When people go through the Productive From Fajr training, they often come up with a challenge during this time of the year…
Question: “That’s all well and good if it’s winter, or you live somewhere in the world, where Fajr (the pre-dawn prayer) is at 6am. But what if Fajr is already over by 5am?!”
Well, the simple, but the deceptively powerful answer is:
Wake up earlier. (And sleep earlier!)
Take all the advice given in the program and set your alarm for 4:30am or 5am instead of 6am (depending on your local prayer timings).
However, this poses a few problems:
With Maghreb (the sunset prayer) at nearly 10pm, that won’t give you much more than 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep, if you’re lucky – even if you take the legal permission to join Maghreb & Isha during summer in the far Northern Hemisphere (see the European Council of Fatwa & Research’s ruling, given by Shaykh Judai) – that’s still unsustainable for most people.
What if your lifestyle just doesn’t allow for you to join the 5am Club?
And, what about the few weeks in the year when the timings really are too early to even do 5am?
In this extreme case, (again, only a few weeks in the entire year), here’s another Fajr life-hack:
Most people sleep in 90 minute rhythms. So, you tend to naturally be inclined to wake up after 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5 or 9 hours.
After Isha go to bed leisurely, let’s say at 11pm.
Then, instead of waking at 5am (do-able, but not sustainable for most), set your alarm for 2am. At this time, Fajr may not even have started yet (depending on where you are and your local prayer timings). However, it will be easy to wake up, because you’ve had 3 hours of sleep and will be coming out of your second sleep cycle.
Wake up fully, brush your teeth, do wudu, all the while knowing that you’ll get plenty of sleep again after your prayers.
Now, it’s 2:15am and Fajr still hasn’t started. That means you’re in the most blessed, beneficial time of the night: Tahajjud.
Remember this hadith..?
‘The Lord descends every night to the lowest heaven when one-third of the night remains and says:
“Who will call upon Me, that I may answer him?
Who will ask of Me, that I may give him?
Who will seek My forgiveness, that I may forgive him?”
–The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him
Many Muslims put so much effort into just about managing to wake up for Fajr at around 4am or 5am, then rush back to bed.
However, with roughly the same amount of effort, and a bit of strategy, you can actually do one of the most blessed prayers there is and easily pray Fajr on time.
Simply get 3 to 4.5 hours of sleep, wake up a few minutes before Fajr, pray Tahajjud, do zikr, pray Fajr, then go back to sleep, with plenty of time left to get another 3 to 4.5 hours of sleep before you get up for work.
Heck, a couple of days a week you may even want to do a Sunnah Intermittent Fast, and get ripped abs in the process.
When you wake up the 2nd time for work, you’ll arise a champion.
If you build this into your summer-routine, the momentum will start to build very quickly and you might find, as many generations of humbly grateful servants have before you, that insightful, life-changing wisdom is gifted to you, while the rest of the world sleeps.
