Five Before Five Podcast | Listen Free on Castbox. (2024)

I have made more progress in achieving my life goals in the last two years than I did in my first 40.And today I want to share my secret.Du’a.Prayer is an essential component to all world religions, and it forms the backbone of Islamic practice. When most Muslims think of prayer, however, they are referring to salah, the five daily prayers that are one of the pillars of Islam.While salah is absolutely essential, it follows a fixed routine, and it doesn’t lend itself as easily to customization.Du’a, on the other hand, is a more personal form of prayer, where you can unload your deepest desires and fears to the one being who can solve them all: Allah.The Most Important Du’a of My LifeThe most important du’a I ever made was at Hajj back in 2003. My burning desire at that time (as it is for many young Muslims) was to find a spouse who could be my companion in this world and the next.On the day of Arafah—the spiritual climax of the pilgrimage—I made a “design-a-bride” du’a in which I shared with Allah the exact qualities I was looking for in a wife.When I returned from Hajj, I had an email waiting for me from a sister named Ruheena who turned out to be the answer to my prayers.Within three months of Hajj, we were engaged, and just six months after that life-altering du’a, we were married. This August will mark 20 years, alhamdulillah.I detailed our remarkable courtship and eventual marriage in “A Preppy WASM Finds a Wife.”Despite the success of this du’a, for many years I underutilized this form of prayer, falling into a routine for much of the year of somewhat robotic du’as that did not establish a deep connection with Allah.Every Ramadan, particularly during the last ten nights, I would briefly “lock in” and power my entire year with a few sincere du’as in the last third of the night during tahajjud. But these ultimate flow states of du’a were fleeting, and I rarely accessed them outside of this beautiful month.Pronounced Prayers: The Power of Du'a Out LoudA couple of years ago, I stumbled upon a habit that changed everything.Making du’a out loud.When I hit the age of 40, I faced the proverbial midlife crisis. Was I fulfilling my potential? Had I allowed myself to get stuck in a rut? What would the second half of my life look like?This crisis coincided with the onset of the pandemic which, in turn, helped me discover the magic of walking.In addition to listening to podcasts and audiobooks during my 20,000 steps per day, I began speaking to Allah out loud.Deep inside beautiful state parks bursting with signs of the Creator and far removed from any other humans, I was inspired to speak with Allah in a more conversational tone than I had ever used before.Walking unlocks my creativity, and my du’as became intensely personal and increasingly profound. Something about speaking out loud allowed me to reach a level of focus and sincerity that had eluded me for so many years outside of Ramadan.A Shift from Sole to Soul SolutionsMost of us are doing everything backwards.When we face a challenge, our first inclination is to ask, “How can I solve this problem? What can I do to make things better?”Seventeen times a day in Surah Fatiha we say, “Iyyak na’budu wa iyyak nasta’een” (“You alone do we worship, and from You alone do we seek help.”) But our actions show that we are only giving lip service to this prayer, and its reality has not penetrated our heart.So many of us rely exclusively on ourselves and on worldly asbaab (means) to solve our problems, turning only to Allah when things have become hopeless.Allah himself has told us about this quality in the following ayah:The goal of today’s FBF is to convince everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to tap into the superpower of sincere du’a, especially du’as spoken out loud between only you and Allah.1.Ramadan: A Du’a a DayWhile the du’as I have been discussing so far are personal ones emanating from your heart and typically in your native language, nothing can compare to the Quranic du’as and those taught to us by the Prophet (SAWS).The wife of my local imam, Sr. Nadia Salma Ahmad, wrote a short book called Ramadan: A Dua a Day. It is a compilation of 30 authentic du’as drawn from the Quran and sunna.It is magical.On the 27th night, I have a tradition of going somewhere in nature in the middle of the night using my headlamp and reading all 30 du’as in both Arabic and English.Here is the very first du’a.Notice how beautiful and comprehensive it is and what a punch it packs in so few words. SubhanAllah!2.Moonshot Du’as: Daring to Dream BigWith my “Find Your Qibla” premium coaching students, we are currently working on building “moonshot” du’as that we can make during these precious last 10 days of Ramadan.These are powerful, ambitious prayers that stretch our imagination and faith. A “moonshot” du’a is bold and aspirational and intertwines your worldly ambitions with your hopes for the hereafter.In order to qualify as a “moonshot,” the du’a needs to give you butterflies, be a decade in length, and include elements of both dunya and akhira.I built my first moonshot du’a when I took Visionaire 2030 with Sh. Muhammad Alshareef (rahimahullah).I always yearned to make a huge impact on the ummah, but I was struggling to figure out how.I turned this problem over to Allah and begged him to open up the way for me to share my talents and skills with the ummah as a whole.The fruit of this du’a was Five Before College.Allah inspired me to found a company that helps Muslim teenagers develop an akhira orientation and arm them with the insider knowledge of how to excel in college admissions and get into the college of their dreams.The trajectory of my life changed forever when I embraced Islam at the age of 15, and my “moonshot” vision is to transform the ummah one teenager at a time by launching them on a path of dunyawi and spiritual success.3.Tapping into Times of AcceptanceLast weekend I attended a coaching business conference in San Diego. One of the speakers, a remarkable man named George Bryant, said something that struck me.“For some reason, I always wake up at 3:30am and am inspired to walk around and talk to God. Last night I was wandering the hallways of the hotel in the middle of the night.”I shared with him this hadith:These prayers in the last third of the night are known as tahajjud. During these last 10 days of Ramadan, most mosques offer communal tahajjud prayers starting at 2 or 3am.I actually find that I have more khusu’ (concentration) when I pray tahajjud on my own. Whether alone at home or in the mosque, after praying 2, 4, or 8 rakaats, be sure to leave time to make du’a.Any tears that fall from our eyes during these du’as are sufficient to put out oceans of fire.The most special time of all is Laylat al-Qadr, which Allah describes as better than 1000 months. Oliver Burkeman wrote a great self-help book called “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.”Both 1000 months and 4000 weeks represent 83 years, the average life span of a healthy person. This infographic breaks down the untold reward possible to unlock during Laylat al-Qadr.4.The Catalyst of the 99 Names of AllahOne of the best ways to start your du’a is to call out to Allah using some or all of His 99 names. While the oneness of Allah is the central tenet of Islam, the 99 names are ways that He has described Himself that allude to different elements of His Majesty.By prefacing your du’a with Yaa Allah, Yaa Aleem, Yaa Khabeer, etc. and pondering on these attributes, you are able to “lock in” and recognize the immense privilege you have to be in communion with the One.I find repeating “Yaa Allah” ten or more times electrifies my body and makes my hairs stand on end. It is the perfect way to catalyze the du’a mindset.5.Applying Our Superpower in Daily LifeI used to only make du’a for things pertaining to the akhira. Once I began begging Allah for my dunyawi needs as well, I really tapped into the superpower of du’a.Let me give a practical example to illustrate what I mean.As I recounted last week, I recently participated in a marathon of 25 sales calls in two weeks. Before each of these calls, to get myself in the zone and to give the greatest chance of success, I would turn to Allah.“Yaa Allah, I am going to be speaking to Aisha & Omar. They are coming to me because they think I can help them increase their iman, discover their purpose, and get into the college of their dreams. But yaa Allah, I cannot do anything. It is You alone who control the hearts. If there be good in this program and it will help them grow closer to You, then You allow them to join Find Your Qibla. If it would harm them in any way, please prevent them from joining. I beg you to enliven my tongue and expand my chest, just as you did for Moses when he spoke to Pharaoh. These students are in complete need of You and I beg You to allow me to be a conduit to help them get there.”I have no doubt that it is thanks to this du’a that Allah allowed me to close 12 of the 25 sales.Articles like this are not about information.They are about transformation.While I of course love the dopamine hits of your likes and comments, my greatest ask is that you take action on this advice and call out to Allah aloud in the last third of the night.Whether you are Muslim or not, you are calling out to the same God, and He will answer your prayers inshAllah.And, if you remember, please remember to make du’a for me.Download our free eBook 11 Mistakes Muslim Families Make When Applying to College, and don’t forget to hit the heart button if you found this article beneficial. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an email that made me $25k.Today I’d like to tell you how.For many years I had bought into the myth that pursuing humanities was a recipe for a meager existence. I didn’t just buy into it, I lived it.My first career was in Islamic Finance. I knew that my Harvard degree was supposed to unlock the “good life,” but I had my eyes set on the true prize of succeeding in the akhira.When I discovered the nascent field of Shari’a-compliant investing, I thought I had solved this dilemma. Islamic finance was a way for me to “have my biryani and eat it too” — to build wealth and plant seeds to be harvested in Janna at the same time.Within a short time, however, I realized I had made a mistake. I was a man of letters, not numbers. I thrived on ideas, not Bloomberg spreadsheets.The Pivot: From Islamic Finance to EducationIn 2003, just two years after graduating, I made a pivotal shift—moving from the corporate world of Islamic investing to the more humble world of education.I told myself that I was giving up a life of wealth for one of purpose.My classmates used to mock my choice of major at Harvard: Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.They would say things like, “Studying ancient Islamic philosophy and theology sounds like a real money maker.”I would dismiss these barbs with vague statements about how I would leverage my position as a westerner fluent in Arabic to connect the Middle East with the West.Deep down, however, their words ate away at me. By the time I made the transition to education, I had emotionally embraced the starving artist trope.For 20 years I pursued a deeply meaningful career as an English teacher at international, private, and Islamic schools. Alhamdulillah, I helped close to 1000 students deepen their understanding of English and themselves.I led a “good life,” marked by ample time for tennis, long walks, and summers in Maine.I don’t regret my decision one bit.But I never earned a salary above $60k.Eventually the financial realities of raising two children in the States as well as the daily frustrations of a teacher’s life—administrative red tape, unruly students, lunch duty—started to chafe away at me.I knew I needed to make a change, but I was held back by what I call “altruistic anchors.”Every time I contemplated leaving, I would tell myself things like, “These kids need me,” and “If I leave, who is going to replace me?”The Entrepreneurial AwakeningBut an entrepreneurial idea that had long been germinating finally sprouted during the waning days of the pandemic. I could take my expertise of helping place Muslim teenagers into the country’s top colleges and start a company to deliver these services to the umma as a whole.On a whim, I called up another Muslim convert who had also gone to Harvard and had also followed his heart, buying a farm in Western Mass where he sold organic vegetables and pasture-raised Zabiha poultry.“How’s farm life treating you?” I asked.“The farm went bankrupt a few years ago. The business model was broken. I didn’t realize that being a business owner meant more than just doing good work.”“So, what are you doing now?”“Copywriting for an Islamic publishing house.”“You mean like getting patents and stuff?”“No, no, that’s copyrighting, I’m copywriting.”“Copywriting is the art of using words to spur action. It is a way to use your English skills to sell things and translate your writing into money.”Those few words changed everything.The Power of Copywriting: Turning Words into WealthFor so long I had seen writing as a mere hobby, a way to explore my creative genius, but never as a vehicle for monetization. Sure, I could write a book or become a journalist, but I told myself that it was highly unlikely I could ever make real money from it.But here was a way to leverage my greatest strength to financial success.Almost exactly one year from this conversation, I wrote an email that brought me $25k in revenue.After a year of studying copywriting, hosting webinars, writing an eBook, sending two emails a week, writing this newsletter, and turning on a low-budget FB ad, I had built a “tribe” of thousands.It turns out that all this patient groundwork had built up a lot of pent-up demand within my audience.I enrolled in a life-changing course called High Impact Coaching, and my business coach urged me to send out a "blunt post," a short email stating my offer in plain terms.And so I did. I used all I had learned about copywriting and composed one of the shortest messages I had ever sent to my audience.Here is the $25k email:I was aiming to build a cohort of 12 for an 8-week program called “Find Your Qibla.” Within two weeks, I had scheduled 25 calls with prospective clients.Anatomy of “Find Your Qibla”FYQ is designed to solve the very problem I had been suffering from my entire professional life—how to design an akhira-focused career that both aligns with your values and gives you financial freedom.The goal of FYQ is to guide students in identifying two qiblas.First, it instills the “qibla” of the akhira: the conviction that true success is solely achieved by pleasing Allah and securing a place in Paradise. Second, it helps students discover their dunyawi “qibla,” a ‘big’ vision for their future that will become their north star, allowing them to unlock tremendous success in their worldly lives.With those two qiblas identified, the students then work backwards to design a “Saturday Morning Project” that harmonizes with their vision.It could be a podcast, a YT channel, an entrepreneurial venture, an NGO, or any other heart-centered enterprise. This Saturday Morning Project will become something so exciting to these teenagers that they will eagerly wake up early on weekend mornings to work on it throughout high school.The benefit of FYQ is that they will have developed an impeccable character inspired by the sunna, a compelling vision of how to achieve worldly success, and a fully fleshed out project aligned with their qiblas that will wow admissions committees and get them into the college of their dreams, inshAllah.The message clearly resonated with my audience because, by the end of a frenetic two weeks and 25 inspiring conversations, I had filled the cohort of 12 and brought in a revenue of $25k.Why, oh why, is copywriting not taught in high school and college English classes?Who would have thought that I could earn nearly half a year’s salary by following my heart and leaning into my strength as a writer?Far more important than the money, however, is the life-changing impact that FYQ will, inshAllah, have on those teenagers.The Broader Lessons and Moving ForwardSo, my message to parents and students who believe that the only path to financial stability lies in pursuing STEM education or becoming a lawyer is clear: words can be just as lucrative as numbers.If you believe in Allah and believe in yourself, you can move mountains.You just have to find your qibla first.If you found this article insightful and would like to know the next time a spot in FYQ opens up, join the thousands of readers just like you on my Five Before College email list. Every Monday and Thursday I send out college and education tips interspersed with Islamic wisdom to help teenagers succeed in this world and the next.And, oh yeah, please hit the like button as well! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

I want to tell a story I’ve never spoken about publicly before.I have shared different portions of the story of my conversion to Islam in various places. You can see a fairly comprehensive presentation I did about it last Ramadan here:But none of these give the full picture.I became Muslim at 15, alhamdulillah.But I don’t think I became a mu’min (inshAllah) until 5 years later when I was a junior in college.The Journey BeginsLet me back up.When I first embraced Islam, there were a grand total of three Muslims in my network—Nabil, the brother who introduced me to the deen, and two other classmates who became Muslim about 6 months before me.We did our best.Some tableeghi brothers used to visit our boarding school once a month and brought us to the masjid in Worcester for taraweeh a few times.During those first couple of years our resolve stayed strong. We propped each other up when our iman began to falter.Facing Doubts and Double LivesBy senior year, however, cracks began to appear in everybody’s armor.Although we kept our doubts to ourselves, I believe each of us began to feel increasingly shackled by Islam’s many rules and restrictions. No alcohol. No girls. No inappropriate music. We saw our friends exploring these budding pleasures, and we felt we were missing out on our youth.While my core belief that there was only one God and that Muhammad (SAWS) was his messenger never wavered, my daily prayers become monotonous, burdensome, and eventually ceased altogether.After getting in to Harvard and graduating from high school, I took a gap year and traveled for nine months around the world. I touched down in Hawaii, Thailand, Nepal, India, and Greece; I took trains through nearly all of Western Europe and much of its East; I studied art history in Venice and farming in France. During all this time my horizons were widened to all the possibilities that my narrow Islamic worldview had prevented me from seeing, or so it seemed.By the time I was a freshman at Harvard, Islam had become for me a footnote, something I mentioned in passing.At Harvard, however, I encountered a real Muslim community. For the first time in my life, I could regularly attend Friday prayer. And I began to do just that. I befriended many Muslims, and Islam slowly began to creep back into my life.Before long I had developed two distinct personalities. Around Muslims I was the humble, pious Mahboob; but with my roommates and non-Muslims I was the fun-loving Marshall, whose life resembled that of a typical college student. I was what I now refer to as a “jumma Muslim.”Eventually, this hypocrisy began to eat at me from within. I found myself on the lookout for Muslims when walking towards my final club and ashamed to wear Islamic clothing or make wudhu in front of my roommates.A Turning PointI remember the exact moment when things changed. I attended a Friday khutbah with Sh. Taha Abdul-Baseer, and the topic was nifaq (hypocrisy). He explained that the munafiq—one who professes Islam on his tongue but belies it in his actions—was worse than a disbeliever. Afterwards, I ate lunch at a Chick-fil-a at the Harvard Science Center with a fellow convert. The khutbah had softened my heart, and I was feeling disgusted by the hypocrisy of my lifestyle.My friend was one of the few Muslims who knew about both of my lives. He told me that I was suffering from something called cognitive dissonance, an incongruence between stated beliefs and actual practices. It arises when you simultaneously hold two conflicting beliefs or when your beliefs and actions don’t match up.I knew I had to make a change. But try as I might to shake myself free, I had become too attached to my western freedoms. I realized that I needed a shift in environment to get away from haram influences, and thus I applied to spend my junior spring abroad at the American University in Cairo.The Search for AuthenticityIn my letter to Harvard requesting to study abroad, I explicitly stated that I wanted to spend time in a Muslim country to ensure that my decision to accept Islam was correct. With this niyya in place, in January 2000, I made hijra to Cairo.During the first few days, I was shocked by the permissiveness of AUC. Buried in the middle of Cairo, I found a little America, whose population was even more westernized than the west. Before long, however, I learned to spend all my free time on the rooftop musalla.I soon built a network of incredible Muslim friends who helped reinvigorate my faith. I made a vow to never intentionally miss a daily prayer, and alhamdulillah, I never have in the nearly 25 years since.While I became Muslim at 15, I found my Qibla at 20.The Challenges of being a Teenage MuslimI have now taught at an Islamic school for more than a decade, and I see my same story play out with so many teenagers. For many students, it’s as if they have an Islam “switch” that they flip on as soon as they enter the school or masjid and then shut off as soon as they exit.I think one of the reasons I’m able to connect with teenagers so well is that I was just like them. They are able to open up to me in a way that many never really can with their parents because they see that I am not going to judge them.What I discover during these heart-to-hearts is that many feel disconnected from the deen. Many are going through the motions, largely to keep their parents off their backs, but only a few have forged an authentic connection with Allah. During Ramadan, some have tasted the sweetness of faith, but then they slip out of harmony with their fitra after the shayateen are released from their shackles.Another issue that nearly all face is a general feeling of rudderlessness. They know they are supposed to be “following their passion,” but they swear they have no idea what it is or where to find it.Their extracurricular choices are guided by questions like “will this look good for college,” and their concern for their GPA far outstrips any authentic curiosity about what they are learning. The boys are often addicted to gaming, while the girls are frequently drowning in toxic social media.I don’t want to paint an overly bleak picture of the Muslim teenager.I am constantly amazed by their generosity, social activism, and ingenuity. I have had countless spectacular students whom I have helped place in many of the country’s best schools. When Muslim students discover something they care about, they go after it with a ferocious tenacity. When they fall in love with the Quran and the deen, they transform their lives.Just like I did in that rooftop musalla in Cairo.Introducing Find Your QiblaYesterday I launched a premium 1:1 coaching program set to go live at the beginning of Ramadan.It is called “Find Your Qibla.”This is how I described it in an email sent yesterday:“If you’re a student who has high college aspirations but is struggling to figure out what your ‘passion’ is.Or a parent who wants to make sure your child has the best possible chance of succeeding in this world and the next.Then “Find Your Qibla” is for you.FYQ is an in-depth program to help define what success means to you and then make a plan to go and get it.By the end of the program, you will have a comprehensive high school plan to get into the college of your dreams, inshAllah.But more importantly, you will have built a roadmap to janna.”The response has been overwhelming, alhamdulillah.I have gotten close to 25 emails and WhatsApp messages expressing interest. I have already sold some of the 12 available spots with many others saying they are likely to join.I feel that all of my life has been leading up to teaching this course, and I anticipate that it will become the flagship offering of Five Before College, sort of the “front door” to working with me throughout high school.For today’s FBF, I wanted to briefly mention the five goals of the course, which are all aligned with the famous five before five hadith that underpins this newsletter and my company.1)Getting good grades and getting into a top collegeCollege is the next major milestone for teenagers, and the academic transcript is the single most important component of the college application. I plan to teach students HOW learning works and how to infuse their study time with barakah. The other components of the program will make them irresistible to colleges inshAllah.2)Feeling good about themselves and where they are going in lifeSelf-esteem and self-confidence are hugely underappreciated factors in success. You really need 3 “sets” to succeed—mindset, skillset, and toolset. Of these the mindset is the most foundational. By tapping into the Magic of Thinking Big students will develop a compelling vision for their future, and their self-belief will rise dramatically inshAllah.3)Finding a career path that aligns with their strengths and valuesThis is a biggie. College is not the end goal for students but rather a steppingstone on the way to professional success. Leading students through comprehensive exercises like those found in What Color is Your Parachute? will be a critical component to the program. I aim to help students discover careers that align with what they love, what they are good at, what they can be paid for, and what the world needs. When a student has a vision of what they want to do with their lives and the self belief that they can get there, they can move mountains.4)Discovering their “passion” and how to turn it into a tangible projectAgain and again, I hear students tell me they have no “passions.” Usually it takes only a few questions to get them to change their tune. A few good ones are:* If you could teach a class on any topic, what would it be and why?* Imagine you have an entire day with no obligations or financial constraints. What would you do?* If you could change one thing about your school or community, what would it be and why?Of course, discovering your passions is not sufficient. I will help them develop a “Saturday Morning Project” that wil

“You can't create desire. It’s either there or it’s not.”This lesson—marketers can’t make people want something they have no inherent interest in—is the most significant insight I’ve gained so far from the biggest investment I have made in my coaching business.Last week I decided to reinvest most of my January earnings in a program called High Impact Coaching, which promises to help first-time coaches build 6-figure businesses in under 90 days.I know that this pitch might sound a little gimmicky, but the reality is it worked.In the business world, as I am learning, the only vote that matters is the one our clients make with their credit cards.So far, the program has been phenomenal.Another concept it has drilled into my mind is that people who pay, pay attention. Just as I argued in The Moral Case for Premium Pricing in Islam, your clients are likely to experience the best results if they are fully invested.I am certainly seeking to milk every last drop out of this coaching program after making such a big investment.I was the perfect target for the HIC offer: an early-stage coach who is finding traction in the market but is seeking to really nail his offer.The questions that I am wrestling with now are:“What is the avatar of my ideal client?”“What are his ‘bleeding neck’ problems?”“What is the prison he currently lives in, and what is the dream he is seeking?”“How am I uniquely qualified to push him towards Heaven or pull him away from Hell?”As I have begun applying these frameworks to my business, I have run into a quandary. And I need you to help get me out.As a college coach, one of my particular challenges is that my clients (Muslim parents) are not the primary users of my service (Muslim students). So, should my offer be aimed at parents or students? Or both?For today, given that the audience of Five Before Five skews older, I am going to focus on the “bleeding neck” problems Muslim parents are facing.Allow me to unveil the avatar of my ideal client.His name is Faisal, and he is 47 years old. He completed medical school in Egypt and emigrated to the States when he was in his mid-20s. Once he finished his residency at NYU, he married a Palestinian nurse named Amina who also emigrated to the States just after college. Faisal now works long hours at a hospital in Southern Connecticut. They have 2 children, Mariam (age 15) and Ahmed (14). Both go to a large public school in New Haven. Mariam is a great student and dreams of going to Yale, but she seems to be drifting away from Islam. Ahmed, on the other hand, is obsessed with video games and soccer, and the only thing he seems interested in is becoming a gamer on YouTube.I am going to sketch out five different problems I believe Faisal and Amina are facing.My ask of you is to tell me in the comments which of these five problems most resonate with you. Which problems are Faisal and Amina most likely to seek professional help with? Please also share any problems or challenges I may have overlooked.1)Navigating Admissions and Paying for CollegeAs successful immigrant professionals, Faisal and Amina want Mariam to achieve her college dreams and reach the Ivy League. They see how hard she has worked in high school and want her to get into a college that will help launch her career.The problem is that neither Faisal nor Amina went through the admissions process themselves, and they don't know how to guide her. They know SATs and APs and extracurriculars are important, but they feel overwhelmed by the amount of college information out there. The also feel the cost of college is out of control and don’t know what to do. He and Amina make too much to qualify for need-based financial aid but not nearly enough to be able to pay for two $75K tuitions at the same time. They want the best for their children but are afraid they will either have to get involved with riba or let Ahmed and Mariam down by not being able to pay for them to go to the college of their dreams. 2) Mariam is Becoming Disconnected from IslamFaisal's mother instilled a rock-solid faith in him from a young age. Even more than dunyawi achievement, his greatest desire is for his children to fully embrace their Islamic identity and achieve eternal success in the akhira.Faisal brought Mariam to Saturday school for years and got her a Quran tutor, but he is afraid that her non-Muslim peers and social media are pushing her further and further from Islam. He overheard her talking about a boy she likes and is frustrated that Olivia Rodrigo seems to be her idol. With college on the horizon, he is afraid he will lose his daughter to the arrows of Shaytaan forever.3) Ahmed is Addicted to TechnologyEver since the pandemic, Ahmed has gotten more and more addicted to playing video games. Minecraft became Roblox which graduated to Fortnite. Every free second, Ahmed is on his device. Discord and Instagram notifications constantly interrupt him on the rare occasions he sits down to do his homework. Efforts to limit his screen time result in explosive conflict and resentment.Faisal wishes he could go back in time and never give Ahmed a phone, but he feels helpless to change things because he is always at the hospital.4)Academic Anxiety is Crushing MariamFaisal and Amina are so proud of how Mariam is doing in school, but they are worried about the constant stress she is feeling. Her ultra-competitive school is pushing her to the edge, and they are afraid her anxiety will prevent her from achieving her college dreams.As much as they want her to succeed, they are more concerned about her mental health. They don’t know what to tell her, though, because every time they try to intervene, Mariam says she has to do all this if she wants to have any chance at Yale.5)Ahmed is a Rudderless ShipWhen Faisal was Ahmed's age, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. When he looks at his son now, he sees no ambition or direction in his life. What he wants more than anything is for Ahmed to develop a passion outside of video games and soccer.Faisal desperately wants Ahmed to develop a vision for his career, and he doesn't want to waste a lot of time and money waiting for his son to “find himself.”I imagine that several of these problems might resonate with you, but which one is keeping Faisal and Amina awake at night?How true-to-life do my avatars of Faisal, Amina, Mariam, and Ahmed sound to you?What other problems do you face as a Muslim parent that I am overlooking?Please let me know in the comments or by replying to this email.Just as desire cannot be manufactured, the solutions we offer must resonate with the deeply rooted aspirations and values of Muslim parents and their children. Please help me design a coaching program that best serves your needs.If you found this article insightful, join the thousands of readers just like you on my Five Before College email list. Every Monday and Thursday I send out college and education tips interspersed with Islamic wisdom to help teenagers succeed in this world and the next. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

Which of these college applicants sounds more interesting to you?* Faisal: He is taking an unprecedented 6 AP courses his senior year, and his report card is a sea of A’s. He is a member of the debate team and VP of the science club. Last summer, he took a demanding (and expensive!) computer science course at Harvard Summer School. To keep up with his taxing schedule, his days are meticulously planned with very little downtime. From the time he gets home to when he goes to bed at 1am, he is knocking items off his to-do list like an academic robot. He just got his scores back from his fifth attempt at the SAT: 1570.* Mariam: She became obsessed with beekeeping when she visited an apiary in Nova Scotia when she was in middle school and decided devote her Saturday mornings throughout high school to exploring this passion. After suffering hundreds of stings, she eventually transformed her backyard into a thriving haven for bees. Her venture into beekeeping blossomed into a small business, and Mariam sells her honey at the farmer’s market every Saturday. She even started a YouTube channel that has inspired countless girls to explore beekeeping. She has not pursued as many APs as her peers, has a few B’s on her transcript, earned a 1410 on the SAT, but is almost always in bed before 10pm.While they are both strong candidates, I think we can all agree that Mariam is having a much more enjoyable and fulfilling high school career. During the 5-7 minutes that the admissions officers spend with each application, there’s a far greater chance that Mariam’s story will rise to the top.And yet most families put academic grinders like Faisal on a pedestal and assume that students like Mariam don’t actually exist. No one could possibly have the time to pursue a passion so deeply given the demands of high school, right?Wrong.I have met countless Mariams over the years who have leveraged “Saturday morning projects” to college admissions success. One of my private clients created an NGO to virtually tutor Kashmiri children, another one raised thousands of dollars for Palestine by selling handmade hummus door to door, and a former student wrote poetry about growing up as a hijaabi in America that landed her on a TEDx stage.These were all strong students, but none was at the top of their class. Their applications and essays, however, were dripping with personality, and each sailed into their top choice colleges.Just today, I read about the “Newton of Gaza” who has figured out how to harness the wind to provide electricity for his family’s tent after their home was destroyed by the Israeli bombardment.There are two questions we should ask ourselves at this point:* How do these students come up with such out-of-the-box ideas?* How do they possibly have time to pursue these interests while completing a demanding course load.Today’s FBF endeavors to answer both questions.1)Thinking Fast and SlowDaniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize winning behavioral economist, wrote an amazing book called Thinking Fast and Slow. In it, he introduces the concept of dual-process thinking. System 1 (“Fast”) is instinctual and emotional while System 2 (“Slow”) is more methodical and logical.Most “good students” are so caught up in doing the things they have to do and cramming information into their brain that they never make time for System 1 thinking.To tap into their creativity and intuition and generate innovative ideas, teens need to carve out time to give free reign to System 1, allowing it to freely associate and brainstorm.Once a pool of ideas is generated, they can methodically sift through them using System 2 thinking to evaluate which of them is most feasible and has the deepest impact. This shift from free-flowing ideation to critical assessment is the key to generating and implementing out-of-the-box ideas.2) The Power of WalkingThe question that remains, of course, is how to tap into System 1 thinking.One of the best ways to see the forest for the trees is to go for a walk in the forest, as Gail Goodwin reminds us. Humans are bipeds; walking is built into our operating system. Modern sedentary lifestyles, however, have prevented most teenagers from using their two feet for what they were designed for.The single best way I have found to tap into creativity is to go out for a walk and let my brain roam freely. I will sometimes bring a journal or open my notes app and spend 15 minutes jotting down every thought that comes into my head as I walk through the woods.At other times, I listen to podcasts and audiobooks, and often make connections between something I hear with some challenge I am facing in a different part of my life.Before I began this Substack, I published a few articles on Medium, including “30 Minutes a Day: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Stand Out in the College Admissions Game,” where I share a few other ideas about how to discover ideas.3)Prophetic Strategies to Expand Your Minutes into HoursEven if they manage to make the time to come up with out-of-the-box ideas, how can teenagers find the time to explore them in depth while juggling a demanding course load?The answer is that they need to unlock barakah in their study time.There are two ways to do this: harnessing the power of prophetic teachings and learning to leverage the science of learning.As for the former, one of the most important ways to unlock barakah in your time is to take advantage of the early morning hours by not sleeping after fajr salaat. The salaf used to call this sleep “Naum an-Nadamah” or “the remorseful sleep.” By using the early morning hours on weekdays for schoolwork and on weekends for pursuing their passion projects, students can find time that most kids don’t know exists.Students should also study in a state of wudu, pray two rakaats before exams, and, perhaps most importantly of all, make du’a for barakah in their time and success in their studies. Look at this beautiful du’a of my good friend Hafiz Na’eel Cajee:4)Active RecallMost students have no real idea of how learning works and resort to incredibly inefficient techniques like excessive highlighting and re-reading the textbook.I am currently teaching a course called “Barakah-Boosted Study Skills,” and the single concept that keeps coming up is active recall, Active Recall, ACTIVE RECALL!Active recall means that we must constantly ask ourselves questions about what we are studying with the textbook closed. Students think that learning is about stuffing facts into our brains; in reality, it is what we can pull out that counts.Google sheets, that humble program that many students may have never used, can become an amazing tool for active learning as Ali Abdaal teaches in this video. The core idea is that you put all the big picture questions about what you are learning in column A and the answers to these questions in column B… in white ink.When you want to review, simply fire up the google sheet and ask yourself the questions in Column A and then check then hidden answers in column B. Color code the questions using traffic light signals indicating whether a question is easy, “ya’nee,” or hard. That allows you to review only the material that you are struggling with.5) Use ChatGPT to Pour Kerosene on Your LearningTo show my students the power of the google sheets method, I entered in this prompt:“Create a list of 10 critical thinking questions about the Mayflower compact that will help me understand the topic thoroughly. Provide just the questions, no commentary. I will ask for the answers in a separate prompt.”Within seconds, I had created this google sheet that would, I dare say, help a student get a 5 on their AP US History exam with just a few minutes of studying and review.Indeed, as I indicated in last week's FBF, students MUST learn to harness the power of AI to cut down on their study time and have more time for their moonshots and Saturday morning projects. Here are a few prompts you can try right now.a.Role playYou are a world-class biology professor trained in the Socratic method and the Feynman technique. Ask me questions about [topic] and then evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of my answers.b.Create testsI have just finished studying [topic] and I want to see what I remembered. Ask me a series of questions to test my ability to actively recall what I learned. Ask both critical thinking and multiple-choice questions. Assess my answers and give me a grade.c.Mnemonic creatorI know every [Taylor Swift lyric] but I can’t understand [the Krebs cycle]. Create a mnemonic by attaching this concept to TS lyrics.d.Language partnerI want you to become a [humorous French waiter] and have a conversation with me knowing that I have only done two years of French. Gently correct my mistakes or suggest how I could have spoken more fluently.I hope this week’s edition has taught you why Mariam’s style of high school excellence is more effective than Faisal’s at ensuring admissions success, how to start coming up with ideas for your out-of-the box passion projects, and how to unlock barakah in your time to actually implement your ideas.If you found this article insightful, join the thousands of readers just like you on my Five Before College email list. Every Monday and Thursday I send out college and education tips interspersed with Islamic wisdom to help teenagers succeed in this world and the next.And, oh yeah, please hit the like button as well! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

Five Before Five turns one this week! When I was contemplating starting my own online business, I researched how long it would take to gain traction on the internet. The answer I heard last January: two years. I was told that if you put out high quality information on the internet every week for two years, you will have built a tribe of 1000 true fans, and you’ll never have to rely on a paycheck to support yourself again.Reading that and living it are two different things, of course. It was scary to leave the familiarity of a paycheck and jump into the unknown world of entrepreneurship. Getting this newsletter out every week requires discipline and determination (and a speaking gig in Cincinnati pushed my release date to Saturday this week).I am just one year in, but alhamdulillah, things are starting to pick up steam. We just launched our latest online Masterclass, Barakah-Boosted Study Skills (BBSS), and it is our best-selling product yet. We sold 23 of the 25 seats, and the course has mashAllah brought in nearly $11K in revenue.I imagine some readers may be contemplating starting their own online business or wondering how to launch a course. I know I have benefited tremendously from articles where entrepreneurs take you behind the scenes and share the anatomy of their launches.Thus, for this week's FBF, I will share the playbook we used for our first 5-figure course.1) Email List as the Backbone of the BusinessIn the influencer era, many people think that amassing a huge social media following is the key to monetization. While there is no doubt that social media can build brand awareness, the reality is if you build your empire based on the back of Insta, YouTube, Medium, or TikTok, it's a house upon the sand. You can be de-platformed and lose your entire audience overnight.The key to building a sustainable business is remarkably simple: grow a high-quality email list. People have been predicting the death of email for decades, but the fact remains that email has the single highest ROI of any medium. When you build an email list, you own access to your customers that nobody can take away.Of course, you must nurture your list and provide value; that's why I send a high-quality email with expert college admissions tips with an Islamic flavor every Monday & Thursday.By frequently reaching out and, inshAllah, providing value, I want to go from an unwelcome pest to a welcome guest. Alhamdullilah, based on our open rate and click-throughs, we seem to be on the right track.2) Webinars as Lead MagnetsThe natural question that follows is how to build an email list. The most potent tool I have found is webinars.In the lead-up to launching BBSS, I hosted 3 webinars:* Barakah Secrets Series 1: Five Key Steps for Smarter Studying (390 registrants)* Barakah Secrets Series 2: Insights from Three Academic All-Stars (366 registrants)* Barakah Secrets Series 3: Learning How to Learn with Imam Zaid Shakir (276 registrants)We had a combined 1032 registrants with more than 50% live attendance. These webinars grew my email list by nearly 40% to more than 2K subs. These are mostly high-quality leads of my exact target demographic: American Muslims with high school age children who are thinking about college.The other benefit of webinars is they are an opportunity to sell your product. Roughly half of the course sales came directly from the webinars in which we explained the benefits of the class. I am not done with it yet, but the best book I have come across about how to structure webinars is Jason Fladlien’s One to Many.3) WhatsApp as Distribution PlatformYou have to know where your customer lives, and Muslims live on WhatsApp. Nearly every Muslim I know is in dozens of WhatsApp groups.The key to WhatsApp marketing is you need your messages to look different than everything else. Most masjid events are quickly thrown together flyers that are often missing critical info.There are formatting tricks (bold, italics, bullet points) that can make your messages visually appealing.Most important of all, the content needs to be genuinely appealing, clearly highlighting the benefits event participants will take away.I write, rewrite, and edit my WhatsApp messages, agonizing over every word. Once it’s ready, I send the message to all my groups roughly 3 days before the event. On the day of, I send out a short reminder message with a flyer and the registration link.For this last round, I added a game-changing wrinkle by building a broadcast list of all my Muslim contacts on WhatsApp. Unlike group messages which often get lost in the daily deluge of posts, broadcast messages get delivered individually to everyone who has saved your name as a contact.Zoom allows you to include a pixel to track where registrations are coming from. As you can see from this data from one webinar, our WhatsApp broadcasts were the most effective way to get the word out.4) The Wisdom of Tiered PricingOnce you've gotten as many people as possible into your event, you need to actually sell the class. This is probably the part of the process I'm least comfortable with and have the most room for improvement.One change that I made for the latest class was the introduction of a tiered pricing model. We had 3 levels of the class:* Do-it-Yourself ($447: live attendance at the class)* Do-it-Together ($597: accountability partner, working session, instructor feedback on assignments)* Do-it-One-on-One ($1097: all of the above plus weekly 30 min one-on-ones)As I might have predicted, the middle tier was the most popular. But we sold 4 out of the 5 seats for the Do-It-One-on-One tier as well.We also offered a pay-what-you-can price for Tier 1, which allowed students from Nigeria and Pakistan to attend as well as a 7th grade boy who is using his Eid money to pay his own way.Overall, this 3-tiered pricing model worked well, and I anticipate using it in future launches.5) Read, Read, ReadFar harder than launching a course is figuring out how to solve the most pressing problems for your target audience.In this case, my wife and I decided to teach study skills with an Islamic twist. Academic success often comes at a major cost. The pursuit of top grades takes over the lives of many top students, sucking up the oxygen from other pursuits. Others lose motivation when they don’t see their studying pay off.We wanted to teach students how they could blend Prophetic wisdom with modern science-backed study skills to unlock barakah in their studies that would allow them to get twice the results in half the time. Learning how to learn will help them work smarter, not harder, and win back time to pursue passion projects that are both more fun and more interesting to admissions officers.To prepare for the class, we spent months reading books on the topic. Here are a few of the best:1) Productive Muslim by Mohamed Faris2) How to Be a High School Superstar by Cal Newport3) Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley4) Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal5) How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport6) Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown et al.To have a truly successful course launch, the most important ingredient is to design a truly beneficial course. Long before your first webinar, you need to put in the work by reading, researching, building, and constantly adding value.May Allah put barakah in our students’ time and may He fulfill the amana they have entrusted us with. May He allow all parents to invest in building their children’s skills so they can thrive in this world and the next. Ameen.Until next Friday, inshAllah.If you enjoyed this week’s edition please hit the ❤️. This makes me happy and helps the article become more visible on Substack. If you REALLY enjoyed it, then leave a comment sharing your feedback. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

College admissions coaches like me don’t exist in most parts of the world.In other countries, the university admissions process is straightforward and transparent. Here in the States, however, the process is opaque and confusing. Contradictory advice abounds, and it is easy to get buried by information overload.Muslim families are faced with additional challenges. Even though their children are American born and bred, many Muslim parents did not attend college in the States and thus do not have a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of the American educational system.Many Muslim families additionally struggle with the balancing act between preserving one's faith and identity and embracing the opportunities that higher education offers.While many challenges of applying to college are faith agnostic, after working with hundreds of Muslim families over the last decade, I have seen the same missteps made again and again.For this week’s FBF, I have broken away from my usual five point format and instead extracted the 11 most common “mistakes” I see Muslim families make during the college application process.1)Insisting on living at homeOne of the distinctive features of the college search for many Muslim families is the insistence that their children live at home during the college years. By restricting their applications solely to local institutions, these students significantly narrow their pool of potential colleges and inadvertently immerse themselves in highly competitive applicant pools.I understand where they are coming from. College can be a very difficult place to maintain your Muslim identity and practice. Shaytaan has many arrows in his quiver that he deploys during the college years. For a student who has been in the Muslim “bubble” since kindergarten, the transition to a college campus can be disorienting. Depending on the child, staying home to protect your imaan may make sense.That said, if I had lived at home while studying at Harvard, I would have halved the benefit of my time there. College is about much more than what you learn in the classroom. It is about discovering who you are at your core and building a lifelong network of friends and professional connections. At some point, we have to take the “training wheels” off of our children and let them develop the spiritual backbone to practice the deen when not under our watchful eyes.2)Not visiting campusesI am shocked by how haphazard the college search is for many Muslim families. They see some schools listed in US News and World Report, do a few Google searches, and then apply to 15-20 random schools.The single best way to figure out if a college is right for you is to visit the campus, ideally when classes are in session. During spring break of my junior year, I went on an epic road trip visiting Middlebury, Princeton, Swarthmore, and Haverford with my father. It is one of the first things I remembered when he died last year.This trip gave me real clarity about what I was looking for in a college. Many colleges have fly-in programs that allow you to visit campuses for free. They are opportunities to add depth to your search. Take advantage of them.At the very least, be sure to attend the admitted student events at your top 2-3 schools before depositing. NEVER sign away four years of your life to a campus you have never seen in person.3)Starting too lateDid you know that senior year is the LEAST important of the four years of high school when it comes to admissions decisions? And yet, many Muslim families don’t get serious about the application process until the second half of junior year.Starting the college process too late is one of the single biggest mistakes that I see families make again and again.Most students tread a path through high school that consists of haphazard wanderings with little planning. They dabble in many different courses, interests, and extracurriculars and are left scrambling to find a way to present colleges with a cohesive narrative. Getting expert advice during the early high school years can prove invaluable.The principle of starting early is built into the name of my company, Five Before College. Students and families who start planning for college starting five years before college are infinitely better prepared.4)Emphasizing resume virtues over eulogy virtuesRésumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. Eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest, or faithful.In admissions terms, the résumé virtues show up on your transcript and activities list in the form of APs and leadership positions, but the eulogy virtues can be found in your essays and recommendation letters.Résumé virtues are much easier to teach and measure, and most students focus on developing them first. The tweak here is not to discount the importance of résumé virtues—your transcript is the single most important part of your application—but to FIRST develop a rock-solid moral core of eulogy virtues that will be your guiding light when making decisions throughout high school.One way to achieve this. Every time you see your reflection in the mirror, make the du’a the Prophet (SAWS) recommended, “O Allah, just as you have beautified my body, similarly beautify my character.”5)Focusing on prestige over fitOne of the biggest mistakes that Muslim families make is one that I was once guilty of myself: focusing on institutional prestige over fit.My father passed on his addiction to elite education to me. When I first began helping Muslims with the college process, my slogan was that we prepare students for the “Akhira and the Ivy League.”For some students, an Ivy League school is the perfect fit, but many others would be miserable there even if they managed to gain entrance. There are SO many wonderful, life-changing schools that I have discovered since becoming a college counselor. It is often better to be a “big fish in a small pond” at a school where you can truly excel than to base your decision purely on a set of rankings.As a Muslim community we need to recognize and move beyond our elitist blind spot when it comes to college education. We need to stop letting status concerns pollute our perceptions of college diplomas and remember that we will not be judged on the Day of Judgement on the prestige of our degree or the number of zeroes in our bank balance. Attending in-state public universities, state colleges, or even community college often makes the most sense, and these paths should be respected.6)Not researching Muslim campus lifeCollege campuses vary wildly in the quality and depth of their services and support for Muslim students on campus. Some have full-time chaplains, halal food in all the dining halls, and a dynamic MSA. Others don't even have a proper musalla, and Muslims are left to fend for themselves during Ramadan.Before committing to spend 4 years at a particular college, you should find out how many people attend jumma on campus, the size and structure of the MSA, the ease of access to halal food and local masjids, and whether they have single-sex or substance-free housing options.Islamophobic incidents have soared since the conflict in Gaza, and some campuses are much more welcoming of Muslim students than others. My good friend Salman Khan runs Muslim Campus Life, an excellent resource for Muslims as they explore college.7)Dismissing alternative pathsWe must never lose sight that there are many pathways to success. Over time, I have come to believe college itself is not the right path for everyone. I reckon a good 20% of the students I have worked with would be much better served by going to trade school or pursuing a vocation.By the age of 20, someone who has pursued a career as an electrician is already earning a good income. Once they join a union, they are in great shape financially and essentially have job security for life. Blue collar workers are able to get married early, build a significant nest egg, and do a job where success is tangible.So many Muslim families try to force their child’s square peg into the round hole of college when other, non-academic paths make much more sense.8)Applying for only the most competitive majorsApplying to college is somewhat of a game, and you need to understand how the game works to succeed. The laws of supply and demand are just as much in play in college admissions as they are in other parts of life.When you apply to the most popular majors—biology, engineering, computer science—you are stacking the deck against yourself. If you have been coding since the womb, have won national physics competitions, or have spent summers pursuing competitive internships in a healthcare setting, then of course you have a decent shot of getting into one of these majors.But if your interest in medicine or engineering is more of a vague desire with no coursework and extracurricular experience to support it or if you are only pursuing these things because your parents said you should, you would be much better off pursuing a less common major.When people ask me to give their children a small piece of advice to help them stand out in college admissions, my simple answer is: “Be different. When they zig, you zag.”9)Becoming a cook rather than a chefIn the culinary world, there's a critical distinction between being a chef and being a cook. A cook is someone who follows established recipes, relying on tried and tested methods without much room for innovation. A chef is someone who reasons from first principles, like a scientist in a kitchen, experimenting with raw ingredients to create something new and unique.Most high school students adopt a “cook” mindset towards academic and personal development by looking for predefined formulas for success. While this might yield some short-term success, it's essential to shift your mindset to that of a “chef.”Becoming a “chef” in high school is a lot like making an award-winning me

This week, I am trying something new: an audio version of the article, read by me. If you like this new feature, please let me know in the comments.Most of us are drowning in procrastination. It steals our dreams.Procrastination is delayed goals. It’s dying with a whole lot of wisdom inside of you that never gets released. It’s a silent thief of time leaving behind unrealized potential.I have been a serial procrastinator for as long as I can remember. Nowhere was this more true than in the realm of writing.In college, I had a policy: I would not start any paper 10-pages or fewer until midnight the night before it was due. By 8AM I usually had a great essay, but my gas tank was empty. This technique meant that writing activated my fight or flight response, and for years I had been fleeing.Tim Ferris once said that “your superpower is very often right next to your biggest wound.” Writing is probably my single greatest creative gift, but years of procrastinating had turned it into a festering wound that I avoided at all costs.Over the past 15 months, however, I have had a major breakthrough. In November 2022, I wrote roughly 30,000 words in my 30 College Essays in 30 Days series. I have published this longform Substack every Friday for the past 50 weeks. All of this writing helped give me the courage to make other, even bigger changes, such as leaving my job and beginning my own business.I am about to launch a class called “Barakah-Boosted Study Skills” in which my wife and I translate our insights and research about procrastination and productivity into language and activities that teenagers can use to achieve better results in less time by unlocking the hidden power of barakah.In today’s edition of Five Before Five, I unveil five “slingshot strategies” I have used to land decisive blows against the Goliath of procrastination.1. Ready-Fire-AimGetting started is the hardest part of any creative endeavor. Blank page syndrome or the feeling of paralysis when beginning a new piece, has aborted countless ideas before they ever saw the light of day.Writers suffer from blank page syndrome because they are overwhelmed by the pressure to create something great. They have set unreasonably high expectations for themselves and are afraid that they won’t live up to past successes. This fear spirals into anxiety and self-doubt and inevitably leads back to the blinking cursor on a new document. One way to short circuit blank page syndrome is to adopt the ready-fire-aim paradigm. Rather than trying to get all your ducks in a row and plan the perfect outline, just begin to write. Let the Ouija board of inspiration take over your pen and see where it leads.Once you have “fired” and gotten some words on a page, you can better identify your target and refine your “aim” to achieve your desired outcome.2.Leverage the Inverse of Parkinson’s LawMany people need the pressure of a deadline to do their best work. Coffee-fueled all-nighters at the Science Center at Harvard were how I got my term papers done. When a deadline is looming, you have no choice but to get down to work—you have sucked all the oxygen away from the procrastination demon.I used to hate the idea of letting a piece of writing take me weeks when I knew it could be done in a few painful hours if I created sufficient deadline pressure.What I was really doing was leveraging the inverse of Parkinson’s Law. The law itself, first coined by British historian Cyril Parkinson in 1955, states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” If you give yourself 8 hours to write a Substack, it’s going to take you 8 hours.The inverse of Parkinson’s law would state “work contracts to fit into the time we allot for it.” This is a powerful concept and one that can greatly improve our productivity.There are two tricks to leveraging the inverse of Parkinson’s Law:* Give yourself an internal deadline with teeth. I have created a “personal operating system” that I will publish this Substack every Friday and will send a high-quality email to my Five Before College list every Monday & Thursday. From next week, I plan to add a LinkedIn post every Wednesday. * Get busy. There is a paradox that the busier someone is the more time they seem to have to get things done. Humans are remarkable problem solvers. If you paint yourself into a corner, you’ll find a way out.3.Stop Gilding the LilyThis phrase, coined by Shakespeare in King John, refers to the act of spoiling something that is already beautiful or perfect by trying to improve it.Many writers become too precious with their work. They bang out a great draft in a burst of productivity, but then fiddle with it endlessly, often adding ornamentation to a piece that was already beautiful in its own right.Some of the best writing advice I have gotten is “stop polishing, start publishing.”Editing is, of course, critical to good writing, but it should almost always consist of subtraction, not addition. Chip away all the purple prose and glitzy adverbs until the lily can shine.4.Steal Like an ArtistAustin Kleon, author of the amazing Show Your Work, begins his 2012 NYTimes bestseller Steal Like an Artist, with a quote from T. S. Eliot:One of the things that holds writers back is the need to be “original.” They feel pressured to come up with novel ideas that no one has ever thought before. The reality is that all creative work builds on what came before.Andre Gide once said, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, it needs to be said again.”I am part of a Masterclass with internet writing masters Todd Brison and Tim Denning. Their initial free webinar featured a compelling slide that ultimately drew me into their world:Our ideas have a genealogy—everything is derivative. Every new idea is just a mashup or remix of previous ideas. What I often find myself doing is filtering “western” productivity and business ideas through the lens of Islam to produce something with my own unique flavor.5. Tap into the Barakah of the Early MorningOne of the best ways to overcome procrastination is to “eat the frog,” the single hardest thing that you have been dreading, first thing in the morning.The Prophet (SAWS) made a special prayer for the early part of the day:As Muslims we are encouraged to wake up in the last third of the night and pray tahajjud. At the very least, we are obligated to get up for fajr, the pre-dawn prayer.One of my best pieces of advice to anyone struggling with procrastination is to write first thing in the morning. Whether it is a gratitude journal, “morning pages,” or an actual article for publication, try to find yourself with pen in hand or fingers on keyboard at sunrise.If you made it to the end and found this article insightful, please warm my writer soul by clicking the heart button. And if you or anyone you know might be interested in our Barakah-Boosted Study Skills class, you can fill out this form to book a free 15-minute meeting with me to see if the course is right for you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

Thanks for reading Five Before Five! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

Thanks for reading Five Before Five! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

Thank you for listening to Five Before Five. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hamzahhenshaw.substack.com