You can't plan your way through everything

If you were to look at my education and career trajectory, it's nothing straightforward. I would say it's unique in some ways. Not because I planned it to be that way—it just kind of happened. As a child I never thought about going into engineering. As far back as I can remember, I was fascinated with the universe—learning about the Milky Way, black holes, planets. Engineering wasn't even on the radar. To be absolutely honest, until I finished my A-Levels, I wasn't really sure what I would be doing.

My college grades weren't great, even though I went to a really good one. For the curious readers, I went to Greenhead College, and got an amazing D, E, E, U in Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Funny to read that given I am in a PhD programme now. As you can imagine for any 18 year old, that is demoralising. For all intents and purposes, I thought my life was done. I never liked manual labour, but that was the only future I could see. But I stuck with it, kept searching—is there anything I can do? And that trying helped me discover a Foundation engineering programme at my local university. I met the requirements by just a couple of UCAS points—kind of like GPA in other parts of the world. So even though I did terribly, things seemed to work out.

In university, I learnt that I loved learning, and equally loved sharing knowledge. I would help others as much as I could, and very early on found that from teaching others I was finding gaps in my own knowledge. My mindset shifted here—before, I would just want to get by, but now I wanted to excel. Not to make a name for myself, but because of something more practical: when I aimed for a First-class degree (>70%), at worst I would get something just under 70. But if I aimed for just passing, the inverse could mean failure. So I tried and tried. And the kid who got unimaginably bad results at a college he wasn't sure how he got admittance to—now got a First-class honours degree in engineering. If you were to tell me that would be the case during college, I would have laughed at you. But things seemed to work out once I started putting the effort in.

Then came graduation. Nobody I knew had a clear answer for what came next—myself included. There's support available, sure, but it doesn't make the confusion go away.

The job that changed everything

I ended up in an electrical engineering role. It wasn't what I'd imagined, and honestly I wasn't sure it was where I was supposed to be. But I showed up, learned what I could, and kept my eyes open.

That's where software crept back in. There was an in-house tool—a backend in FORTRAN, a frontend in Visual Basic—and seeing what it did, what it enabled, something clicked. This was software doing something real. The same thing I'd written off as the most tedious module in my entire degree.

The irony isn't lost on me. Of all the modules in my engineering degree, the one I hated the most was software. I couldn't stand it. And yet it is now the anchor of everything I do. It's what got me re-learning C, picking up embedded C again with fresh eyes, and eventually landing my first software engineering role. None of that was planned. It just seemed to work out.

The pattern

Here's what I've noticed looking back. There was always confusion. There was always a moment where I couldn't see what was next. The A-level results. The uncertainty after graduation. The career pivot I didn't see coming. Each time, I didn't have a plan. What I had was a refusal to stop. I kept learning, kept upskilling, kept applying—even when I didn't know what I was applying towards. And each time, it seemed to work out.

That's not me being naive about hardship. Some things genuinely don't work out, and that's real. But I think a lot of the anxiety we feel about the future comes from demanding certainty before we're willing to move. You don't need to see the whole road. You just need to keep moving.

An Islamic perspective

There's a framework I keep coming back to—one I think explains everything I've described better than I can in my own words.

In Islam, there's a concept called tawakkul (توكل). It's usually translated as reliance on Allah, or trust in Allah. But that translation, while accurate, doesn't quite capture the full weight of it. Because tawakkul is not passivity. It's not learned helplessness dressed up in religious language. It's something far more active than that.

There's a narration most Muslims will have heard. A man asked the Prophet (Peace be upon him) whether he should tie his camel or leave it and trust in Allah. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) replied: "Tie it and rely (upon Allah)."^[1]

Do the work. Prepare properly. Exhaust what is in your control. And then—only then—release the outcome. Because the outcome was never yours to determine anyway.

That's the pattern I keep seeing in my own life. The A-level results I couldn't control. The job I stumbled into. The pivot to software I didn't plan. In every case I kept tying the camel—kept learning, kept applying, kept showing up—and then let go. And it seemed to work out.

But there's something else worth bringing in here, because Arabic isn't like English. In English, a word is largely just a label. In Arabic, the root of a word carries an entire picture—a story compressed into three or four letters. When Islamic scholars unpack a concept, they're not defining a term so much as they're revealing what the word already contains. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

The word taqwa (تقوى) is usually translated as God-consciousness, or piety. But the Arabic root—w-q-y (و ق ي)—means to protect, to guard, to shield yourself from harm. Scholars have illustrated it like this: imagine a battle horse, far from home, and its shoe has broken. If you know anything about horses, you'll know their hooves are extraordinarily sensitive. Now imagine that horse crossing a stretch of gravel—sharp stones, uneven ground, nothing soft to land on. The horse doesn't stop. It doesn't panic. It moves slowly, deliberately, placing each hoof only where there are no stones. Picking its way through the difficulty with full awareness of what will cause harm.

That, scholars say, is taqwa. Not freezing. Not recklessness either. Moving forward, carefully, with God-consciousness guiding every step.

Tawakkul and taqwa sit together naturally. Tawakkul tells you to do your work and release the outcome. Taqwa tells you how to move while you're doing it—carefully, deliberately, aware of what you're stepping on. Not paralysed by the gravel. Not pretending it isn't there. Just moving through it, one careful step at a time.

That's what I've tried to do. I won't claim I've always done it well. But every time I've trusted that framework—worked hard, moved carefully, released what I couldn't control—it seemed to work out.

You don't have to share that framework to recognise the principle. Whether it's a religious conviction, a philosophy, or just something you've figured out through experience—most people who've lived through uncertainty and come out the other side will tell you some version of the same thing: you can't plan your way through everything. Do what you can. Keep moving. Let go of what you can't control.

I'm still figuring it out. But so far, it seems to work out.