresh yourself. This simple act will make you tackle the rest of the evening with a refreshed outlook. Not only will you be cleaning yourself from the dust of the outside world but with a wudhu performed sincerely you’ll also be cleansing yourself from sins inshaAllah.
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