Preparing for Ramadan: A Practical and Spiritual Checklist

Most people plan Ramadan on the first night of Ramadan, which is already late. This page is the checklist for the weeks before it starts, and it is organised by how much time you have left.

Six to Eight Weeks Before

Fast the voluntary days of Sha'ban. Aisha reported that she never saw the Prophet fast a full month except Ramadan, and never saw him fast more in any month than in Sha'ban. Recorded in al-Bukhari and Muslim.

There is a practical reason as well as a devotional one. Someone who has not fasted since last Ramadan will spend the first week of it managing a headache instead of praying. A few fasts in Sha'ban move that adjustment out of Ramadan.

Make up any missed fasts from last Ramadan. They are a debt, and Aisha used to make hers up in Sha'ban because her circumstances allowed no earlier time.

Four Weeks Before

Settle your zakat calculation date if it falls in Ramadan, and work out the figure rather than leaving it for the last ten nights when your attention should be elsewhere.

Fix your sleep. Ramadan collapses for most people not because of hunger but because of a night schedule that arrives without preparation. Start shifting toward earlier sleep and a short pre-dawn wake now.

Book your time off if you take any, and decide in advance which nights of the last ten you will protect.

Two Weeks Before

Choose one thing to fix and one thing to build. Not five. A person who enters Ramadan planning to complete the Quran, pray all sunnah prayers, give daily charity, memorise a new surah and abandon three habits will be doing none of it by the tenth day.

Set the Quran plan in pages, not in feeling. A full recitation across the month is twenty pages a day, which splits into four pages after each prayer. That arithmetic is what makes it happen.

Stock the kitchen. An unplanned iftar becomes a takeaway, and a month of takeaways is both the health cost and the budget that could have been charity.

The Week Before

Sight the moon or follow the announcement of the body you normally follow. Sha'ban has either twenty-nine or thirty days and people are caught out every year.

Make the intention for the month. The night before the first fast, decide that you are fasting Ramadan — the intention for an obligatory fast is made before dawn.

Ask forgiveness from anyone you have wronged, and forgive whoever you can. The Prophet described a person whose Ramadan passes without their sins being forgiven as having lost out, and the barrier is usually something owed to a person rather than something owed to God.

The First Night

Pray Taraweeh if you can, and if you cannot pray all of it, pray some. It is voluntary, and a shorter prayer kept through the month is worth more than a long one abandoned.

Eat modestly at the first iftar. The single most common mistake in Ramadan is treating the first meal as a reward, and it sets the pattern for the month.

What Not to Do

Do not plan a Ramadan that belongs to someone with more time than you. A student, a nurse on night shifts and a mother of an infant are not running the same month, and copying a schedule built for someone else is the reliable way to feel like a failure by the second week.

Decide what your Ramadan can actually hold, then hold it to the end. Consistency is what the reports praise: the Prophet said the most beloved deeds to Allah are the most consistent, even if few.