Procrastination and Impatience

I came across this piece of research somewhere which shows a positive corelation between procrastination (laziness) and impatience. It means that both are to be found in a same person at a time.

I talked to a competent psychatrist about it and he noded in yes stating that one is the cause of the other and vice versa. Procrastination is destined to lead one to become impatient, irritated and haphazard. However, what are the causes of it? According to him, procrastination is caused due to following set of reasons:

1. Lack of priorities.
2. Abscence of time-frame in which to accomplish work.

Have these and you're prone to procrastinate. And when the time limit comes to near end, instantly one becomes active, so to say over-active, becoming impatient. Cure one, and you cure the other.

Art

"Art is a sacred lie."

- Allama Iqbal, Stray Reflections.

A Case Study of Kot Addu Flood Relief Project

Read the report here, Its a big mess pasting whole thing from doc here and then modifying it.

Carrying out Relief Missions for Flood Affected People: A Case Study of Kot Addu Project

New Logo for ESEF

Elementary Society to Excel in Future - Pakistan - or ESEF is a welfare organization with taste for Islamic spirituality as well, run by elite Pakistani university students (almost all undergrad now), have developed a new logo of their own. I'm loving it.

ESEF, founded in 2008, works on the basic principle of networking effort to serve Pakistan and Muslim Ummah at large. Currently they're heavily engaged in guiding young students in career choices and doing welfare activities of all sorts. It will see growth on intellectual and practical fronts in future, God willing.

For now - the logo.

One Sinister Enemy of Learning: Fear

Cost/managerial accounting is a major business course which all students of management go through. It is taught by one of most established and expert teacher/scholar in Pakistan. It has reputation of being unaccessible to simple-minded people who lack intellectual rigor. I was afraid of it, thanks to word-of-mouth of seniors. But that's just an external excuse. It was my internal mistake (a cause) that made me nervous about it, as i had to think hard about this course. I enjoyed being in class and solving cases and problem as instructor was there, who was also very accessible to us and went to great length to answer our questions, no matter how stupid. Nonetheless, when it came to self-study, i often had problems breathing well. especially when i attempted to understand its intricate theory and frameworks and tried to apply it complex cases (which is very typical of case method). Data used to be huge and thinking/intellect had to deployed in platoons to tackle any topic in that course. That's why it was fearsome

However, final papers turned to be good due to organized dedicated, directed and group work: this gives us an insight into how to succeed in exams on last day - with a disciplined friend, we systematically chased each chapter and won over it being very consistent over a span of 12-14 hours.

To say the least, this is one of most valuable courses (especially its book) i've have took in business. For instance, one recent grad of my school of management working, although as non-accounting operations management told me how useful this book on managerial accounting had been on the production floor - each day he had to refer to it, literally.

It all came back the memory of it as flash back when i was browsing through SSRN.com and found a paper on Activity-Based Cost accounting, which is a hot field in managerial accounting these days. We studied it as well. . I quote the excerpt of the abstract to illustrate my point about uselessness of fear when it comes to learning:

[Excerpt] It is essential to understand that ABC is a method that tries to frame data in a managerial decision making context. Models, figures and theories only have value to the extent that they help us to understand and explain what happens in the company. ABC is an allocation method cum story: it is an arbitrary way to allocate costs - as arbitrary as any other allocation method - but it helps in communicating how the (production) process works and, therefore, tries to upgrade the value of accounting in the decision making process. If, e.g., a good driver is found and if there is statistical evidence that supports the choice of and/or work-floor feeling on such a driver, using this cost driver in the calculations of product (line) profitability makes the accounting much more vivid and important to decision making.

Mr. Van Schenkel, founder and owner of small company producing colour printed T-shirts, has some ideas on why multi-coloured T-shirts are more expensive in production than T-shirts with fewer colours printed on them. Process mapping and accounting data are available to set up an ABC system that will allow to test the validity of Mr. Van Schenkel's ideas and to come to better accounting calculations of product profitability.

You can see how the author is applying theory and making it practical. This is a simple demonstration of higher level of learning: experimentation, application = usefulness. Had been more fearless of the burden of reputation of the course and its demanding nature, i'd have turned out to be a better citizen. And i happy i have learned this insight.

See the example and you'll get just how useful the concepts of managerial accounting is for entrepreneurship, SME's and all kinds of organization. It should be all research (read: play) with all seriousness - I'm not denying pain at all, which is part and parcel of (higher) learning. nothing can help a too fearful and shy a learner in the path of getting useful knowledge. To say the least, one has to be fearless in outlook when s/he approaches knowledge. And habit of tinkering with stuff be encouraged. It's an engineer's attitude, that's why we trust them.

What are your comments?

Appearance and Reality: An astonishing recitation by Qari Antar

Please read translation with the recitation to purify and warm your hearts.

Dear Rushdie... (A Guest Post)

Copyright. Uni: Sniggers and Sniffles of a moron

(What follows is a response to Salman Rushdie's letter denigrating religious traditions answered by a Pakistani blogger, link to whose blog is given in start of the post. Italics text is Rushdie's words, green is by the Pakistani blogger, "Uni".)

***

Rushdie: Dear little Six - Billionth Living Person: As one of the newest members of a notoriously inquisitive species, it probably won't be too long before you start asking the two $64,000 questions with which the other 5,999,999,999 of us have been wrestling for some time.
How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?

Uni: Dear Rushdi. As one of the newest member of the notoriously sneering species, it is a pleasure to note that you at least admit that the whatever dollar questions remain unanswered - still being wrestled with.

Oddly - as if six billion of us weren't enough to be going on with - it will almost certainly be suggested to you that the answer to the question of origins requires you to believe in the existence of a further, invisible, innefable Being "somewhere up there", an omnipotent creature whom we poor limited creatures are unable even to perceive, much less to understand. That is, you will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven, with at least one god in residence.

Oddly, it has occured to you that we the inquisitive EXIST and all on our own... function and procreate, all on our own... the entire universe runs smoothly all on its own - down to the whole factory running within a single cell - all on its own. The fact that you're unable to percieve THIS little piece of clear logic, is what's beyond us poor creatures.

This sky god, it's said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Or, he danced. Or, he vomited creation out of himself. Or, he simply called it into being, and lo, it Was. In some of the more interesting creation stories, the singly mighty sky god is subdivided into many lesser forces - junior dieties, avatars, gigantic metamorphic "ancestors" whose adventures create the landscape, or the whimsical, wanton, meddling, cruel pantheons of the great polytheisms, whose wild doings will convince you that the real engine of creation was lust; for infinite power, for too easily broken human bodies, for clouds of glory. But it's only fair to add that there are also stories which offer the message that the primary creative impulse was, and is, love.

Creation stories might be many - yes, but the truth is only one. If you're not convinced by it, cool. But this gives you no right to ridicule all the versions with a singlemindedness worthy of an award, really. You can't prove your theory, even if you're unconvinced by the opposing theory. There are far too many out there who (despite, not having seen it)... believe in God. And you don't find them ridiculing the opinions you hold.

Many of these stories will strike you extremely beautiful, and therefore seductive.

No. That's not the reason why we believe in them. Sorry. Wrong guess.

It is possible that they may at some point come to feel inescapable, not in the way that the truth is inescapable, but in the way that a jail is. They may at some point cease to feel like the texts in which human beings have tried to solve a great mystery, and feel, instead, like the pretexts for other properly anointed human beings to order you around. And it's true that human history is full of the public oppression wrought by the charioteers of the gods.
In the opinion of religious people, however, the private comfort that religion brings more than compensates for the evil done in its name.

Firstly, for people who do believe in God (with their hearts and minds) do not feel the truth to be like a jail, confining them. So wrong guess here again. And secondly, the teaching of human beings that led to this truth, wasn't forced upon us. Nobody pointed a gun at us to believe in God. And thus, the argument that they only did it to order us around, stands totally invalid. The fact is, that evil can take any excuse for committing evil. If religion is one such excuse, then the blame on religion itself is foolish. Go blame those particular people.

As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right. There was no celestial churning, no maker's dance, no vomiting of galaxies, no snake or kangaroo ancestors, no Valhalla, no Olympus, no six-day conjuring trick followed by a day of rest. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Your opinion, your opinion, your opinion. We don't consider the creation process as wrong.

But here's something genuinly odd. The wrongness of the sacred tales hasn't lessened the zeal of the devout in the least. If anything, the sheer out-of-step zaniness of religion leads the religious to insist ever more stridently on the importance of blind faith.

It's not blind. As I said (and I'm a believer so I know what I'm saying), the decision is a sound one, made by the heart and mind. If you don't believe that, your problem.

As a result of this faith, by the way, lt has proved impossible, in many parts of the world, to prevent the human race's numbers from swelling alarmingly. Blame the overcrowded planet at least partly on the misguidedness of the races spiritual guides. In your own lifetime, you may witness the arrival of the nine billionth world citizen. (If too many people are being born as a result, in part, of religious strictures against birth control, then too many people are also dying because religious culture, by refusing to face the facts of human sexuality, also refuses to fight against sexually transmitted diseases.)

Weird it is, that you, not having had control of when to enter this world (did you decide your birthday hmm?), and not in control of when you'll leave this world... think it's prudent to think that we all have control over the population size of this planet?

There are those who say that the great wars of the new century will once again be wars of religion, jihads and crusades, as they were in the Middle Ages. I don't believe them, or not in the way they mean it. Take a look at the Muslim world, or rather the Islamist world, to use the word coined to describe Islam's present day "political arm". The divisions between its great powers (Afghanistan against Iran against Iraq against Saudi Arabia against Syria against Egypt) are what strike you most forcefully. There's very little resembling a common purpose. Even after the non-Islamic NATO fought a war for the Muslim Kosovan Albanians, the Muslim world was slow in coming forward with much needed humanitarian aid.

Oh you don't need to remind us about the ''efforts'' of the Muslim nations right now. They are deplorable. But we also know that it's the leaders of these states that are quite oblivious to events around them. Not the common man. If the common man were like this, there would be no flotilla towards Gaza .. knowing that Israeli forces aren't going to give them a red carpet welcome. And btw, the war b/w religions is already going on. And yes, ideology remains the key war instigator even now.

The real wars of religion are the wars religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their "sphere of influence." They are wars of the godly against the largely defenceless - American fundamentalists against pro-choice doctors, Iranian mullahs against their country's Jewish minority, Hindu fundamentalists in Bombay against that city's increasingly fearful Muslims.

If you're calling state laws as wars... then even more weird is that you didn't mention in this list of yours one very very important one... the policies of the state of Israel, the policies of India on Kashmiri Muslims... it's not only the godly who impose their laws. Secular governments do the same thing. If one opinion is unacceptable to you, doesn't mean you go about calling it war and then select a subset of state policies as examples. Puny indeed.

The victors in that war must not be the closed-minded, marching into battle with, as ever, God on their side. To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities. So, how did we get here? Don't look for the answer in story books. Imperfect human knowledge may be a bumpy, pot-holed street, but it's the only road to wisdom worth taking. Virgil, who believed that the apiarist Aristaeus could spontaneously generate new bees from the rotting carcess of a cow, was closer to a truth about origins than all the revered old books.

To choose unbelief is your choice, we're open to believing in God, despite you thinking of it as being closed minded. Trusting in humanity can't go side by side with belief in God? Apparently, you haven't read much into history. Imperfect human knowledge was enlightened with scriptures, and this knowledge was the source of illumination for a great number of minds. And then you ask, how did we get here? Didn't you, in the beginning talk about this as a notoriously inquisitive display to ask these questions? Consistent, aren't you?

The ancient wisdoms are modern non-senses.

Live in your own time, use what we know and, as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you and put aside childish things. As the song says, "It's easy if you try."

As for mortality, the second great question - how to live? What is right action, and what wrong?- it comes down to your willingness to think for yourself. Only you can decide if you want to be handed down the law by priests, and accept that good and evil are somehow external to ourselves.

The blind wanderings and backtrackings of modern sciences is also a lot of claptrap, no worries. And sure, go ahead with this logical mode. Hand over the morality reigns to each and everybody's own individual self. So if a thief thinks its moral to steal (because he/she felt it inside that its okay!), then don't blame him. Sure.

To my mind, religion - even at its most sophisticated - essentially infantalizes our ethical selves by setting infallible moral Arbiters and irredeemably immoral Tempters above us; the eternal parents, good and bad, light and dark, of the supernatural realm.

To each, his or her own. We don't (and won't) mock your ideas. Follow what you will, but at least you shouldn't mock the things you don't agree with.

How, then, are we to make ethical choices without a divine rulebook or judge?

You're not supposed to. That's the thing, see.

Intellectual freedom, in European history, has mostly meant freedom from the restraints of the Church and not the state.

The Church men had made the laws that were suffocating mankind. Christianity had nothing to do with it. Even now, the lobbying for doing away with celibacy laws prove that the original teaching did NOT contain celibacy - nothing unnatural is ever promulgated in the main religions.

This is the battle Voltaire was fighting, and it's also what all six billion of us could do for ourselves, the revolution in which each of us could play our small, six-billionth part; once and for all we could refuse to allow priests, and the fictions on whose behalf they claim to speak, to be the policemen of our liberties and behavior. Once and for all we could put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatized and plain.

You mean, see the world in chaos and disorder. Even right now, the world's in disorder because of lack of belief in accountability (yes, even by those who CLAIM they're following religion and do heinous crimes - all acts of people who don't believe in God, Hereafter and Judgement).

Imagine there's no heaven, my dear Six-Billionth, and at once the sky's the limit.

Imagine a Just God, and imagine trying to follow His Teachings, being good to fellow humans and doing good in all spheres of life. The sky is certainly the limit.

Top 10 Sites I visit whenever I open Internet Explorer

It doesn't mean that I only use Internet Explorer, which I have to use when Chrome of FireFox don't work. It means - I asked myself what do i do everytime i use internet, i.e., what sites i almost always visit. This would help me become more self-conscious, maybe, of what I am now. Those who 'compete on the edge' live in today, (see Competing on the Edge, HBSP).

1. Gmail
Thou my GHQ, my runway, my shuttle, my launching pad to travel to Mars and beyond, my baby, my kabootar (pigeon), my post office, my railway, my aeroplane. Enough.

2. Google
For reference guide to anything of which i am ignorant except getting information on Islamic law and theology. What I cherish most about it is whenever i come across a new worthy author, Google makes me happy by allowing to delve deep into the bio of the author, although i can contain very erratic information uploaded by heinous beings. Recently it helped me understand better two very important Muslim (convert) scholars: John Ahmed Herlihy, whose Modern Man at the Crossroads, chapter # 2 on origins of man (scientific and religious critique of macro-evolution) i'm reading these days; and Sheikh Ragip Robert Frager al Jerrahi, an amazing psychologist who is also a sufi and his works integrate psychology (of west) and sufism. Both are very important authors who have written widely, who know modern world better than anyone but at the same are well-versed in modern science and traditional world-view of Islam and spirituality, as well. They deserve wide and intense readership, especially by modern young Muslim who faces the challenges of modernity to Tradition and religious world-view of Islam.

Apart from that, i browse it for pics for this blogs... And for fighter jet images, can't forget that.

3. ESEF: Elementary Society to Excel in Future (Estd. 2008)
ESEF is a non-political, yet not lacking political baseerat (insight/vision), social welfare and spiritual organization founded by high school (FSc, Pakistan) toppers back in 2008. It right now entertains young students seeking career counselling for undergrad education through its website and test preparation services (off-net). its students are very charitable who visit social welfare institutions in groups to get inspired, for they love service to mankind. Responding to flood crisis in Pakistan, they are raising funds and have volunteers on stand-by ready to be deployed with a given plan in any affected area, inshaAllah.
Old Website.
New Website.

4. SSRN
My academic love is flourishing with SSRN these days, may it never see a fall. Social Science Research Network, mashaAllah, is the best free research papers website covering (almost) all fields in social science, from public policy to management (all business fields covered) to philosophy and English literature, and what not. Perhaps more than 80% top research papers or cases are for free to view and download! Wholesale! Just register with an email and commence operation unbounded research!

5. Dr Asad Zaman's website
Its grace of God that I've discovered this man first in Intellect Magazine, which published his life-story from darkness (disbelief, atheism) to Nur Allah (light, Islam), and then i found him and his research work on net. Links to his websites are as follows:

• Personal website (containing links to all of his works and other sites as well)
• His papers on SSRN
• Islamic Economics Research
• Newspaper Articles

6. InfoTrac-College.Com
With over 20 million articles in all subjects, this is a researcher's choice to be at. Access is not free for all, only with a password, often given freely with a "Thomson Learner's" text, can one log in and enjoy the spring of unlimited access to unlimited research topics, newspaper, journals and what not.
if you want access to it, just email at: i.umer.toor@gmail.com. i'll be very happy to share it with you :)

7. Youtube
Usually I consume it to enlighten my soul and intellect lectures by hamza yusuf, abdal hakim murad, Nuh Mim Keller, Islamic convert story (interesting research area for social scientists), tilawah, etc.

8. Hamza's Book Writing Effort: Astronomy for Teens
This haphazardly design site is dedicated to assist (hopefully) a 14-year old Pakistani student writing an introductory book on astronomy. News chapters are uploaded on it, and bibliography is being maintained. He deserves much attention and appreciation. You'll find his writing to be fluent and accurate, though with pardonable grammatical errors, for his knowledge of history and of science is quite up-to-date. He doesn't just memorize facts, which are crucial, but also entertains me with his hypothesis.

What he needs at this point is rigorous education in astronomy. He has just read Hawking's A Brief History of Time, but couldn't fully understand complex ideas. Secondly, we also needs directions on the content and form of the book. Astronomy professors would do it.

9. Masud.co.uk
Hosts almost all articles and links to the other works, audios, etc of Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad (click to visit) and Shaykh Nuh Mim Keller.

10. Towards the Reign of 'Quality': Umer Toor's Blog
Only for you.

Thought of the Day

"Posssessors of knowledge and seekers of knowledge are the only two groups of any use to humanity."

- Muhammad (may God be pleased with him and bless)

How important, thus, it comes to know even the true nature of knowledge and to classify it.

Alpha and Omega: Why Muslims must excel in Scientific Research

Copyright/write - Dr. M. Zaman Khan,
Tranlsated (& notes) by, Yours Truly.

Many Pakistani professors, with the exception of few noble souls, follow this line of pattern: They come, they teach Western science, glorify it, make pupils memorize it, and then criticize their students of their impotence, as concluding remarks. However, rarely they are self-critical of the fact that they do very little research at their own, locally. If they do so, only then they can have the moral authority of criticizing young students about their lack of interest in scientific research. This matter of doing research locally is first and the last thing Pakistani and Muslim teachers and students should be aware of.

Why it is so? According to a Prophetic tradition of Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him), a non-believing man once came to him and challenged him a match of wrestling. He said he could beat ten persons at a time. Prophet accepted the challenge and beat him three times in a row. Impressed by his physical strength, the non-believer could not resist believing his religious message. Therefore, he accepted Islam.

The example illustrates that if you are impressed by one aspect or part of a person or a thing, you are also prone to be impressed by its whole. One reason for studying science and doing independent research lies in this psychological aspect of human being to preserve one’s own identity, world-view and civilization. If we go back it time and explore Muslim history, there was a time when Greek philosophy and sciences were encountered by Muslims. When Muslim youth experienced the brilliance of Greek science (mathematics, physics, etc.) they could not avoid taking Greek metaphysics and religious knowledge as sound as its physical sciences. It was a grave mistake from Islamic point of view. They could not decide what to take, and what to reject.

The very same problem is being encountered by contemporary Muslim youth getting education based on Western models and content. Today, as then, they study Western science and research, which is of top quality, and they cannot remain unimpressed by its vitality. But, they mistakenly consider that Western social sciences and their views on religion would be as accurate and sound as their physical sciences. Truth is that the results of their social sciences and views on religion have been disastrous for humanity, completely opposite to their success in physical sciences*. Their religious world-views need to be studied at all as a source of guidance by Muslim youth blessed with the gift of Islam.

Our future needs in science are not being met due a lack of interest in research. Due to this gap and inferiority complex generated by this very reason vis-à-vis Western science, we also observe that contemporary Muslim universities teaching non-religious sciences don’t value much their religious educational institutions. Having seen the importance of ‘innovation’, ‘change’ and ‘evolution’ in scientific theories and experimentation, they come to fancy that religion (i.e., of Islam) would be something similar to a laboratory experiment or a science text-book which needs to be updated regularly. Nothing can be farther from truth than this, due to the ‘eclipse of intellect and soul’, in words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr**.

To avoid this clash and to bridge this gap, it is indispensable to meet the need of scientific research in Muslim world. If this cannot be done, then it is safe to fear that our future generations cannot overcome the inferiority complex vis-à-vis west; and they may end up depriving themselves, and humanity, of treasures of religious knowledge of Islam and also a sense of Sacred, to which we owe our existence, which is supreme science.

________________________
* Prof. Dr. Asad Zaman, International Islamic University, has written a research paper discussing this very fact. He compares the tragic consequences of Western social sciences for humanity. See, The Origins of Western Social Science, Dr Asad Zaman available on his personal website: http://sites.google.com/site/asaduzaman. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ph.D. Harvard in history and philosophy of science, has also shown the tragic consequence of Western humanism for environment, see his book, Religion and the Order of the Nature, Suhail Academy, Lahore.

** For a refutation of this and similar modern mental fashions and erratic views on religion, see The Reign of Quantity; The Crisis of Modern World; East and West, by Rene Guenon, Islam and the Plight of Modern Man; Knowledge and Sacred; Islamic Life and Thought; Science, Civilization and Islam, by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr.