So the ProductiveMuslim time-tracking experiment begins today with 4 brave participants from our wonderful facebook fan page! (I was going to write an article on time-tracking, but thought I’d make it more interesting by involving you as well!)

So the aim of this experiment is simple: use time-tracking as a powerful personal development and focus tool...also get some insights from our participants about what they learnt about themselves from this experiment.

To make it interesting, I’ve asked each participant to perform a different task for this experiment, hopefully the range of results would provide us with some thought-provoking results ;).

In honour of the participants, I want to mention them here along with the task they were given, wishing them all the best in this experiment! :D

Sister Farah -  Armed with a watch or timer that buzzes every 20 minutes, sister Farah will record what she does every day, every 20 minutes, for one week.  She has to record what she does "LIVE", and not at the end of the day or whenever she remembers. She can ask others to help her, but honesty would be key here. (She won't have to reveal her 'timesheets' to us - just lessons she learnt from this experiment)

Br. Ahmad  - Our YouTube star! He was given a slightly complicated time-tracking experiment. He was asked to list 5-7 different categories of projects/actions that were considered productive. Every time he starts on one of these activities, he should start his timer/stopwatch and every time he gets distracted or moves to something else, he stops the time/stopwatch. The idea is to record how long he can focus on one ‘productive’ task in one go.

Sister Faiza - Using the ProductiveMuslim taskinator, sister Faiza will list 3 important tasks she needs to get done the next day and block time out for them. She needs to assess each day whether she achieved these tasks and measure how many hours/minutes she was able to focus on each task separately.  The tasks must be ‘important’ tasks that are either part of a big project she’s working on or moves her towards an important goal in her life.

Sister Saan’a  - Same as sister Faiza’s experiment, but with a slight caveat ;). She’ll block time out for her tasks right after a Salah prayer, i.e. she’ll only work on her important tasks right after she performs Salah. She’ll measure how long she focuses on the task and if she gets it done! (Will be interesting to compare between her results and sister Faiza's inshaAllah)

I’ve asked our participants to report daily - if possible - updates on how they are doing on the ProductiveMuslim facebook fan page - just small snippets of how the experiment is going so far. By the end of the week, they’ll each do a small write up for us on what they learnt.

That’s it! Let the great timetracking experiment BEGIN! :D

(p.s. feels like an online reality productivity show lol! I’m tempted to ask you to vote who’d win..haha)