AI for Faith, Focus, and Productivity

balam alikum hi everybody and a warm welcome to yet another episode of the Barakah Blueprint podcast this is the podcast where we align faith and focus to achieve success that truly lasts I'm your host Ibrahim Shareef and before I get started with the second episode I just want to say that I am very grateful to all of you for this amazing Kickstart to the Barakah Blueprint podcast I am very very excited to take this journey to the next step with you guys thank you so much for your support thank you for those of you that reached out privately and separately with your advice and with your feedback please keep it coming and for those of you who left a review this really means a lot I truly appreciate it and keep that coming as well now today's topic is going to be specifically about AI or artificial intelligence how we can leverage this technological advancement both for personal and spiritual growth and what practical ways we can enhance our day-to-day and to bring more Baraka into our lives so let's get started with today's episode in Baraka style before we get started let's define the topic that we're going to be talking about AI or artificial intelligence now this particular tool is no longer in the state where this is aimed for the technical subject matter experts or for corporations but is something that not only we can use we're actually encouraged to use it so this is a tool that is accessible to anybody including yourself there's one thing that you need to keep in mind though which is that this is a tool so just like any other tool it can either be used for distraction and time wasting or it can be used to boost whatever we have and it can be used prod productively so Allah subhana wa ta'ala teaches us in the Quran that we should use the tools that we have received and we should use them with gratitude for example Allah says if you are grateful surely I will give you more and one of the favors that Allah subhana wa ta'ala installs in people and in mankind and in civilizations is advancing evolving growing and in the past couple of decades we have seen tremendous exponential growth and technological advancement we can even see that media has decentralized or democratized as we can call it no longer is it specific satellite channels or cable channels that you can tune in and this is the only way that you can have some form of coverage and verality now I mean do you have a podcast like this you have a YouTube channel for example where you can hey spread something like the Barakah Blueprint podcast or what have you you can have Tik Tok where you can produce your content and go live really this in of itself is a huge advance in the immediate side of things and like we mentioned earlier this can either be for good or for bad you can either use it for something beneficial or you can use it for something harmful the Arabs usually say time is like the sword if you don't use it to cut it will surely be used to cut you H and social media is one of those things as well you can either use it for benefit or you can use it for harm and zombie scroll the turn but what I'm trying to say is and connect it to the previous episode if you use AI like any other tool with proper intention you can actually get rewarded by it and to The non-muslim Listener I would say if you use it with a proper intention and the proper vision for your goal I would say that you will be able to excel far better and far more efficiently than if you didn't have the proper intention for the usage of this tool okay so now we describe the what let's describe the why why does it matter that you use Ai and integrate AI into your personal day-to-day or even your career path number one AI streamlines processes and it's not really about replacing the effort it's about amplifying the impact so it's become a tool that is used to simplify tasks simplify processes streamline processes which would cut the time that you usually take to learn a skill or to even perform a task and cut it ially so they you can use the remainder of your time for another output or for another strategic task for example in my case for example as a project manager I can cut time severely by automating the process of report generation and documentation of all sorts and instead spend the remainder of my time for strictly strategic tasks and well things to do basically so the question now for me is how can I use AI to grow spiritually personally and to advance my career path and this is actually what we're going to be talking about today I'm going to be talking about three things the first thing is using AI to learn a new skill using AI to streamline your tasks and using AI to better your approach to your spiritual self for me this is the most important one and I believe it should be the the most important one for you as a Muslim as well so starting with the first part which is using AI to learn a new skills one of the most powerful uses of AI Bots like chat GPT for example or any other chat bot that you want to use or any other AI functionality is that you can use it for learning there's one thing that I have done when I was studying for my PMP certification I specifically used AI to coach me and teach me and to act like my personal tutor now I I'm not sure that you're going to be able to see this but I'm going to pull up chat GPT right here on my phone and what you can see right here or uh I know it's it's very very blurry at the bottom right there is this advanced voice assistance and this is a perfect conver perfect it's not perfect nothing is perfect in technology everything can be developed it is an amazing technological piece and feature for conversation and the AI is a smart one to the level where you can tailor it to your own personal benefit so for me I used it to coach me during mck exams and study questions and throughout my entire study process when I was trying to study for my PMP certification and what happened here is that it was coaching me to that level telling me what mindset I should have and how I should be thinking how I should be approaching the questions it gave me even tasks and exercises to do and it was perfectly tailored for my learning type we all have different learning types we all learn different tasks and different SK differently some of us are more visual some of us are audio visual some of us are motoric Learners we are different types of Learners so what you can do by tailoring the chatbot or the AI tool to your specific type you will ensure that you have basically a custom tailored tutor or teacher with you in your pocket all the time and with that said the best way AI works is with the correct prompting so when you give prompts that are clear to the point and further tailoring it and repr prompting and repr prompting and repr prompting you will ensure that the further down the funnel you go here you'll ensure that you get the most optimized outlets and the most optimized help from AI this particular process is called prom engineering basically to summarize it in short it's about asking the right questions to get the right answers you can ask it to give you a project plan or teach me coding but if you specifically say what you want to learn what timeline are you looking at what specific context you're learning with or within what tools do you have do you have a Macbook do you have other limitations that the tutor needs to consider so when you give that context you're ensuring that you'll get the most optimal output so an example prompt here is let's say you want to Learn Python you want you want to learn coding and specifically you want to learn the language for python so what you can say here is something like and the best one the better things you can do is you roleplay with chat in this case I'm using chat GPT it's my favorite tool whatever tool you use is up to you claw Gemini whatever personally I recommend chat GPT but anyway one of the better things to do is to roleplay with chat GPT so you tell us for example you're an expert in Python Programming I am a complete beginner I've never done any of this before or I have basic experience with this and that I want you to give me a 30-day blueprint on how I can Master python in this time what resources I should be learning what tasks I should be learning what do I need give me a step-by-step guide and then what will happen is you will get exactly that and then you can further tailor it and say well I don't like this and I don't like that point of the story or point of what I'm trying to say is when you use chat GPT in the context of roleplay you will ensure an even better output because you're giving it a specific task or a specific context that this is you're supposed to answer like a python expert another piece of advice that I can give you is to focus on the at 20 rule which is learning 20% of a skill that can give you 80% of the results so in this case you can further tailor the output of chat GPT by telling it hey well could you focus on a guide that will ensure me learning 20% of the skill and to get 80% of the so and in terms of coding for example this could be learning particular algorithms or particular functions first which means that although you may not have covered the full aspect of the skill that you're trying to learn you have covered a certain part that ensures you master the majority of what you want to achieve and with that said you can use AI to ensure that you work and learn smarter without necessarily working and learning harder now let's talk about how we can use it for task managements this is for me especially as a project manager has been an absolute Game Changer and I really want to share this with you guys so what I have done is I have used it to automate and rewrite professional emails to stakeholders within a project to write minutes of meeting just based off of a transcript so that I don't have to sit and jam a keyboard like a crazy maniac and to those of my colleagues if any are listening to this you know that I have a horrible keyboard so I'm saving you a bit of trouble there as well what I'm trying to say is instead of actively note taking I can ensure that instead I am just having a part of the transcript or the transcript in of itself and AI will create the structured minutes of meeting with the actions you can for example use it to set up meeting agenda to better tailor your communication internally and externally you can use it to provide analysis of reports that you're using at at your work to so it helps you analyze those reports and helps you interpreting those reports now of course this goes without saying this doesn't mean that we fully trust what the AI tool does of course we have to give it some refinement ourselves to those of you who watch Superstore one of my personal favorite TV shows Glenn Sturgis usually said that you need to reread the emails that you write seven times as funny as it is it turned out that he was actually right in what he was saying and with that being said while you may not have to read reread your emails seven times what you can do is or sorry what you should do is make sure to give it a second look before using the output that cat GPT gives you or that the AI tool inquest gives you so in this case again we're we're tying this back to prompt engineering what you should be doing as an example here you could use AI to give you a project timeline or a project plan by asking the chat bot specifically you can even use it for you can use it for role playing hey pretend that you're an exp project manager in X industry so whatever field you're working in I personally work in the fintech industry so this is the example or this is the context that I will be giving the chat bot I will provide it a highlevel overview of the project what is the scope what certain tasks take as a as as time if I can provide it a critical path or if not I can even I can even ask it to provide me a critical path and so on and this will ensure that the chatbot will take care of the smaller details and what I personally can do is I can focus on more prioritized parts of my activities or my day-to- dat but remember this is very important without bar which would initially come from the intention without intention without sincere proper intention this is all just going to be busy work and that's not really what we're here for what we're here for is to have purpose and to ensure that we have purpose so before doing all of this do remember your intention why are you doing all of this why are you taking your time to utilize particular tools so for us as Muslims everything ultimately ties to worship because our entire purpose is worship we need to connect that to our career we need to connect that to our day-to-day tasks everything is worship at the end of the day your project management can be an act of worship for God's sake your football can be an act of worship for God's sake so with that being said I want want to connect us to the third point today which is using AI for spiritual growth now besides chpt or for me I use chip in this case for scheduling my day I schedule my day around Salah around prayers and in this case what I would do is I there's another app that I really like and this app is called so it looks like a it looks like a it's a purple application and I know you can't see the UI very clearly but what I use it for as a it's it's a very intuitive UI where I can just read verse by verse I set a goal for myself a daily reading goal a recitation goal and it has a gamified setup where I can connect to my friends I'll leave my link in the description in the comments H if you do have Quran Le do add me so that we can compete with each other Allah subh says in the Quran when he talks about the people of optimal spiritual growth he says that they are competing in that which is good they are competing in blessings they are competing in acts of worship and this is also how he described the prophets so let's be like that as well and let's compete in in rewards and let's compete in and goodness so do add me so that we can compete with each other in Quran and if you don't have Quran Le get Quran Le download it it's a fantastic app to ensure that you build a habit of reading Quran because that in itself is a catalyst to Growing spiritually so what we do here with this particular setup we ensure that we have Baraka in our life and Baraka in the tools that we are using because what we're doing here is we are utilizing these ad these advances these technological advances to not only our personal growth and not only to our career but also to our faith and to our Iman and with that when you're when you ensure that you have a bit of Quran in the mix you know there are there are certain ingredients that don't take up a significant portion of the dish that you're cooking but they can make this significant difference in taste what I'm trying to tell you is that the Quran is this ingredient while it doesn't have to be the majority of your day it can be the minority of your day that makes the majority of your life successful so ensure that you have a daily routine with the Quran it is very important because God Almighty says verily we are the ones who sent out the scripture and verily we are the ones who will be preserving it the Quran has been preserved for over 14400 years not a single letter has changed not a single pronunciation has changed nothing has changed from the Scripture it is indeed preserved if the scripture is preserved you better believe that its people are preserved you better believe that those that associate themselves with this preserved scripture are themselves going to be preserved they istics are going to be preserved and just like the Quran is protected its people are going to be protected so what I'm saying here is that this is the piece of balance that you need to ensure that your path to success remains protected before I end I just want to emphasize three specific points as a summary of what we have talked about number one avoid over Reliance you shouldn't over rely on anything that tangible literally the only thing that we should over rely on and it's never really over relying but the only entity we rely completely towards is God Almighty and nothing else and everything that is connected to God so AI as a tangible item shouldn't be something that you should over rely on use it for your advantage delegate tasks to it but always give it a second look to ensure that the output is correct second thing is that we need to ensure that we have boundaries so it shouldn't be contributing to an excess mive amount of screen time as it's not really that beneficial for us what we out to do is that we ensure that these tools however beneficial they are that they are used for our advantage and that we are the ones that control it not that it controls us and with that the final thought here is balance it is very important that you ensure that whatever you are working with has Baraka and provides you directly or indirectly bar using it purely for tangible things and limited things while it may be successful for you in the short term you won't have the optimal long-term success for the very simple reason that you don't have a part or ingredient of Baraka it's completely missing ensure that you are using it for use it for worship use it like any other tool to connect to God Almighty in my case I use it for Quran in my case I use it to schedule my time around prayer make sure that you do the same or as much as you possibly can to connect it to your spiritual growth and with that being said I want to thank you so very very much for tuning in on yet another episode of the Barakah Blueprint podcast this is podcast where we align Faith with Focus to achieve success that truly lasts I am so happy to have had you listen to this entire episode please give this a like a follow whichever platform you're listening on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube make sure to give me a follow or subscription to ensure sure that you're staying up to dat with the Barakah Blueprint content if you find the content beneficial please share it with your friends and family to ensure that the Baraka is spreading to everybody around us and that you together with me can get an optimal rewards and optimal hassat please do give this podcast a review so that I know what I'm doing which is good or what I can do to further improve my Approach thank you so very much until next time stay productive stay purposeful and stay faithful anabolica Style