I’m so busy earning a living that my prayers and connection with Allah keep slipping. How do I stay close to Him while working full time?

The fact that a missed prayer sits uneasily with you means the connection is not broken. That unease is worth trusting, so let us work with it.

There is a verse about men who were fully in the marketplace, buying and selling, and yet when the call to prayer rose over the stalls, nothing in their hands was heavy enough to keep them from standing before Him.

“Men whom neither commerce nor trade distracts from the remembrance of Allah, and the establishing of prayer, and the giving of zakah.”

Qur’an, An-Nur 24:37 · meaning

Notice that He did not ask them to leave their trade. These were market men, and the reports about them say that when the prayer was called they set the trade down, went to their Lord, and came back to it afterwards. The work was never the enemy. It simply never took the prayer’s place, and that is the whole art of it. Let the prayer keep its own hour, and then He asks only that the rest of the day not swallow the remembrance whole. He names it plainly, so that we hold our wealth without letting it hold us.

“O you who have believed, let not your wealth or your children divert you from the remembrance of Allah, and whoever does that, it is they who are the losers.”

Qur’an, Al-Munafiqun 63:9 · meaning

And the way back costs less than you fear. You do not have to cross the whole distance at a sprint. One honest step is asked of you, and He covers the rest Himself.

“…and if he comes to Me walking, I come to him running.”

The Prophet (peace be upon him), Sahih al-Bukhari (hadith Qudsi) (7405) · meaning

So do not try to rebuild everything at once. Give each prayer its own time first, even when it costs you a few minutes of the day’s momentum. Then take the rhythms you already have, the commute, the coffee break, the walk between meetings, and hang small beads of remembrance on them, a SubhanAllah here, an istighfar there. Those who tie dhikr to routines they already keep find that a full schedule becomes a lattice for remembrance rather than its enemy. Take the one step today, and know that He is already moving toward you.

One small step: Choose one daily commute or break and make it your fixed “dhikr window,” whispering SubhanAllahi wa bihamdihi ten times each time it comes.