Muhammad Haris Iqbal

29/06/2026

𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐈 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦.

They have a decision-making problem.

I see it every week.

Someone asks me which AI tool is better. ChatGPT or Claude. This one or that one.

They spend hours comparing. Reading reviews. Watching comparison videos.

And they still have not opened a single one to actually use it.

𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮.

It is not about the tool.

It is about how you use it.

I have tested almost every major AI tool out there. Across writing, research, editing.

And the pattern is always the same. The people getting the best results are not using the "best" tool.

They are using whatever tool they have actually learned to prompt properly.

You can hand someone the most advanced AI model on the market today, and they will still get generic, average output. Not because the tool failed them.

Because they never learned how to talk to it.

𝐈𝐧 𝐚 𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥, the tool is never the bottleneck. The skill of using it is.

So instead of spending another week comparing tools, here is what actually moves the needle.

Pick one tool. Any reputable one will do.

Learn to give it context, not just commands.

Test, fail, refine. Do not expect magic on the first prompt.

Treat it as a collaborator, not a vending machine.

Have you been stuck comparing tools instead of using one?

28/06/2026

Tie your camel first. Then trust Allah.

A man once asked the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, a simple question.

Should I leave my camel untied and trust in Allah, or should I tie her and trust in Allah?

The Prophet's answer was direct.

اعْقِلْهَا وَتَوَكَّلْ

"Tie her and trust in Allah."

This hadith is recorded in Jami at Tirmidhi, hadith number 2517, and graded Hasan by scholars.

Here is the hard truth nobody tells you in freelancing.

We love to blame luck. We see someone succeed and call it fortune. We rarely see the proposals they sent that got ignored. The clients who ghosted them.

The nights they almost quit.

I have lived both sides of this. The nights I refreshed my inbox for hours waiting for a reply that never came. And the mornings, much later, when clients started finding me instead of me chasing them.

Neither version was luck. Both were the result of tying the camel first.

Francis Bacon understood this centuries before freelancing existed.

In his essay Of Delays, he wrote,

"Fortune is like the market; where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall."

People read that line and think it is about patience. It is not. It is about who is still standing when the moment finally comes.

The market does not fall for the person who walked away. It falls for the one who stayed in it, working, learning, adjusting, showing up again the next day even when nothing was happening yet.

That is the part everyone conveniently forgets when they talk about luck.

Luck is just a word we give to someone else's hard work when we did not see them put it in. Nobody posts the eighty rejected proposals. Nobody shows the two years of working for almost nothing while they learned the actual skill. They show the result. You assume it was fortune. It was not. It was repetition. It was getting better every single week while everyone else was waiting for a shortcut.

Fortune did not make Bacon's market fall. Staying in the market did.

The same applies to learning a craft, building a client base, or making it as a freelancer. You do not get good by waiting for inspiration to strike or luck to find you. You get good by doing the unglamorous work for long enough that the world has no choice but to notice.

Tawakkul works the same way. It is not passivity. It is trust that follows effort, not trust that replaces it. You do not get to skip the proposal, the late night, the client who says no five times before one says yes. You tie the camel. You put in the work, the learning, the consistency. Then you trust the outcome to Allah.

So if you are waiting for your moment to be handed to you, stop waiting.

Send the proposal. Build the skill. Show up today. Do it again tomorrow.

Then trust Allah with what happens next.

Have you ever had to choose between waiting for your moment and going out to create one?

27/06/2026

I almost lost everything I had earned in a single bad month.

Not because a client didn't pay.

Because I didn't know how to handle the money that did come in.

Here is the truth nobody tells you about freelancing when you start.

It is not a salary. It is a rollercoaster.

Some months you are so busy you don't have time to scratch your head. Other months you don't land a single project, and you start questioning if this freelance career is even going anywhere.

When I had a job, I earned twenty five thousand a month and lived accordingly.

The day I started freelancing, I charged twenty five thousand for one project.

And I treated it exactly how you would expect. I felt rich. I went shopping. I ate out. I spent almost the entire amount within days because in my head, another project was always around the corner.

Then one month, it wasn't.

No work. No income. Not a single rupee saved as backup.

That is when it hit me. Freelancing is nonlinear. It does not care about your bills. It gives you everything one month and nothing the next, and you have to be ready for both.

Around that time I came across something a billionaire said in an interview about getting rich, and it rewired how I think about money completely.

He said if you want to become rich, you need at least four months of expenses saved, sitting untouched, at all times.

So if your monthly expense is fifty thousand, you keep twenty thousand aside, every single month, no matter how good that month felt.

That buffer is not really about money. It is about buying yourself room to think, experiment, and try new things without panic breathing down your neck.

I started doing exactly that. Every time I earn, a portion goes straight into that reserve before anything else touches it.

Now when a rough patch hits, I don't lose sleep over it. I don't run out of ideas. I don't put myself under pressure I don't need to be under.

In a nutshell, freelancing will test your patience long before it tests your skill.

Have you ever gone through a dry month that taught you something your busiest month never could?

25/06/2026

A client once told me his project had failed.

Not my part of it. His supervisor had rejected the whole thing after I had already delivered exactly what was asked.

I had done the work properly. He had paid me well, on time, no issues. He was happy with what I gave him. But the people above him were not and now he was the one facing the consequences.

He reached out hesitant. Almost apologetic. Asking what he should do, half expecting me to ask for more money to fix someone else's standards.

I told him I would redo it from scratch. No extra charge.

He did not expect that answer. I could tell from how quickly he replied.

Here is something freelancing does not advertise. Not every project succeeds.

Sometimes the writing is right and the outcome still goes wrong, because approval depends on people you never spoke to and pressures you never saw.

You cannot control that. You can only control what you do next.

I rewrote the entire piece without billing him again, because the version of success that matters most to me is not the invoice. It is whether someone trusts me enough to come back and whether they tell someone else to call me too.

That client did exactly that.

And the one after him. And the one after that.

I have never used Fiverr. I have never used Upwork. I do not run paid ads to find clients.

Every single project I have today traces back to someone who trusted me once and decided I was worth recommending. That circle now reaches Pakistan, the UK, Scotland, Germany, and Australia.

Sometimes the smartest business decision looks like the least profitable one in the moment.

Has a moment of going beyond what was paid for ever changed the direction of your work?

23/06/2026

AI did not kill the em dash. Lazy writing did.

People stopped noticing the difference between a sentence built with intention and one stitched together by a tool with no judgment of its own.

So now the em dash gets blamed for something it never did.

I have used it for years. Long before ChatGPT existed. It was how I signaled rhythm, how I let one thought trail into the next without losing the reader.

Now the moment it shows up, people assume a machine wrote the sentence.

That says less about the punctuation mark and more about what AI-generated writing has trained our eyes to expect.

Predictable rhythm. Safe phrasing. Sentences that all sound like they came from the same invisible author.

Here is what nobody talks about.

The tool is not the problem. The input is.

Feed AI a weak prompt, get weak output.

Feed it no judgment, get no judgment back. It will mirror exactly what you give it, nothing more.

Taste still matters. Editing still matters. Knowing when a sentence needs to breathe and when it needs to stop, that still matters more than ever.

I studied linguistics for years before AI tools existed.

That training did not become useless the day these tools arrived. If anything, it became the thing that separates writing that moves people from writing that simply fills space.

AI can help me think faster and explore more directions in less time. But it cannot replace the human decision of what stays and what gets cut.

So yes, I still use that punctuation mark when the sentence calls for it. Not because a tool told me to. Because I learned what it does long before any tool could write a sentence for me.

Has AI changed how you read other people's writing, even when you cannot quite explain why something feels off?

22/06/2026

I have not posted in two months.

Not because I ran out of things to say. Because I ran out of time to say them.

Work picked up. Clients across Pakistan and the UK kept the calendar full.

Academic deadlines stacked on top of copywriting deadlines. And somewhere in that stretch, Social Media became the thing I kept telling myself I would get back to next week.

Next week became eight weeks.

Here is what nobody tells you about going quiet online. The work does not stop. The clients do not disappear. But something else fades, and you only notice it when you try to write again and the words feel slightly unfamiliar in your own hands.

Consistency is not about discipline alone. It is a muscle, and muscles that go unused get stiff.

So I am back. Not with a big announcement. Just with the same thing I have always done here, sharing what I am learning from academic writing, copywriting, and the strange, specific science of why language moves people the way it does.

Two years of freelancing taught me that showing up matters more than showing up perfectly.

What is the longest you have gone without posting, and what brought you back?

08/04/2026

My 10th research paper is published. Alhamdulillah.

I want to share this one properly because it means something to me and because the study itself is worth knowing about.

This paper analyze Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart through the lens of raciolinguistics. Most literary analysis of this novel focuses on what the Igbo say, or what colonial power takes away from them. My study asks a different question entirely: how did the colonial system hear them?

There is a difference between being silenced and being heard as inadequate. Colonialism did not just suppress Igbo language. It built a listening apparatus that decided, before any conversation began, that Igbo speakers could never sound legitimate enough.

Achebe understood this. And he wrote back against it, not by proving the Igbo were legitimate by colonial standards, but by building a completely different framework that never used those standards at all.

That is the argument I develop across the paper, drawing on five passages from the novel and applying the raciolinguistic ideologies framework to literary text, which itself is a methodological contribution the field has not fully explored.

It has been published in the Journal of Language, Literature and Social Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2026. Pages 44 to 51.

https://scholarclub.org/index.php/jllsa/article/view/154

Muhammad Haris Iqbal

Founder, Englocity Writer | Academic Writer and Copywriter

Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Colonial Listening Apparatus in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: A Raciolinguistic Reading Authors Muhammad Haris Independent Researcher, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan Keywords: Raciolinguistic ideologies, colonial listening apparatus, standardizing gaze, Thi...

01/04/2026

𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖎𝖘 𝖘𝖜𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖙𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘.

Google Search is out. Perplexity is in.

ChatGPT replaced by Claude.

PowerPoint by Gamma. Keyboard by voice. The list goes on.

And honestly, I get it. Things are moving fast. If you blink, you are already behind.

But here is what nobody is saying out loud.

When I first started as a writer, I made the same mistake most people are making right now. I was chasing the tool instead of building the skill. I thought if I just used the right software, learned the right platform, stayed current with every update, I would be ahead of everyone else. So I kept switching. Kept updating. Kept learning the newest thing.

And I was still producing mediocre content.

It took me a while to understand why.

The tool does not know your reader. The tool does not know what makes a sentence land or why a paragraph loses momentum halfway through. My linguistics training taught me that language has structure, and that structure is what moves people. Not the software you use to produce it.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥.

Every single time. No matter what year it is.

By all means, learn the new tools. Use them. Save time with them.

But do not let the tool become a substitute for the skill underneath it.

The tools on that list will look completely different by 2027. The fundamentals of good writing will not.

What do you think?

Are we spending too much time learning tools and not enough time mastering the craft?

30/03/2026

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮.

Nobody warns you about that part.

When I started freelancing, I would check my inbox first thing every morning hoping something had come in.

𝐀 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐝. 𝐀 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟. 𝐀𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠.

And when the work finally started coming, I felt like I had made it.

Every project felt exciting. Every deadline felt like proof I was building something real. Writing was not a job. It was a reward.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝.

The inbox never emptied. One client needed a draft by Thursday. Another needed revisions by Friday. A third had just dropped a 4,000-word brief on a Sunday night. I was saying yes to everything because I still had the hunger of someone who had nothing.

But now I had too much.

I was writing faster. Sleeping less. Skipping the revision pass I used to take pride in. The quality started slipping in ways only I could see. And the thing that once gave me energy started draining it.

I was not a writer anymore. I was a machine trying to keep up with itself.

Here is what I wish someone had told me earlier.

𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧.

When you overload yourself, you do not deliver more. You deliver worse. Your best client gets 60% of you. Your reputation takes the hit. And your passion, the thing that made you good at this in the first place, quietly disappears.

𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞.

First, I started setting a project cap. A maximum number of active clients at any one time. Not based on income. Based on how much I could genuinely give to each one.

Second, I built a small trusted network of writers who work the way I do. So when a good project came in at the wrong time, I had someone I could hand it to without worrying about quality. Not outsourcing blindly. Passing it carefully.

Your name is on everything that leaves your desk.

Protect the standard. Even if it means turning down the money.

How do you manage your workload when too much comes in at once?

25/03/2026

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬. 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤.

I had been waiting for work to come in for so long.

Then it all arrived at once.

And every client expected the same thing: your best work, on time, no excuses.

The pressure was not just about finishing. It was about finishing well without letting anyone down.

Here is what I did:

Separate folders for every project Before writing a single word, I create a dedicated folder for each project on my PC. Drafts, research, references, all in one place. No mixing. No confusion.

Assign a time block to each task I map out every available hour and distribute them deliberately. Each project gets its own window. I treat that window the way I treat a client commitment. Because it is one.

Follow the system strictly Not approximately. Not loosely. Strictly. The moment I start bending my own rules, quality starts to slip. And I refuse to let that happen.

𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐠𝐨 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲?

No.

But it works far more often than winging it ever did.

When everything demands your attention at once, structure is not a nice-to-have. It is the only thing standing between you and a missed deadline.

Have you ever managed multiple projects under the same deadline? What system did you use?