The Blog

New Year’s Resolution
To Do Lists and Project Plans for 2003

I am going nuts. Literally. I went to the bulk food store the other day and got a variety of dried fruits such as almonds, pistachios, peanuts, cashews and soy beans-all roasted and all salted. Combined with dried figs and apricots they make one heck of a snack but boy they don’t help you at all when you’re trying to get back in shape. Redistributing my body mass, not losing weight, is on the top of the New Year’s Resolutions list for me. I need to ensure that I go to the gym regularly (I haven’t gone since Aliyah was born) and avoid the temptations to pig out whenever I have great food in front of me. For instance, Sadia made the best Achar Gosht last night and it was to die for. Of course, I couldn’t resist and ended up over eating. But it is still 2002. No more of that in 2003 I am glad I don’t have a Quit Smoking item on the list this year…hahaha…I showed them!

I have developed a To Do List of on-going tasks for things that I think I need to do in order to improve myself. Here’s a brief summary:

General To Do List

1-Go to the Masjid for daily prayers, as often as possible
2-Read the Quraan and re-memorize the last 10 Juz
3-Study and acquire some new skills
4-Eat Healthy and avoid unnecessary snacking
5-Go to the Gym at least twice a week, no exceptions
6-Control Finances (I suck at this one)
7-Manage Relationships with family, relatives and friends
8-Stop wasting too much time blogging/web surfing
9-Start using the To Do Lists I spend so much time creating

PBS Documentary -Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet
and Empire of Faith

We watched and recorded Empire of Faith last night. It was a great program, mashaAllah! I am so glad that they showed such a great program, alhamdulillah! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet on PBS yet. The PBS station that we get decided to postpone it and we missed it! We can probably get a copy from PBS directly or buy it online or something. It seems to be pretty good. Here’s an e-mail I received from a UBC mailing list about the reaction of an American to watching the documentary. Read on:

Salaams All,

I thought I would share this with you, a feedback that came from a Cisco Employee after watching “Muhammad Legacy of a Prophet”, a PBS production. With such a feedback, every muslim household in the US should have at least one copy of this documentary to share it with their American friends…buy it from PBS directly (http://www.pbs.org/muhammad, click on SHOP) to support them airing this show.

New Year’s Resolution
Download Document Templates

I don’t know about you, but I need to write things down in the form of To Do Lists and Project Plans to accomplish most tasks. I even refuse to do grocery shopping unless Sadia has prepared a grocery list first This is because I believe it is much more efficient to write things down prior to doing them so as not to lose direction and waste time. And I think a solid, not-too-easy-not-too-difficult New Year’s Resolution is a good idea to start off the year with. It has a psychological effect: let’s start anew. We really need to have a Plan of Action and some Tools to try to accustom ourselves to continuous improvement. Time Management is fundamental to improving our lives. And I suck at it. So I’ve prepared a few document templates which I think will help me to some degree. And you can download them too, enjoy!

Instructions on how to use the Calendar.xls file to generate Monthly Calendars in Microsoft Excel:
For the Calendar Template to work, make sure you enable macros. Once the spreadsheet is open, click on Tools and Macros and Macros (or Alt-F8) and Click the Run button. In the pop-up box, type in the month and the year in the format January 2003 or July 2003 and hit Enter. The macro will create the monthly calendar (you can create all the 12 months in the same spreadsheet, 1 per worksheet) add pictures, fill in birthdays/anniversaries etc and print them out…enjoy!

Time Management is fundamental to continuous self improvement.