With the beginning of each Islamic year, our scholars & Imam remind us of the momentous journey, our beloved Prophet (Peace be upon him) and his companion Abu Bakr (May Allah be pleased with him) undertook 1431 Years ago.

As with every Islamic occasion and especially those linked to our Prophet’s beautiful biography, I’ll try my best to extract lessons of productivity for us to share and discuss here.

 Perhaps the first lesson that strikes me, and is often not talked about, is the migration itself. In today’s age of ease of transportation, and a globalised tourist industry where everywhere you go, you expect certain basic services and most things are “standardized”, we tend to forget the difficulty of taking a journey to a completely new territory, where you’re not accustomed to the terrain, culture, or people. Although one might argue, that Makkah and Medina are only 3-days-by-camel apart and hence shouldn’t be a world of difference between them, but there was, and the Prophet (Peace be upon him) & his companions didn’t find it easy to live in Medina in the first few months. Moreover, regardless of the proximity, how many of us, are truly ready to leave our homes, our families, our businesses and just go to a new town and start from scratch?

By all scales, the migration itself as an act, wasn’t that easy. So, the question is why? The standard answer is that the migration occurred to escape persecution from Makkah and establish the first Islamic state in Medina. More importantly, Allah (SWT) gave permission for the Prophet for this migration to take place. But there’s another reason, and forgive me, if it seems a bit far-fetched or I’m trying too hard to link everything to Productivity, but think about it, the Prophet’s Dawah wasn’t productive in Makkah & he had to move to Medina for his dawah and his message to be productive! 

As mentioned many times before, our Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was THE most productive man on earth. He achieved in 23 years what no one can achieve in 100 years! So for him, staying in Makkah with the persecution from the Makkan people was unproductive. He had a message to deliver, a purpose to fulfil and people are stopping him. He had to find a way out, he had to find a venue for his productivity to unleash.

This brings another powerful lesson of productivity: have a purpose, and not just any purpose, but a purpose greater than yourself! Something that’ll keep you going regardless of what comes against you! SubhanaAllah, for us Muslims, we are TOLD what this purpose should be: worship Allah! The GREATEST purpose ever! But the question is: how many us truly LIVE this purpose? I guarantee you, the moment we embed the worship of Allah in all we do, our life will have a greater meaning than our selfish needs and we’ll be truly productive people.

There are other lessons of productivity in the hijrah as well, from the way the Prophet (Peace be upon him) prepared for his journey to the trust he had in Allah which granted him the well-known miracles. Perhaps I’ll save explaining these lessons to my upcoming book “Life of the Most Productive” or future posts, inshaAllah.