How To Stop Procrastinating With Your Hifz

Over the past year, we've followed at least 7 different Hifz diaries on a weekly basis. One of the most common challenges we've seen is procrastination. A subject that is widely discussed and typically sits right at the top of our goals list.

Let's face the facts.

We've all procrastinated with something in our lives. We all delay and avoid issues that matter to us. We avoid conversations with people. We use delay tactics. Yet, when we feel good and productive, we forget procrastination exists, and we feel accomplished.

Procrastination can be curse or a blessing (when used rightly). For the most part, it's rarely a blessing. Procrastination only compounds. The more it compounds, the more it becomes a problem.

So how to stop procrastinating?

What is Hifz Procrastination?

A modern day definition of procrastination is:

Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing a task or set of tasks. [...] it is the force that prevents you from following through on what you set out to do.

A Scientific Guide on How to Stop Procrastinating

I would say that procrastination is not just about leaving, delaying or avoiding a task. It's an emotion that overpowers you. Just like anger, sadness, fear, regret, or hopelessness.

When you're memorising the Qur'ān and you procrastinate, the action you're avoiding and delaying is memorisation and revision. But, in reality, you're avoiding the emotions connected to it. You're avoiding the feelings you're going through and you don't want to face them.

The issue with this is that this begins to flow into every aspect of your life, eventually affecting your health and well-being. This is why procrastination can end up leading to not feeling your best, thanks to further stress and a habit of ignoring things that would otherwise keep you healthy.

The pattern of procrastination

At the start of your Qur'ān memorisation, time feels abundant. You are fully motivated and you embrace the challenge. You make several strides and you're making steady progress.

But challenges soon start to knock on your door. You must revise. You must memorise. You have days where you can't memorise and you're forgetting things. You start to feel tough emotions. If the task can be forgotten, you’ll forget it.

Then a day arrives when you really intend to get down to it; but suddenly it’s just something you don’t feel like doing. You can’t find traction. Every time you try to wrap your mind around it, something distracts you, defeating your attempts at progress. So you forward your tasks to a new date, only to find that every tomorrow seems to have the same pattern of avoidance. This goes on for a while.

Meanwhile, you're searching for answers. You're trying to find motivation and inspiration. You start to distract yourself with other things to try and validate how you feel, and hopefully find a solution. Eventually, time’s limited nature reveals itself. Hours, once tossed carelessly away, become increasingly limited and precious. That very pressure makes it hard to get started again. You want to get going on your memorisation but instead you take on different chores. Part of you knows this isn’t what you should be doing, yet you do it! Eventually, it is too late in the day to really get started, you're tired, so you go to bed. And the cycle of avoidance starts again the next morning.

Your anxiety grows, you seek diversions. You get a rush of dopamine from them unlike your Qur'ān memorisation process. Soon all of those temptations eat you away. So much so that the task of Hifz now feels so deeply painful. Deeply boring. Deeply unsatisfying. You're acting on feelings, not intention. You become powerless as you become unable to get out of it. Yet your task still looms over your head.

At some point, you're reminded about things - perhaps you read my words and your urge to prevent all this pain kicks into gear and you start doing your Hifz again. You feel urgency and regret. So you work on purifying your intentions and thoughts. You tell yourself, never again.

My sisters and brothers, the cost of this procrastination is too high. If you have no good planning, perfectionism on another level, sky-high expectations and sky-high standards, acting on impulse - you will find half of your mind obsessing about the past and the other half obsessing about the future. You will find a constant battle and it's not pleasant.

Why does Hifz procrastination happen?

Surely, the Qur'ān is enjoyable and something that makes you really happy right? Why would you begin to procrastinate on it?

As I mentioned before, procrastination is really an emotion (positive and negative). Your emotional barriers can be fear, low self-belief and esteem, feeling down, or perfectionism. These emotions give birth to different types of procrastination:

1. Idealistic procrastination:
   This is where you look at your goal but you are overwhelmed by the future. So you want to do Hifz but you will only do it until everything is in a perfect condition. You will only do it when you feel ready.
   
2. Avoidant procrastination:
   This is based on negative emotions where your brain tries to protect you from them. You start to give yourself rational justifications for why you should procrastinate but it doesn't work as it's being ruled over by your emotions. This is when you say "I don't want to do this because it will make me feel anxiety, etc."
   
3. Operational Procrastination:
   Operational procrastination is when we deceive ourselves about our path forward and skip steps. This is when you're struggling to engage in the task but without clarity. It's where you find yourself doing Hifz and you end up saying, "this wasn't so bad, I should have done this earlier." This is when you're likely to be suffering from operational procrastination.

There are other causes of procrastination such as:

• not getting an immediate result or reward
• fear of missing out
• fear of mistakes
• poor time management
• fear of the unknown
• fear of judgment, failure, or success
• over planning
• lack of purpose or direction.

I can relate to having experienced a lot of these. It's not easy to deal with many of them:

• Difficulty saying no.
• Trying to get things perfect.
• Trying to do everything.
• Dreaming and doing nothing.
• Playing blame games.
• Avoiding the task because it's not entertaining enough.
• Getting distracted by everything.

Doing everything but Qur'ān and then regretting every moment knowing had I done so, I would have made progress today!

What type of Hifz procrastinator are you? Take the quiz!

Try taking this quiz and see what type of procrastinator you are. It will also give you some recommendations based on your type.

How do you stop Hifz procrastinating?

If you have idealistic procrastination

1. Aim low (set low expectations)
2. Let go of any unattainable goals.

Trying is in the middle of doing and failing, which prevents you from acting and taking the next step. Instead of trying to do something, you should attempt despite the success or failure of it because confidence is built from from failing and knowing that you survived that failure.

If you have avoidant procrastination

1. Recognise your emotions — "What is the emotion that I'm feeling or trying to avoid feeling?" Bad, lazy stupid, incompetent are not emotions. For people that struggle with feeling their emotions, ask yourself: "What is the consequence I'm trying to avoid? How would someone who is in that situation feel?"
2. Work on an emotional level — ask yourself: "If I had a friend who felt X emotion, what would I say to them?" Then say that to yourself (don't be a judge, be a coach).

If you have operational Procrastination

1. Sit down with a piece of paper and chunk the task down into its smallest constituent tasks.
2. Start at the end and work to the beginning.
   • Get ready
     • Make wudu'
     • Apply perfume
     • Make du'ā
   • Recite
     • Recite new lesson bit by bit
     • Listen and memorise bit by bit
   • Revise
     • Revise previous portions bit by bit

Chunking ensures that when you get knocked down you are back to the somewhere in the middle. Procrastination often arises when we feel overwhelmed by the size or complexity of a task. By breaking it into smaller parts, it can become less intimidating and easier to manage. So macro goals should be your big-picture items. Micro quotas should be the minimum amount of work you must do daily to make your bigger goals a reality. Think in 24 hour time frames. Break things down. Do goal setting well.

Set 2-5 minute rules

Most tasks are not difficult to complete. The first part of this rule is that if a task takes under 2-5 minutes or less to complete, do it immediately. The second part of this rule is when starting new habits, it should take less than 2-5 minutes to do. Once we get started, "we perceive the task as much less aversive than we do when we're avoiding it."

How does this apply to Qur'ān memorisation? When you're struggling to start, take the least frictionless activity to start with. Take the action that is least difficult to start with. That could be just playing Qur'ān recitation and reciting alongside it. That could be reading a page or taking on a Hifz test and challenge. It can be many things but these actions should get you past the avoiding phase and kick start your task.

Working on a single task at a time

Multitasking has become common place due to the internet and it is one of the biggest time wasters around. You should avoid this as much as possible is you want to leave procrastination. Do one thing at a time. Remove distractions and have a list of priorities.

Remember your intentions

Your intentions for memorising the Qur'ān should be solid. Make these intentions more refined and implementation based. If you do xyz, you will do xyz, and get xyz. Part of your intentions should also be to really, really, really want to do the task.

Have systems in place

Motivation and willpower alone, can't get you through everything. Systems will. You need rules. You need deadlines, accountability systems like hifz buddies, working in intervals, eating well, sleeping well, removing distractions, exercising and having more internal motivation. Combining all of these things creates a system to improve focus, give you more energy, and remove temptations. You work on the brain, the body, and then procrastination tactics can be overcome. In return, you'll see productivity.

Spiritual treatment of procrastination

Understand your own motivations and the self (nafs)

Treatments

One of the words for procrastination in Arabic is Taswīf, meaning to put things off, to delay, and to endure. The spiritual root cause discussed by scholars is often a form of heedlessness and the cure lies in fear (of Allāh). Having an awe and fear in front of Allāh because you realise that you are going to stand in front of Him. You are going to be questioned. You can die right now, and if you can die right now, know that He is standing before you right now too! So why are you delaying good deeds?

Other treatments include:

1. Reading about the lives of the great scholars of the past and present. They will show you how little you are doing and how much you have the potential to also do. Doing this gives you the company of these great scholars.
2. Reading about the benefits of memorisation of Qur'ān and knowledge (think about your goal to paradise). “Whoever travels a path in search of knowledge, Allah will make easy for him a path to Paradise.”
3. Being in better company and accompanying individuals frequently that have high aspirations (gatherings of knowledge). Those that you can look up to and compete with. Those that you can see and try to mirror. This will kill procrastination.
4. Breaks in your time. Sometimes, you can overburden yourself and become bored. Our scholars go on for hours and hours studying but what is their secret? When they feel their interest dropping, they move on to something else (another science). This renews resolve and interest, as well as focus.
5. Overburdening yourself with more than what you can bear is not ideal. You should only take on what you can do with honestly and consistency.
6. Cutting out thoughts and emotions at the time they begin to appear. It's important to deal with thoughts and emotions straight away. Face them, challenge them, understand them and control them.

Motivation

There are many paths onto Allāh, each of which require hard work. Everyone of us has an inclination towards different things. The way you can get closer to Allāh can be done through many routes including a fear of punishment, a fear of accountability, shyness, hope of reward, love and pleasure [of Allāh]. You have to discover your own route and inclination. This is also linked to procrastination. Ask yourself, what makes you act? What makes you move? And you'll get closer to discovering how to break procrastination.

Doing all these things can help you, in shā' Allāh.

May Allāh make it easier for us all and grant us blessing in our time and efforts.

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