Three Academic Habits to Do Again and Again and Again Until You Die.

psst, it's reading, note taking and writing (professors hate these tips, publishers are repulsed by these tips, oh just read it)

Introduction to the Series

Alhamdulillah, with the grace of his highness, I have been able to become calm, consistent and content in Academia. As I wrote in my previous post, Adab in Academia, it’s the philosophical basis of such an understanding of life that helped me order life and be calm in an increasingly or ever anxious world. Do give it a read, if you haven’t already.

Adab in Academia: From Episteme to Everyday

As I wrote there, Adab is about the material things as much as it is about the metaphysical things. The everyday as much as the episteme. It is about recognising the proper order of things, and the recognition entails the recognition of the need for praxis too and actually doing it, and hence fulfilling our proper place in the order of things as Allah has intended. This would mean understanding (recognising) the best ways to make use of our time as Academics and the best methods to do them. This might be a familiar emotion in a neo-liberal world, where we are marching towards progress, for no particular reason other than material profit and prosperity. In Adab, efficiency is done on the basis of Ihsan. In the profound Hadith about Ihsan, one understands that Ihsan is about doing things as if you can see Allah, because even if we do not see him, he sees us. What makes Ihsan different from capitalistic notions of productivity and efficiency is that this is tied not to profit but to worship and to the possibility of going to Jannah. What this entails is that Allah asks us only what is possible of us, and he’s kind to us. We are not kind to ourselves, we are bad masters. We demand too much of us and are harsh towards ourselves when we miss something or has fallen back a bit in stuff, especially Academia. Allah is kind to us and thus we feel at ease, we feel more calm in doing the work, because Allah only demands us of the effort, the result is his to give or deny.

This series of writings are part of a lecture series I am running online titled ‘How to Read, Write and Research’. I started this because I found out that Alhamdulillah, I am getting a lot of Academic work done efficiently and the techniques I have could help my peers. I genuinely wish to share everything I know to all of my friends and enemies so that we can grow together in the path of ilm, which is one of the blessed paths to Allah.

PS: Message me if you wish to attend the next few lectures.

The Foundation: Three Consistent Practices

The first lecture of the series is titled: Three Academic Habits to Do Again and Again and Again Until You Die.

No secrets here, they are reading regularly, taking notes regularly and writing regularly. What I wish to tell you is not to do these things, but rather share with you some of the methods to do this efficiently, these are things that has been taught to me by several brilliant people from all over the world through many channels, Alhamdulillah.

Before writing about these, a quick remembrance of the Hadith,

حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ الْعَزِيزِ بْنُ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ، حَدَّثَنَا سُلَيْمَانُ، عَنْ مُوسَى بْنِ عُقْبَةَ، عَنْ أَبِي سَلَمَةَ بْنِ عَبْدِ الرَّحْمَنِ، عَنْ عَائِشَةَ، أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ "‏ سَدِّدُوا وَقَارِبُوا، وَاعْلَمُوا أَنْ لَنْ يُدْخِلَ أَحَدَكُمْ عَمَلُهُ الْجَنَّةَ، وَأَنَّ أَحَبَّ الأَعْمَالِ أَدْوَمُهَا إِلَى اللَّهِ، وَإِنْ قَلَّ ‏"‏

Narrated `Aisha: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately and know that your deeds will not make you enter Paradise, and that the most beloved deed to Allah is the most regular and constant even if it were little."

Sahih al-Bukhari 6464

Consistency over quality, Insha Allah, I will write about habit formations from an Adabi perspective later, but let this be here for now.

Habit # 1 Reading Regularly

If you are in Academia, reading is the most…. you know what read, okay, this is your job.

The techniques I draw are from an essay by Mathew Walther titled ‘THE ONE HUNDRED PAGES STRATEGY’, I highly recommend it to all of you. Below are some takeaways mixed with some experiences of mine.

1. Always have a reading list ready. At no point in your life should you be thinking, hmm, what to read next. You are in the reading business, start a reading list if you haven’t already and don’t worry, be calm, you’ll never finish it. You are not here on this earth to read all the books published ever right from Season 1 Episode 1, you are here to worship Allah and get to Jannah, so only worry about that. The rest of these work, be calm about it. It’s all secondary. Your worth is determined by how close you are to Allah, not by the number of academic texts you have devoured.

2. If you have a list, or are making one, categorise your reading into two:

   1. Heavy Reading (Usually anything that needs annotation and a lot of highlighting and brain power)

   2. Light Reading (Things that you can just read away)

   I have deliberately avoided any other terms because these can be different for different people at different circumstances, for me fiction and anthropology are light reading (usually, unless it’s Talal Asad, then it’s impossible reading for me, cries) and Philosophy or other Social Sciences/Humanities/Science/Math are Heavy reading for me.

3. Now that you have a reading list, choose two slots for reading through out the day, Mathew recommends and I concur on an hour of heavy reading in the morning and 40 minutes of light reading in the afternoon after lunch (yeah that time when you scroll lying on your back). These are the minimum reading times, Maximum, do as much as you can of course while maintaining justice to other needs in life. But these two times, never miss these. Even if you can only read for a very small amount of time due to some special day, maintain the habit. Also be kind to yourself.

4. When you are sitting down to read, distraction is your devil, the phone is merely a tool in his hand. The whole of duniya is distraction, set a timer for an hour or thirty minutes and keep your phone away. Alternatively, I have found an App called Regain and the focus mode on it to be very useful (it lets you use the phone but blocks selected apps during focus mode, oh it also blocks reels on Instagram)

Remember, the list will never be over, that’s not your goal. Your goal is to sit down everyday and read until you die.

Habit # 2 Taking Notes Regularly

You might already be taking notes of some sort unless you are a chitti the robot who scans books and memorises them. It’s an academician’s dream to be able to get back to that old note you wrote at the back of the laundry receipt some years ago that had a profound epiphany and could’ve changed your life. Well the methods I suggest have given me exactly that, giving me a central repository of my notes that I can search and recall whenever necessary. Taking notes is also what will transform you from a reader to a writer, because when you read, usually it is at that second your face lits up and you go, ah interesting, I would like to add something to that, like we do in a chai conversation with our friends. But, unlike those conversations, we need to document these instances so that we can use them later. I have three levels of note taking I usually do:

1. The quick notes from lectures, passing web/print articles. I usually write them on my phone on an app called OneNote. This is just for quick notes, ideas, thoughts etc.

2. For Academic Papers, book chapters and other medium-length texts, almost always read them on your laptop. Use Zotero to annotate and take notes. This is where you will be directly marking quotations, finding and noting down and connecting things to new thoughts.

3. For longer works, like Book length things, read them on a Kindle or a tablet if possible, so that you can digitally annotate and export the notes when necessary.

4. At the end, I personally follow a very specific method of note taking called Zettelkasten using a digital note taking App called Obsidian. All my notes from my phone from One Note, Zotero and Kindle/Book readings are finally stored on Obsidian. It works by linking together your notes, helping you generate new ideas. It’d be an understatement to say that it has revolutionised my Academic Writing. Below is one video, the only video you should watch to set up your Obsidian (don’t watch anything else, strict warning).

Habit # 3 Writing Regularly

I understand, you may say, and are probably, thinking: Who am I to Write? I am not old or knowledgeable enough to write. This would be true if you were an illiterate person who has never read a book (even then you know what others say). But no, you are at least a student in their BA, where you have read things. Academic writing is the process of joining a conversation as I mentioned in the second habit, They (the people on text, or society, or anyone other than you) are saying something and you are saying Um, Actually, I would like to add to that and you say your own opinion. The thing about opinions is that everyone’s got one, you too. Write it down. It might be bullshit, but if it’s bullshit you’ll know soon enough because people will let you know, if it’s not and makes some sense then people will probably stay silent or say a word or two in reply, recognising your point. Don’t think that you will reach a stage in life where you will be qualified enough to write, that stage is over, it was when you were in 10th standard and passed the state run exams. Congratulations, you are allowed to write. (Jazakallah Khair to Prof. Rizwan Ahmed from Qatar University, who set me up on this path and gave me the advice and confidence.)

Some concrete advices I have are:

1. Try to write at least two properly researched articles per month of the length 1500-2000 words, with proper citation format.

2. List down ideas you want to write about on your One Note App the moment it comes to you (you will forget it, definitely forget it if you keep it for later.)

3. The Zettelkasten method that the guy from the youtube video will give you countless genuine writing ideas that are very unique and things that only you can articulate and say.

4. Set an hour aside for writing every day, yes everyday and always have some or the other writing idea on hand. Like I mentioned about reading, you should never be thinking what should I write, because if you follow the note taking methods I suggest, you will have at least 10 ideas you would want to shout to the world passionately in a week of reading and note taking.

A final word.

Be kind to yourself, your worth and value is not determined by your academic output or achievements, it is by how close you are to Allah. That is what matters the most in life. Be kind to yourself after failures and discipline yourselves when you are about be lazy. May Allah give us barakah in our life and Ilm. May Allah accept from us all.