As I was preparing for a seerah class this week, I happened to pause upon Anwar Al-Awlaki's derived lessons of why were all Prophets shepherd's once in their lifetime, including Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). Imam Anwar, derived so many lessons, and it stroke me how some of these lessons are beneficial to any Muslim. But there's three lessons in particular which I believe are very useful to any Productive Muslim:

[For those who attended the seerah class, I apologise, I'm still talking about sheep!]

Being a shepherd, teaches you the true meaning of Responsibility.

This is paramount in the Prophet Muhammad's hadeeth, "Everyone of you is a guardian and is responsible for his charges. The ruler who has authority over people, is a guardian and is responsible for them, a man is a guardian of his family and is responsible for them; a woman is a guardian of her husband's house and children and is responsible for them; a slave ('Abu) is a guardian of his master's property and is responsiblefor it; so all of you are guardians and are responsible for your charges."

When you're a shepherd, you are hired by the sheep owner to take care of the flock, that's your responsibility. If anything goes wrong, you'll be blamed and not the sheep! Let's take this lesson within the field you're working in: You've been appointed as a manager over a group of staff. If you deal with the situation as a shepherd taking care of the flock, you should feel responsible over the outcomes of your team. Although the actions of your staff are theirs, but the consequences in the end is your responsibility. With that, you'd take extra care to make sure that you fulfill your responsibility and that nothing goes wrong, and if things do go wrong, then make sure you've enough evidence to show the that you did your best to sheep owner (the big boss).

Sheep are short-sighted!

Sheep are naturally short-sighted, but the shepheard standing on 2 feet can see the surrounding and much further down. He's got a vantage point that the sheep don't have. Similarly, at work, whilst your staff are busy with the day to day operations, you should be like the shepherd looking far into the horizon trying to predict opportunities, and anticipate dangers, and the best managers and entrepreneurs I've met were the ones who can see 5-10 years down the line, rather than 1-2 months vision.

The job you're in affects you

Imam Anwar comments on why was the Prophet a sheep shepherd and he didn't shepherd cows or camels. And one of the answer was that when working with sheep, one learns compassion and mercy, necessary characteristics of dealing with the flock, and who's the Prophet of Mercy? Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)!

There's an important lesson here for all of us: your job affects you! your profession will leave certain traits in you. For example, teachers are more fatherly/motherly, even amongst peers, always giving advice, always teaching. Lawyers are argumentative (most, not all, I hasten to add before I start getting hate mails from lawyers arguing that's not true..!)..etc. Politicians are...do I need to say more?. 

So as a Muslim, be aware of this, and notice any "abnormal" characteristics crossing into your personal life from your work life.

-- These are some of the lessons from Prophet Muhammad's experience as a Shepherd. SubhanaAllah, notice how nothing in the Prophet's life (nor in ours) was random, everything happens for a reason and you might not understand it till later in your life (even taking care of sheep!!!).