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Bismillāh ar-Raḥmān ar-Raḥīm, al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabbil-‘alāmīn, wa salātu was-salāmu ‘ala al-kirāfi al-anbiyā’ wal-mursalīn, Muḥammadur Rasūlullāh sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa ‘ala ālihi wa sahbihi wa sa-lam, tasliman kathīran kathīran wa nabadū. My brothers and sisters, alhamdulillah, we just finished the tadfeen of our elder, the mother of Aliuddin Haider, our beloved aunt who passed away, Allah Ta’ālā fill her khawār with noor and grant her Jannat al-Firdaus; she was a remarkable lady, MashaAllāh, engaged in all kinds of good works as long as she could do that until her end. May Allah Ta’ālā reward her in keeping with His Majesty and Grace.
Remind me again and again about the whole issue of time, which is what we are talking about here. The thing to think about is Allah Ta’ālā mentioned time specifically by name in the Quran, while Allah Ta’ālā also mentioned time in a specific way. Allah Ta’ālā said, Allah Ta’ālā took an oath by time, but if you see the way Allah Ta’ālā took this oath, Allah did not say,
The Arabic word for time is *zaman*. Zaman, from which we have our Urdu *zamana*, Urdu and Farsi.
The… Allah Subḥānahu Wa Ta’ālā used the word *asr*. Now, *asr* is time when it is squeezed—time in a sense of urgency, when there is no time left. Right, right at the end, you are running now because this is… there is only a little bit of time left. That kind of feeling of urgency, a feeling of panic connected with time, is the word *asr*. Otherwise, the normal word for time is *zaman*. Allah Subḥānahu Wa Ta’ālā took an oath by time in that state. And whenever I go to a janazah, I remember and remind myself that Imam Shafi’i said that this life is only a moment (*lamha*), which is time. One moment, one second. He said, “This life is only a moment; let that be a moment of obedience.”
The life is a moment; let it be a moment of obedience. I remind myself and you: the day we were born, the minute we were born, the *lamha*, the second that we were born, we had the maximum time in our account.
Maximum time—we had at that time. We don’t know, we didn’t know then, we don’t know now, what the actual quality or quantity of the time and amount of the time is. But we know that we had the maximum time the minute we were born. And then the clock starts ticking, and it ticks backwards. It’s a countdown clock, like… like a speed check, it’s a countdown clock.
Alhamdulillah, the years pass, months pass, decades pass, and we don’t know how much there is left. For most of us, we are over the 50% mark, wallahualā. Certainly, I can say that I’m 70 now; I will not live for another 70 years, so… We don’t know how much time we have. The question is, what to do with that time?
The answer is very simple. Implementation is the key thing. The answer is: make that time the most valuable—very simple answer. Make it the most valuable, like you would do with any other investment, you know, we deal with investments and so on. If you are looking at a portfolio which has several stocks in it, which one will you buy? It’s a no-brainer. You will buy the one from which you expect to have the maximum return. It’s a no-brainer. The most valuable of those stocks. The one from which you expect the maximum ROI, you would buy that. If you don’t buy that, if you buy some junk stock, people will say, “You’re crazy! Why are you doing that?” You have a certain amount of money; the money’s not unlimited. Even if it was unlimited, why would you buy something which has no value when you have the option of buying something which has high value and which will give you a high return? When you have the options, why would you leave that and buy something which has no value, right? If somebody gives you a brick—a regular brick made of mud—and a gold brick and says, “Pick one,” what… you know, I mean, it is a no-brainer, right? Okay. I’m giving you this example which sounds stupid, but that’s the reality. This is what we are doing with time, and what we are doing with time is even more because the gold is replaceable, but the time is not replaceable. Time, once it’s gone, it’s gone.
So, we were talking yesterday about the difference between content consumers and content creators. I said to you that creators do not consume. Content creators do not consume. For example, cricketers, footballers, all professional players—they get paid what looks like big salaries, big money, and they make more money in sponsorships, right? Which is a big deal. It’s in millions, maybe even a billion or something nowadays; you know, they’re paying for Messi and Ronaldo and so on. They’re paying some really big-time money. But compare that to what those who own the TV channels, people who own the game itself and all that goes with the game—compare the salary of Ronaldo or Messi with what Rupert Murdoch makes, for example, right? Right? Right? Right? There’s no comparison. Because, obviously, the paymaster makes more than the servant to whom he’s paying. Any employer always makes more money than his employee. I mean, that’s… you know, that’s a given. Because the employer is paying the employee. So, obviously, the employer is making more money than the employee.
For example, that’s why, you see: if you think about it, consumer—I’m talking about consumer and creator. Both are using time. The creator is using time. And the consumer is also using time. The question is, who is gaining and who is losing? Cricket, for example, test cricket, for example, you know, was a five-day game which was more a test of patience than anything else. I attended only one test cricket match in my life for an hour or two hours in Fateh Baidan Stadium here in Hyderabad when I was in school. And that was it. I mean, I couldn’t go to another cricket match in my life. Now, cricket diehards went to the stadium to watch it. Others listened to the commentary. But since nobody can dedicate five full days to watching or to listening to a commentary of any game, revenues for the owners of the game were limited. So, what did they do? They invented ODI and they invented T20. Now, T20 matches have 20 overs per side, lasting about three hours. And ODIs have 50 overs. And they last for about a day. It’s roughly about eight hours. Now, cricketers play the game and they make some money, no doubt. The owners of the game do not play the game but make a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, a million times more money. All thanks to those who watch the game, who donate their greatest non-renewable asset called time, also called life. Free. Free of charge. And they get nothing in compensation.
So, my submission to you is: which one are you? Ask yourself the question. Which one are you? The player is playing; he’s getting a salary. The owner of the game is running the whole game. He doesn’t play. He may not even know how to play, but he’s making a million times more than the player. All because of the viewers who are donating. They’re donating their life, which is called time, for free, without getting any compensation.
Zero compensation.
So, ask yourself: what did I gain in the time that passed? That is the key thing. If we learn this one thing and if we can, with discipline, if we follow that, you are a winner all through—*Duniya wal Akhirah*. Ask yourself, “What did I gain in the time that passed?”
Ask this question at the end of each day. Keep a notebook by your bed and write the lessons you learned that day. And don’t sleep until you do that. That is the way to calculate the real value of your time.
Take the time it takes to watch a full match of any game. An average match, for example, American football like in NFL. NFL lasts around 3 hours and 12 minutes. However, the actual playing time when the ball is in motion is only 11 minutes out of 3 hours and 12 minutes. Can you believe it? Only 11 minutes. The rest of the time is cheerleaders and this and that, going up and back and forth. And this is from NBA statistics, NFL statistics, according to Wall Street Journal analysis. This is a standard basketball game like the NBA. It’s 48 minutes, but the time it takes to play the whole game averages around 2 to 2 and a half hours. Out of which the actual game is only 48 minutes. Imagine that when you are dying. Think about this. When you and I are dying, if Malakut Maut says to me, “I will give you the time that you spent in watching one game.”
What will you pay for it?
What will you say?
That’s the real value of time. That is the real value of time. Today, we give it away free. So we need to ask ourselves: am I doing myself justice? It’s not talking about anybody else. I’m saying, am I doing myself justice? I’m giving only an example of games because that’s one example. But this obviously applies to everything else. Plus it applies to other things in different ways. For example, depending on what you are watching—what you are watching on television or on social media. Social media may actually be earning you evil. It’s not just a neutral thing to say, “I’m watching somebody playing football.” Depending on what you are watching, it might actually be earning you negative credits. Right? So that’s a bigger problem. It’s not only the time that is being spent that’s not being spent correctly. But what you are watching is actually a problem on your life. So think about that also. So the key thing is this: that every night in this book, as I mentioned, keep a notebook by your side, by the bedside. Every night, write down in it three things that you must accomplish the following day. Three things. In order of priority. I don’t care what it is. Anything, whatever you think is important. Three things in order of priority. Write that down specifically. One, two, three. The next day, start on the first one. Finish it. Go to the second one. Finish it. Go to the third one. If you get interrupted, come back to the one you were doing. Complete it before going to the next one. It’s as simple as that. And then in the night, take the same notebook and say, “Here were my three things for the day. What did I accomplish? How was it?” Alhamdulillah, great day—I finished all my three things. I’m very satisfied. Alhamdulillah. No, I’m not satisfied. I did only one. I got interrupted. And somebody… So now, therefore, what is the lesson for tomorrow? The lesson for tomorrow is if somebody comes and interrupts me or somebody comes and wants to take me away somewhere, I’m going to say no. I’m going to say, sorry, I cannot come with you now. I have to finish this work. After that, come back at so-and-so time. So, we have to understand. We have to be able to say no. We must be able to refuse to do things just because somebody happens to turn up.
That’s it. Three things to do for tomorrow. End of the day. Assess that: how did I do? Did I do well? Alhamdulillah. I did over my target. Even more Alhamdulillah. I could not complete. No problem. Why could you not complete? What is the fix? That is the important thing. I’m not saying just sit and feel bad. No. Feeling bad is no use.
I could not complete. There’s a reason. What was the reason? Find that reason. Identify that reason. Write it down. And say no. And say what am I going to do today to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen again.
Our problem with most things—if you just reflect on it and think about it—our problem with most things is we repeat our mistakes. We know it’s a mistake. Nobody is such a fool that you don’t know. We know it’s a mistake. But we still do it. You might say why are you doing it? “You know, I didn’t think about it” or something or whatever.
We repeat that mistake again and again. And that is what is the root cause of the problem. Making a mistake one time. Alhamdulillah. Allah Ta’ālā made us like that. We make mistakes. No problem. Turn the mistake into a learning moment—a learning point.
And extract learnings from that. And say, “I made this mistake. This is what I learnt.” And that is what makes the mistake itself valuable.
Right. In GE we used to do this: best practice sharing. In best practice sharing we used to actually ask people talk about the mistake they made. Talk about the biggest mistake they made. And what is the fix.
So people would say, “This is the mistake I made. This is what I did. This is what went wrong. This is the loss we had. And therefore this is the fix.” And we never repeat that. That’s a huge learning. It’s a very, very valuable learning. It happened because we made a mistake—not because of the mistake, but because of what we did after that mistake happened. How did we treat that mistake?
Right. But we have to do this consciously. Otherwise believe me, time will go.
And time passes. And time passes so fast. It’s not funny. We ask Allah to enable us to maximize the benefit of the time that He has given us—whatever is left for us. We ask Allah to make this the most valuable time of our lives. And to enable us to benefit from it. And to reward us. And to forgive us. And to be pleased with us. And never to be displeased.