How I became more productive
So here are the benefits I got from giving up listening to news and music.
Quality of prayer significantly improved.
Salah is a barometer for a person’s life. It accurately indicates your relationship with ALLAH. If your salah is good, then everything else is good. Even if you are going through obstacles, as long as you have your salah that you are performing with sincerity and humility, your eeman will be your strength. However when I listened to news or music, I found that it became stored in my heart and mind like data, only to be played out when I was talking to my Lord.
You know those times when you’re praying and everything is silent, and in the back of your mind, a song is replaying over and over which makes it hard to concentrate… You get onto your third raka’ah and you’re like “wait is this the third or fourth raka’ah?” It made my salah feel like basic physical yoga rather than a conversation with my Lord. A little something like this:
For me that stopped after giving up news and music. I was no longer feeding my soul with what could be considered mental deviances; instead I was feeding it with Qur’an and beneficial knowledge. If you want to remember ALLAH in your prayer, remember HIM more outside of your prayer, and letting go of all unwanted thoughts.
This was probably the biggest benefit to my giving up music because developing a stronger relationship with the Qur’an helped me be more connected with ALLAH than ever before.
Rather than replacing the music with silence, I replaced it with the Qur’an and Islamic lectures so that I would be learning more about my deen.
