This post was submitted by Arif Kabir of Muslim Youth Musings (MYM). MYM is a blog in which Muslim youth from across the nation share their experiences and thoughts on a myriad of issues pertaining to the Muslim Ummah

For all of those of you that are using Google Documents, I found that the two following Google Docs usage has really helped me in having a more productive day:

1. Daily Checklist – I was once talking to someone and he was telling me about how stressed he felt. When asked what factors stressed him out, the top three answers I got was food, work, and school. His situation is one of many; it could be something as little as food, but it would make a big impact in someone’s life. Among my personal priorities include Salah, Qur’an, and exercise. Therefore, I made a Google Form for myself:

When I had first started with this form, I had originally written exact numbers for the Qur’an, Salah, and the exercise. However, I noticed that if I didn’t get to do all of the numbers for any of them, I wouldn’t feel like filling the form out because we all want to see a perfect result. Therefore, I changed it to either ‘Yes’ or ‘Will Insha’Allah, so even if I don’t do all, I wrote ‘Will Insha’Allah’, which makes me want to strive to do better the next day. I also have a small Hadith box in which I submit a Hadith per day that I reflect on. The amazing thing about all of this is that in all, this task list would only take about an hour to two hours, but it really makes you feel better at the end of the day. List your daily minimum priorities so that you will feel that you accomplished at least something. The nice thing about this is that your answers get aggregated into a single spreadsheet, so you can see your answers over a period of a long time. Once it becomes part of your habit, you can add activities to the form to make yourself more productive Bi’idhnillah.

1. Google Spreadsheet Tasks List: Google has released a task widget that one has access to from Gmail. I found that to be useful, but found it to be a tad more organized to bring it into a spreadsheet because they have special tools that can be used to have a very nice task list:

This is a blank version of the log that I use in my Google spreadsheet. I included both weekly objectives, monthly objectives, and another sheet for previous tasks (every time I finish a task, I move it over to the completed tasks’ sheet). The date of this writing was the 17^th, so you can see that the colors are coded to what day it is – the day before was black (task is dead), today is red (urgent), tomorrow is orange (important), and any day after tomorrow is yellow (head’s up). The best part of it all is that it’s all automatic. Google has a feature that allows you to make rules based on color:

This should be at the top of all of our Google Documents and it should be something that we use on a daily basis. It helps us to keep in track our vision for this week and for this month (and if you’re really aspiring, for the year also), as well as keeping track of daily activities that are dear to us. If you need any help in making these forms, please don’t hesitate to send us an email. May Allah help us to use these tools to improve our productivity and allow us to accomplish more in less time for His Sake.