What happens around us often affects us more than we want it to. If you find yourself being inconsistent with your plan, identify the cause and come up with a strategy to overcome the obstacle that’s preventing you from being consistent.

A sure way to become consistent is to build a habit of memorising and revising, rather than relying on motivation. Habit can trump discipline and motivation any day, because it’s something you do without thinking, and becomes second nature.

Attach your Hifdh plan to existing habits.

For example, you go to work/place of study every day, and the commute time is 1 hour. Instead of wasting 1 hour scrolling through social media, make the most of it by dedicating that time to Hifdh. In the beginning, it will take some discipline and motivation to rewire your brain, but eventually, you’ll be whipping out your portable Mushaf or opening your Quran app rather than opening up social media. Focus on creating the right neural pathway.

There is the ideal Hifdh plan for the ideal day, but sometimes the ideal day doesn’t happen, so we have to adapt to make sure we don’t leave out the Hifdh plan completely.

It would be better to revise what you learnt yesterday or last week than not to revise anything at all.

Work on maintaining the house you built rather than making it bigger when you’re busy or short on time.

If you don’t do Hifdh consistently because you feel like you should memorise either one page or nothing, remember:

قَلِيلٌ دَائِمٌ خَيْرٌ مِنْ كَثِيرٍ مُنْقَطِعٍ

A little that is consistent is better than a lot that is interrupted.

Learning 2 or 3 lines or half a page is better than nothing. The key is in compounding your efforts. If you happen to remain in this state, where you memorise just a few verses daily instead of your targeted page, over time, you are more likely to have made greater progress than if you had kept waiting for the time to tackle a whole page.

Plus, the feeling that you successfully memorised 3 lines is better than the feeling of defeat. The small triumph will fuel you to come back for more and keep up your habit.

PARTS IN THIS SERIES

  1. Introduction
  2. Errors in Recitation
  3. Stuck on a Difficult Verse
  4. Similar Verses (المُتَشَابِهَات)
  5. Struggling to Recall How the Next Verse/Page Starts
  6. Struggling to Recalling How Verses End
  7. Forgetting
  8. Being Consistent
  9. Lack of Motivation
  10. Difficulty Focusing
  11. Not Reflecting and Understanding
  12. Reflections & Resources