You spent 30 days with the book of Allah, reading it, listening to it, contemplating it, but suddenly you’re back to your regular routine, and things don’t feel the same.
The motivation isn’t there, you feel rusty, and reading just a single page at a time feels like climbing a mountain!
What can you practically do to keep the Quran as part of your daily life?
Here are 5 tips on how to maintain a daily habit of reciting Allah’s book.
1- Don’t do it alone!
If Allah wanted, He could have simply revealed the Quran in full to the Prophet ﷺ without anyone in between…
But He (S.W.T) sent Jibril (A.S) to teach it.
The Prophet ﷺ would revise the Quran with Jibril every Ramadan, and twice in the final Ramadan of his life ﷺ .
What can we take from that?
You don’t have to go at this alone.
A big mistake many people make when trying to build any skill or habit is doing it all on their own.
But, as the famous saying goes:
“If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
Having a teacher is ideal, but even if you don’t, just having a friend there to motivate and hold you to account will make a huge difference in your Quranic goals.
Set a daily or weekly check-up, try reading together, and have a system in place to make sure you’re reaching your daily milestones.
“Did you read X pages today?”
“Have you recited Surah Kahf this Friday?”
“Have you memorized your ayat for this week?”
2- Focus on what you can do
Another major trap people can fall into is setting unrealistic expectations for themselves.
Maybe you found yourself reading 10 pages, 20, a whole juz a day during Ramadan,
But now doing even a fraction of that feels infinitely harder, and you’re feeling demotivated.
Look, Ramadan is the month of more… you will push yourself past your limit in that month in your worship, in your recitation, etc.
And that’s exactly the point, you can’t expect yourself to be the same throughout the year!
The important thing is consistency.
If the most you can do is a page, half a page, or even a few verses a day, then stick to it.
Don’t let a day pass without opening the book of Allah.
3- Memorize
Having a clear goal and direction in mind makes the journey a lot easier.
For most, that goal comes down to memorizing the Quran.
Memorization demands repetition, over and over,
You force yourself to become intimately acquainted with each and every ayah you read.
It’s a small but achievable task that will help you become more fluid in your recitation.
Set aside time dedicated purely to memorization:
15, 20, 30 minutes a day focused on a select few verses you recite repeatedly.
Maybe you can dedicate that time between your prayers, before you head to work, or during your lunch breaks.
Another great aspect of memorization is that it demands revision too, so when you do it right, you will find yourself returning to each surah you learn again, and again.
4- Use the power of moments
Time is a major crutch for most people.
Work, studies, family commitments, all get in the way of the relationship with the Quran you’ve always wanted.
But here’s the thing; nobody has time!
Chances are your schedule in Ramadan was just as busy as the rest of the year…
The difference is that you made time for the Quran.
Now committing the same amount of time might not be sustainable year-round, but in principle you can always allocate small amounts time within your schedule to spend with the Quran.
Whether it’s listening to it on your daily commute to work, reading a few pages on the bus home from school or university, reciting before you go to sleep etc.
Be intelligent with those smaller moments, and you will find more opportunities to recite than you realized.
5- Take advantage of the sunnah!
Many of us have this idea that reading the Quran has to always be a cover-to-cover effort, as if just reciting it off from memory or opening up a random page isn’t the same.
But why is that?
Does reciting a surah you know already not count?
There are moments throughout the week tied in with specific passages and verses of the Quran, that we know carry major reward.
So make the intention to recite those too:
Abu Sa’eed al Khudri narrates that the Prophet ﷺ said:
“Whoever recites Surat al-Kahf on Friday, a light will shine for him between this Friday and the next.”
[Bayhaqi]
Make Surah Kahf a part of your jummah routine! At the very least the first 10 verses.
Jaabir reported that the Prophet ﷺ would not sleep without reciting Surah as-Sajdah and Surah al-Mulk [Hadith in Tirmidhi]
So make them a part of your bedtime routine!
Abu Huraira reported that the Prophet ﷺ said:
“Do not turn your houses into graveyards. Verily, Satan flees from the house in which Surat al-Baqarah is recited.”
[Sahih Muslim]
So change things up and make time to recite it every now and then.
Look for every reason and opportunity to be with Allah’s book, make yourself its companion, and it will be yours!
