Life–Road Map

It’s been a while since I posted about my personal life. Honestly, there hasn’t been any progress in my life, so didn’t feel the necessity of posting. And I didn’t want to embarrass myself repeating same stuff again and again (although when I read my old posts, I find them poetic and intimidating). Even as I write this, there hasn’t been much change in my life. Still, my priorities are the same. But the failure to produce anything productive in last few years have taught me lot of things. The first and foremost being, the value of being able to convert the raw ideas into actionable items. Frankly I never had difficulties in producing new ideas, however, the fact that, I haven’t had much success in life testifies that I haven’t been able to convert my ideas into actionable items.

As one grows old, the need for stabilizing the life increases. You either have get adjusted with the direction in which your life is heading or you have to push the life towards the direction of your choice. I am working at Microsoft, earning reasonably good income and have a supporting family… there isn’t much to complain. Yet, I am finding it difficult to adjust with this life. This means, if I have to be happy, the other option is, I need to push my life towards the direction of my choice. In order to do so, I first need to identify the ‘direction’ of my choice. Otherwise, I will be trying out various things but that ‘happiness’ would still be elusive.

I did a mind-map of what exactly I want to accomplish during this life… the list of objectives when accomplished, I would feel satisfied with life. After lot of introspection, this is what I have got.

Essentially, there are four top priority goals. And each of these goals have a criteria for being successful. I don’t want to go in details about each of these things… but what this essentially means is that, I need to immediately reduce investing time in activities which aren’t my priorities.

The next step was to draft action items for each of these goals. Here’s what I have come up with so far.

Practice Islam: Action Items

• Offer Salah punctually
• Give away significant portion of earning in charity
• · Stay away from Riba and Zina
• · Read and Understand Tafsir of Holy Quran
• · Read all six important books of Hadith
• · Practice the values of mentioned in Holy Quran and books of Hadith.

Be a Good Son, Brother, Husband, etc.: Action Items

• · Practice Islam and guide the family members towards the right path
• · Love and respect the family members even if they don’t listen to me
• · Support and fulfil the (halal) wishes of family members
• · Be selfless and reduce ego

Make Discoveries: Action Items

• · Be persistent in learning new stuff
• · Convert ideas into research papers and publish in top journals (Nature, Phys. Rev. Letters)

To showcase intellectual leadership: Action Items

• · Complete Masters and PhD.
• · Connect with people and understand the issues faced at a civilization level
• · Inspire and guide people through ideas and values

Will keep you posted about my progress. By the way, I do recommend you to try the above exercise if you are not happy with life.