Four Types of Progress

Assalamu Alaykum,

It was Friday morning and I already knew I was going to have a busy day. That meant one thing. Reading Surah Kahf in the quickest time possible on my way to Jummah. However, as I was walking to Jummah I came across a post on LinkedIn that changed my entire perspective.

It was from a young brother who explained that every Friday he reads Surah Kahf but recently he had only read the Surah in English and not in Arabic. His frustration was that every Friday he rushes to read this Surah in Arabic however he doesn’t necessarily understand the words he is saying.

He had the motion of worshiping Allah and reading the Qur’an but not necessarily the awareness of what he was doing and reading..

This is a challenge that we all face.

Do we prioritize the doing or the being? What gets us closer to Allah and what reaps more benefit?

In 1978, a neurologist named Dr. James Austin published a book entitled Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty. In this book he defined four ways people can make progress in life.

Whilst I would love to explain all four ways. There are two ways which resonate greatly with this challenge that we face. What should we prioritize first? The actions of worship? Or understanding our worship?

The first type of progress is Motion Progress. You’re creating motion and progress through hustle and energy that you are inserting into an ecosystem. As a result of your simple movement for e.g. opening the Quran on a Friday to read Surah Kahf, you increase the chance of progress that one day through reading it in Arabic for many years, you eventually memorize or understand it through the motion you have made.

The second type of progress is Awareness Progress. This type of progress requires a special receptivity. You make progress through being able to pause, reflect and internalize the task at hand and ultimately your intuition increases. For e.g. you open the Qur’an on a Friday and rather than speed read Surah Kahf for 20 minutes, you take an hour to consume the translation and meaning behind the stories. This then fuels your understanding for let’s say the next few months when you read it.

So how should you proceed?

I remember back in my teenage years and 20’s I definitely made progress through Motion as my personality type suited to aggressively pursuing progress through the simple act of getting things done. However now I am in a different place and I strive to move less however being acutely aware of my actions and knowledge..

How you make progress in you worship ultimately depends on:

1. Where you are in life in terms of your age
2. Your personality type
3. The maturity of your knowledge of Islam

THIS WEEK: Think about ways in which you can improve and make progress in terms of your worship but also bring meaning and depth to the worship you do.