We're All Products With a Manual

and I work as a full-time project manager and I always get the question, how do you balance your time? It's exhausting. Super exhausting. This is not going to be a scheduling video. By the way, your relationship with salah and Quran is the best brand statement you can have. >> What is your Barakah Blueprint? [singing] >> People think like, oh, Islam is something you add to your life. No, Islam is life. Who are we? >> Who Who are we when no one's looking? >> I' I'd always have to explain my existence to [music] people. >> Why can't that not be me? Why can't that not be another Muslim? The gold is in the work that you don't want to do. >> You lose everyone. Don't lose your prayer. >> You can fool people, but you cannot fool yourself [music] and you cannot fool Allah. >> You're reaching for something in the duny. You're reaching for Allah. It does not matter what I want. It matters what Allah wants. The ego cannot [music] survive under the light of awareness. >> My Barakah Blueprint is the Quran. >> I love that you called your podcast Barakah Blueprint because the blueprint is baraka. [music] >> What is your Barakah Blueprint? [music] Asalamu alaykum. Welcome to the Barakah Blueprint podcast. If this is the first time you're listening to the podcast, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ibrahim Shareef. I work as a project manager here in Dubai. I pretend to be an entrepreneur running uh the studio and my Shareefico Productions, which is a content creation studio without a studio. I just go and rent studios. Uh I'm also a Quran, which is the reason why I created this podcast and my entire content creation journey started from this. My mission is very simple. I want to tell people and the whole world that the way to live life is according to the Quranic compass. And that is going to be the difference between a successful life and a miserable life. It's also the podcast where I share my lessons learned from following this compass. Sometimes from my readings and my readings are flawed and not the compass itself. >> [snorts] >> uh I do step on landmines uh some bear traps uh and I go through some pitfalls. I want to share my findings and my observations from this journey because I know I'm not alone when I'm building all of this and I know that there are people who are also building their own empire and brand and product and company or podcast or literally whatever right and I know there are going to be people who are going to be going through their struggles and I want to be the person who uh helps. I want to be the person who shares and gives that value back. So that being said, I want to talk about [snorts] how I actually balance everything that I am trying to do. [laughter] [gasps] Spoiler alert, it's difficult, but I'll share with you what I'm doing so far in my journey. I'm running a brand studio called it. I have my content creation through well the Shareefico brand and balprint podcast and everything. And I'm building products like the Shareefico CMS for example. And I have my school community as well. and I work as a full-time project manager. And I always get the question, how do you balance your time? Spoiler alert, like I said, it's very, very difficult. It's exhausting. Super exhausting. Maybe you can see like it's um I'm I'm looking sleepy, guys. [gasps] Um but I want to share this because I still think it's very doable. I think it's very doable that we can do so much. And I think it's also very doable that if I let go of any of those streams, uh I can with my thousand% focus uh I am actually able to um get so much more quality done and get so much more done as a matter of fact. But um you know what that's for future future Ibrahim to learn from that mistake. I'm still going to I'm still going to be making that mistake now for for the moment. Um, I want to share with you how I try to structure all of this because this does require work. It does require effort. It does require some learning. And let me present to you what it is exactly that I'm doing. So between 8 to 5, 8 to 6, 9 to 6 sort of semiflexible hours. Monday to Friday, I have my work. And during my work, alhamdulillah, this is what gets the full dedication. Every single workday I put in my eight hours. I put in the uh dedication, the quality and alhamdulillah the clients in my projects are noticing this and my colleagues are noticing this. Alhamdulillah and it's all from Allahhala like like God says my success comes only from God almighty and no one else. And that being said it is everything that happens before and after. That's where the sharico/han/ products come in. And the key is this is this is not going to be a scheduling video, by the way. And so if if you're expecting a scheduling video, sorry to disappoint. I'll try my best. But if you're interested, you can just reach out to me. I I respond to my messages. So I want to tell you the difference between having a successful day successfully productive day where I successfully uh do my stuff accordingly is how good I've been with Quran that day and week literally this is the um this is the uh difference because if the days that I don't do it while I alhamdulillah am able to uh balance some things and I'm able to produce some value it's not going to be optimal. because I've let go of the most important priority after salah, of course, after prayer. So, I want to I want to take time in this video to tell you why this formula works. Why the formula of scheduling your time around Quran and around your prayers is the only pathway to success. Because this is the manufacturers's manual. Look, we're products at the end of the day. And the thing is like building spending time building products has led me to look at life from a particular lens which is that we're all products ultimately. were all prompts that became products if we think about it, right? And in order to use a product in the best way possible, you need to follow the manual that is made by that manufacturer because I mean it's safe to assume and it's safe to say that the manufacturer knows best how to use that product and how to get the most out of that product. And the thing is the way we are supposed to deal with this product ourselves in this product life is following the manual that governs both of those products which is the Quran. Right now um I want to share one verse one verse that strikes uh as a strong reminder. The verse is prayer prevents you from harm and evil. Literally prayer prevents from getting a bad product or getting a bad output. Prayer prevents you from corruption. Prayer prevents you from so many more of those like evil uh definitions, right? Important to say prevents. Okay. doesn't mean that it's a full blocker because you're still going to be exposed to evil. You're still going to be exposed to corruption. You're still going to be exposed to the the evil of the self. I mean, obviously, that's always going to happen. But what I'm trying to say is not praying is going to be so much worse because you're going to get so much more influx or stronger influx of that same corruption and evil. Whereas prayer on the other hand is going to stop you from that. And why am I saying this is because connecting it to how we live our life. If you were to live your life from meeting to meeting, your output is going to be very bland, horrible at best. On the other hand, if you live your life according to the manual from that manufacturer, which is to shape everything around salah and around prayers, for sure you will have a much stronger and more qualitative output if you think about it. And that's why I say your relationship with the manual, which is the Quran, the stronger it is, the stronger your relationship is going to be with life's positive and qualitative outcomes. That's also a very natural and very logical and rational uh thing to deduct from uh from this. Now, one thing I would like to add as well here is that it will help you understand your mission. Your relationship with prayers and Quran will by far by far it will help you understand your mission much much better than if you weren't to have it because the Quran already says in this Quran this manual this guidance guides to that which is stronger better qualitative it's a verse in the Quran so having that is going to be and having that relationship and the strength of of that relationship is in direct correlation with how qualitative your life is let alone the most important part which is your so it also helps you with whatever mission you've put yourself on and I'm this is where everything else comes in that I wanted to talk about look [snorts] I've been creating content for a year and a half and for about a year I've had my company it studio and I haven't been active with my company because I've had other priorities I have been active with my content creation, but I haven't gotten substantial results from it. Like, there aren't many viewers to my YouTube or to my other short form content. Uh, who knows what it will be years from now. And whoever is going to be listening to this, Allah, God knows, but um there aren't many metrics, if any, that point to me having been successful in this journey. If I'm going to be pragmatic and to the point, but I still continue. I still do this. I still put my eggs in these baskets and I bet on these horses and I continue and I push on. Why? Because like I said, your relationship with Salah and Quran is the best brand statement you can have. It's the best brand strategy you can have. It's the best um direction you can take. And this is what will help you keep it together and continue and soldier on, right? because other than that um all you're going to be dealing with is just a bunch of pointless um loose ants. We don't do any of that here. And at the same time, as cliche as it sounds, I'm going to say it anyway. Building something good takes time. All right? But it's important to actually start. This is one thing that I want to leave you guys with as well before I conclude. Building something good takes time, but you have to start. Where do we learn this? The story of the prophets or the stories of the prophets from the prophets. Uh I'm I'm also not uh necessarily comparing a prophetic mission to an entrepreneurial mission. No. But what what I'm saying is instead um we take lessons from the prophetic mission and the prophetic missions. For example, uh God Almighty says in the Quran about the prophets, in the stories of the prophets, we have given you lessons and wisdom to take and something to look up to. And they are because they are a good example and I'm paraphrasing the verse by the way, as I'm doing with many of the translations, just so you know. Um what we learn from their stories is that their dawa takes time. They build the most strong and resilient brands that there are. All right? It takes time. It takes energy. It takes effort. Uh it takes convincing because they have to convince other people of that brand. That brand is superior. This is the brand they have to follow. The brand of is always going to be better than the brand of but not everyone buys that. Right? So this is something that takes time as well. Some prophets spent some prophets spent hundreds of years like noisam 950 years of dawa of just calling people right. So we learn from their story and stories actually if the brand is clear and the direction is clear then it doesn't matter how long time it takes as long as you take the right steps and you learn from your mistakes and you pivot. for example about pivoting and learning from your mistakes right um let's talk about the story of NIA right the prophet Noah he also pivoted he also corrected mistakes we we we do we notice that in surah hud chapter hood which is what is it going to be now toba is nine unice is 10 so hood is 11 okay good now I got the numerology right so uh surah chapter 11 part 12 of the Quran, God Almighty uh tells a story about Noah, the prophet Noah. So, Prophet Noah, he spent like like we said so many years calling people and he was a he was a very affectionate u gentleman. So what he did was when he got the order to direct the believers and uh various species to the ark that was built because they they're they are the people that are going to be saved from the flood. One of his sons was a non-Muslim, right? Or he did not accept the message of Noah. So uh he was not of the people that were added to the ship. Uh the prophet Noah, he still asked his son to join the ship or the the ark. Sorry, ship is the wrong word. Now his son instead say, "No, no, no. I'm going to go to a tall enough mountain. It's going to protect me from the waves. I'm not going to drown. Surely I'm going to be saved." Lo and behold, he wasn't saved. He drowned like the other uh the others who rejected the message of Noah. So here's where the pivot happens. Um Noah asked God, the prophet Noah asked God and said, "Would you forgive my son?" And God Almighty very, very strictly and clearly tells him that no, polytheism is a no-go. It's not accepted. Absolutely not. And taught Noah why that is the case. So the prophet Noah, no, the prophet Noah from that point on he pivoted. He understood that okay, mistake has been done. lesson was learned and he makes makes and he asks God for repentance and he makes which is ask God ask God for protection and protection from committing uh said sin in questioning. What I want to say again is that we need to be open for pivoting. You don't have to necessarily change the direction of the ship or the ark, whatever you're building, but you need to be aware that you need to be ver you need to be prepared and you need to be ready that sometimes there is the time for steering and sometimes there is the time for maintenance and that you don't mix up the different endeavors. So, if you're in the same jungle as me and you're in the same trenches taking care of your battles, um, my only advice is number one, purify your intention. Number two, strengthen your relationship with God in prayer and Quran. And number three, keep soldiering on. You have no other choice. And uh, I think this serves as a great ending for this short podcast episode. I want to thank you so much for your time. Renew your intention. Renew your connection to God Almighty and live your life in Baraka style. Take care of yourselves. [music]