Islamic Work

Good teachers need good students, and good students need good teachers. When either teachers or students are not up to par, knowledge wastes. Either the teacher fails to teach at their best capability, or the students learn nothing. The same concept can apply to leadership–good leaders require good followers, and good followers require good leaders. Wallahu ‘alim. Are YOU a good teacher and a good student? Something to think about inshaAllah.

Influence leaders, don’t import your own. When you need to influence masses of people towards your ideology (da’wah) or project or cause, don’t bring your speaker in to preach to them. It doesn’t consistantly work–if the people don’t know your leader, they can’t trust him, and most will refuse to follow him. Instead, influence the leader of the people you wish to lead. Once he agrees to your cause, he automatically spreads it to those who follow him.

Good workers are rare. Great workers are more rare. Outstanding workers are still more rare. Instead of investing hundreds of hours in the search for excellent workers, take what you can get–given that they hold some of the attributes you need, and the potential to grow–and increase them in their excellence. This way, not only do you benefit from the work they produce, but they benefit from the training. Think of it as an investment that pays off long-term.

When you choose a leader, someone always disagrees with you. No matter who you are and who your leader is, you cannot please everyone. So get used to it inshaAllah. During the time of the Prophet (صلي الله عليه وسلم), the Prophet (صلي الله عليه وسلم) chose ‘Usama ibn Zayd (son of Zayid ibn Thabit, may Allah be pleased with them both) as the leader of the army. And they had high-status alumni sahaba in that army, like ‘Umar ibn Al-Khattab (radiallahu ‘anh), who was in his 40s or so.

Front Leaders: These leaders take charge, set the vision, and lead the way. They take the initiative, and step up to the call when Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) calls them. Back Leaders: These leaders encourage, gather everyone’s opinion, call meetings, and encourage mutual agreement and compromise. In Islaimc work, and in any project, you need both types of leadership. Like when a group hikes through a trail. You need someone at the front to pick the path and set the pace.

Abstraction: Selective ignorance of certain elements in order to focus on other elements. In software development, abstraction means you zoom out and see the big picture. You ignore minor implementation details–what are the little pieces? How do they work?–and focus on the whole. These are the systems and how they fit together, and this is the overall goal. When you employ abstraction, efficiency increases. No longer bogged down with function pointers, memory management, or 16-bit register values, you focus on how to make your software work better.

To optimize your meetings and keep them clear, concise, and on-topic, follow the following two rules as much as possible: Two Cents: Keep your two cents out of it. Nobody wants to hear your opinion anyway, and spewing one opinion denies other opinions their right. When you compound personal opinion with rebuttal with re-rebuttal, your main topic quickly derails. (Never tolerate deviations from this rule.) Two Sentences: _When you speak, l_imit your dialogue to two sentences max.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover or a man by his beard, because what’s behind the beard can be weird.” Apply this to your lives, and you’ll find that, bi ithnillah (by the permission of Allah), you will never be surprised or dissapointed. When you make great assumptions about people, where can they go except down? Great assumptions often lead to great letdowns. Wallahu ‘alim.

MultiTimer, a lightweight application, allows you to track your time commitments to multiple items simultaneously. You type in the timer label, set the inital time and count method (countup or countdown), and the application handles the rest. In particular, if you need to track (and, optionally, aggregate) time usage for multiple projects, you can assign one timer per project and track your time use per day. Or per week. Or per month.

This article by Steve Pavlina explains how to effectively manage your life by focusing on tasks based on their long-term effects. The article defines three categories of tasks, and allocates your daily time to each of them proportionally based on their expected benefit. “A” tasks yield benefit in five or more years, such as learning a new language. “B” tasks yield benefit in two or more years, such as training for a marathon.