Have you ever set your alarm an entire hour before you need to wake up--and
decided this is it? Tomorrow is the morning I’m going to wake up at
6 or 7 or 8am so I can run that one errand I need to do before I head to class or work.
It can be something as simple as cleaning up my room or house, making breakfast, or going
for a morning walk. And we know, whatever small task it is that we have planned for the morning,
if we can get it done before our day starts, it’ll feel great. It’s just making breakfast
rather than running to grab a granola bar or chug a cup of coffee, yet it makes the world
of a difference to our day. That’s because this type of an action can become a “keystone
habit.” They’re the kind of habits that we choose to prioritize and, once completed, basically
trigger a sense of accomplishment and energy that gets channeled throughout the rest of your day.
When we start our day right and loosen those three knots tied by Shaytan through salah,
we’ve accomplished so much more than we think. Waking up to pray tahajjud,
aka salah during the end of the night, or Fajr is not simply any task you check off your list.
These prayers in particular are keystone habits. Besides the immense rewards we are promised for
these prayers in the next life, there are so many benefits we get to enjoy from them in this life.
When the Prophet (s) was facing some of his earliest and most difficult challenges as a
Messenger of God, Allah (swt) actually comforted him by encouraging him to rise for late night
salah in particular: inna nashiat al-layl hiya ashshaddu watan wa-aqwamu qila [73:6].
“Night prayer makes a deeper impression and sharpens words.” That these prayers give
you strength both internally and externally, giving you what some tafsir scholars describe
as istiqama--firmness and resolve in your faith and actions. What better way to start your day?
And it doesn’t end there. The Prophet (s) told us that boorika li-ummati fi bukuriha,
that my ummah is endowed with barakah or blessings in the early mornings. And no surprise, our brains
are wired to achieve optimal productivity in the mornings. By waking up early, orienting
your day through the remembrance of Allah, and getting a head start, you’ve unlocked one of the
most powerful secrets to a productive day. So what are we encouraged to do with this
blessed time and prime brain power? Inna Qur’an al-fajr kana mashhuda [17:78]. Recite Qur’an
and the angels will testify on your behalf. You might find this counterintuitive.
Why not use this time for all of the other endless tasks you need to do? Why can’t we
just save Quran time for later? But what we don’t recognize is what reciting, and in particular,
memorizing Quran can do, especially in the morning, for our focus and brain power. You are
literally training your brain to concentrate, and in doing so, you have to block out distractions,
which helps you train your brain to overcome distraction as well. And if you spend only 5, 10,
15 minutes every morning trying to memorize just one or a handful of verses, you’ve built far more
than a day’s supply of focus and concentration. In fact, the significance of training your
brain in this manner has become very popular today. One book that I read, for instance,
encourages you to memorize the order of a deck of cards and then repeat the deck or as many
cards as you can, in order, from memory. All of this, just to build that focus and concentration
people are so desperate to find today. And as I read that, I just sat back and
laughed. Here I was, yet again, a Muslim who was given far better and more effective tools
to achieve something much greater. Not only was I encouraged to memorize Quran at a young age,
but I always had heard that the best time to memorize was after Fajr salah, in the
early morning hours of the day. And while for a good part of my childhood, I always felt like,
man this is rough--being a good Muslim is so much work. Little did I realize at the time that, just
like everything else I’m required or encouraged to do in my religion, at the end of the day, it
all comes back to benefit me in this world and the next. And there’s no better life hack than that.