After my initial post about how waking up for fajr prayer boosts your productivity, here's the intro to the how post: how do you wake up for fajr? And I don't mean wake up for a day or two, but how do you keep waking up for fajr, constantly, everyday,  without fail.

There's loads & loads of websites online giving you tips and advice on how to wake up early. But our focus is not on worldly tips (which should be taken by all means, part of tying the camel ;)), our focus is on the spiritual means.

My dear brothers/sisters, every day when you read Surat Al-Fatiha, at least 17 times a day, you recite the verse "You Alone we Worship, and You Alone we Seek Help from": You want to worship Allah? "Yes!" You need His help then. You want to wake up for Fajr? "Yes please!" Guess what, you need Allah. You cannot, I repeat, cannot, wake up for fajr without Allah's help. Now ask yourself the question, what can I do to show Allah that I truly and utterly want to wake up for fajr?!

Have you ever had days when you're about to go to sleep, and you have this deep feeling that you'll definitely wake up for fajr? And have you ever had days when you know for certain that you'll oversleep? Imagine the two scenarios, which I'm sure some of us have gone through: 

Scenario 1: You feel high with Eman, you've prayed your witr, read some Quran, and even though you've got 2 hours to sleep till fajr, you're certain you'll wake up because you've set your mind, heart and body to make sure you wake up. In fact, sometimes you keep on waking in the middle of the night thinking it's fajr time out of fear that you're going to miss it. If you haven't experienced this, think of a time when you had to catch an early flight or a bus/train, and think of how your mind, heart and body were switched on, and it doesn't matter what time you slept, you'll wake up.

Scenario 2: There are days when deep down you really don't want to wake up, you hope that you "oversleep" so you feel less guilty about it, and Allah may have mercy upon you and still wake you up, and that's when the battle with the snooze alarm starts and the classic shaytaan trick "just 5 more minutes..." begins.

How do we maintain scenario one everyday? That's the topic of my Part 2 inshaAllah.

I read once that if you look at all the great men and women of history, there's one habit they all had in common: they all woke up early!

SubhanaAllah! Look how Allah is so kareem to us, and giving us this secret through a daily call of waking up for Fajr prayer! Brothers & Sisters, we're the Ummah of Productivity!! Seriously, if all of us actually wake up for fajr, and just stick to that, can you imagine how productive we'll be?

At those early hours, I find myself most productive, creative, and able to think clearly. You end up doing so much in those early hours, then the rest of the day put together. You want to know why? And this will make you cry, because our dear Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), made a beautiful dua for us, he said: "May Allah bless my Ummah in its early hours".

SubhanaAllah, this is it. If all of us don't take from this website except this advice, we're on our way towards a productive Ummah!

P.S. Next post I'll tackle how to actually wake up early for fajr, inshaAllah.