How I Manage My Time - The Trident Calendar System

hey friends welcome back to the channel

so over the last decade I have

experimented with dozens and dozens of

strategies for managing my time and I've

been doing that because time management

is I think one of the most important

skills that we can develop and build in

the world today and it's because

fundamentally time is our single most

valuable non-renewable resource we can

always make more money but we can never

make more time and so really the skill

of time management is in being able to

make the best use of that time not

necessarily for only doing productive

things but instead to use that time

intentionally and effectively so in this

video I want to talk you through my tri

method which is a sort of three-pronged

method for time management and I'll show

you exactly how I use these different

methods in my life to manage my own time

and in the video description I've also

linked completely for free the templates

that you can use to incorporate this

into your life if you would like as well

so this aspect of the strategy was a

total Game Changer when I actually tried

bullet journaling last year now bullet

journaling is a somewhat fancy pen and

paper method of productivity but it's

sort of been co-opted over the years by

artists and people making ridiculously

fancy and beautiful looking bullet

Journal spreads and I was super enamored

by this and thought you know what I'm

going to try the bullet Journal method

and so for the final 4 months of 2022 I

painstakingly bullet journaled basically

every day and I sunk so many hours into

my bullet Journal method and it was

really good but there was one aspect of

the bullet Journal method that

completely changed the game for my time

management and that was this view the

year at a glance now the point of this

view is that you split up the entire

year into these different columns and so

you end up having 12 columns that show

the different months and then one to 31

down the side that show you the

different dates and so what you end up

with is these three 66 blocks now when I

did this when I did the bullet Journal

technique this immediately gave me

incredible insight and Clarity into what

the rest of my year was going to look

like because this is not really a view

that we see particularly often if for

example you use Google Calendar or

something you tend to be stuck in the

weekly view or in the monthly View and

even if you have like a physical annual

calendar you tend to flip the pages and

so you never really see your entire year

just laid out on a single page or two

pages so in January of this year I

decided I wanted to have a more Digital

Way of having this kind of view in my

life and so I decided to just make a

Google sheet out of it I think these

days it's too easy to default to fancy

apps and like oh what's the latest thing

here but I thought you know what a

spreadsheet just does the job totally

fine and so I literally just went

through on Google Sheets and I created

one of these year at a glance templates

and this is what the blank version of

this looks like so as you can see we've

got the months down the top we have

colorcoded the months in like pretty

colors and we've got the weekends

colorcoded as well and this is the

template that you can download just hit

the link in the video description it's

completely free and you can duplicate

this into your own Google sheet account

if you would really like to and this is

what my version of this actually looks

like and I use this in two specific ways

to manage my time firstly it's really

helpful for zooming out and getting a

bird's eye view of my entire year so I

can use it to plan my life I'm filming

this video for example in April but I

already know that this is the stuff

that's kind of going on in May and in

June I'm going to Austin for a bit and

then I've got this block of time to go

on an adventure with some friends and

then I'm going on a retreat to La later

in June and this is so helpful to get an

idea of a where things are and B it then

allows me to plan things like weekend

group trips with friends or being able

to plan holidays in advance so I can

block out the time I then reflect those

changes in my actual Google Calendar so

the team knows exactly what's going on

in my life and I found this to be a

ridiculously effective way of managing

my time on a macro scale and to make

this easier to deal with what you can do

is when the months are gone you can just

right click you can hide those columns

and now it's just way easier to see

exactly what's going on in a given month

and then what's going on for the rest of

the year so that's how I manage my time

on the level of the whole year let's now

move on to the level of a single week

but I've got to go somewhere right now

be right back good morning it's a new

day and we are talking about component

number two which is all about ideal week

planning now here's the context behind

this so essentially we all have these

goals and plans and stuff that we want

to get done now please don't cancel me

for saying this but there are literally

just 24 hours in a day and we all have

to decide how we're going to make the

most use of that time if for example you

have three personal assistants and five

private chefs and stuff then obviously

you will have more of those 24 hours

that are free to do things that you want

to do rather than do things like laundry

and cooking and cleaning and stuff but

fundamentally those 24 hours or 168

hours a week are basically the same for

everyone and assuming you're sleeping

for 8 hours every night we all basically

have 112 hours in a given week that we

can play with and the point of component

number two is that we want to define the

ideal week I.E our absolute ideal

allocation of those 112 hours per week

and this is a method I've been using for

the last 8 months or so ever since I

started working with my CEO coach Eric

parako and Eric has worked with a couple

hundred CEOs of really high growth

companies and me and this is one of the

methods that he asks all of his clients

to do and apparently it's a method that

always gets some results and it's

certainly gotten me a lot of results

over the last 8 months and so instead of

you having to pay several thousand an

hour for Eric's time I'm just going to

teach you the method straight up and

it's actually fairly straightforward to

do all it involves is going on Google

Calendar and it involves creating a new

calendar so that you've got a completely

fresh slate where you can do your audal

week planning cool so I've now created

Ali's udal week and now you can see it's

shown up in my Google Calendar right

here and this is completely free

everyone can use Google Calendar you

don't have to pay a penny ever at all

now at the moment my life is a little

bit of a mess because of the YouTuber

Academy happening and because of all the

book stuff going on and all the meetings

with the editors and the agents and all

of that fun stuff and so what can often

happen is that I actually don't have

that ideal lunch hour in which I'd like

to cook a healthy lunch and so instead a

product that I've been finding a lot of

use of is in fact hu who are very kindly

sponsoring this video now I've actually

been a pain customer of hu since 2017

and since my penultimate year of medical

school and actually when I first started

this YouTube channel 6 years ago I've

been taking heel fairly regularly and

there's broadly two types of heel that I

really enjoy the first one is heel black

which is often what I have in the

mornings as part of my morning routine

it's 40 g of protein 400 calories I just

Add Water Blended up in the Nutri Bullet

blender thingy and then it turns into a

genuinely tasty smoothie that has all of

the right macros and all of the

micronutrients that I might need for the

day and the other heel product that I

get a lot of value out of is the heal

ready to

drink and again I've been getting

deliveries of this ever I I I don't

quite think this started in 2017 cuz

this wasn't a thing in 2017 I think like

since 2020 this has been a thing and

I've been getting regular deliveries of

these and it's basically a whole meal

that's 100% nutritionally complete in a

single bottle and if on a given day I

don't have time to have a proper lunch

then the heuel ready to drink is an

absolutely fantastic Lifesaver my

favorite flavor is banana I think that's

the best one but all of the others are

pretty tasty as well now the best way of

trying these I'd say is the variety pack

because it gives you like three bottles

of all of the four different flavors if

you're interested in trying out any of

these heel products including heuel

ready to drink then do hit the link in

the video description and if you use

that link then you will get two free

products along with your heuel order you

will get a free t-shirt which is

genuinely good and it's nice and

elasticy and like makes you look Hench

which is a fantastic like quality

t-shirt and you'll also get a Shaker so

that if you don't want to use a like

Nutri Bullet blendery type thing you can

just like put the thing put the powder

into the water into the Shaker shake it

up and now you have a nutrition complete

meal that's basically ready to go so

thank you so much heal for sponsoring

this video and the point here is that

basically I want to Define what are the

containers of time where in an

absolutely ideal week not necessarily a

perfect week but in an ideal ordinary

week how would I choose to be spending

my time so for example I've decided that

like in my ideal week Monday through to

Friday I'd like to wake up at 7:00 and

then I'd like to have the first hour of

the day for my morning routine and this

is a thing I'd like to happen every day

and so I'm going to repeat this daily

and I'm going to give it this yellow

color because that like signifies the

sunrise or something like that and you

know what why not add an emoji to it

just to make this a bit more fun so we

can see that this is now shown up across

my ideal week and because I want to get

my 8 hours of sleep I want to aim to be

asleep by 11:00 p.m. and therefore I

want to be starting to get ready for bed

around 10:00 doing my reading nighttime

routine all that fun stuff and I'm going

to repeat this every single day and I'm

going to give this a lavender color to

signify nighttime fantastic so we now

have a block for waking up and we have a

block for sleeping and now I can figure

out what I want my ideal ordinary week

to look like in the rest of the time

I've decided that in my dream world from

8:00 till 9:00 every morning I'd like to

do breakfast and journaling and in that

block I could maybe have a breakfast

meeting with someone or maybe go for a

walk and then I want my actual quote

work day to start at 9:00 a.m. every day

and So based on my own energy levels how

would I like my ideal work day to go now

obviously this is going to vary a bit

depending on how much control you have

over your own schedule for example when

I worked as a doctor I just had my

entire block being like 9 to 5 workday

or whatever the shift was and then I

would just have to do whatever just

happened on the day I couldn't quite

decide you know what these are my 4

hours of deep work time but as an

entrepreneur I can decide how I spend my

time and actually increasingly in jobs

especially in knowledge work you

actually do have ability to talk to your

boss or your manager and say hey this is

this is how I work best I would love it

if we can kind of find a way to fit my

calendar around this then obviously

based on the needs of the business and

the team or whatever things will have to

adjust accordingly and so I've added in

the blocks for the weekly team meeting

weekly team lunch weekly content Squad

meeting and my two meetings a week with

Angus who's my general manager and I've

added in the blocks for when I want to

have lunch roughly and the blocks for

when I want to have dinner on weekdays

and this is already very helpful because

now I can see what is the other time

that I have to play with and then I can

adapt this ideal ordinary week based on

how I'd actually want to spend that time

and so Tuesdays to Fridays for example I

want to have several hours in the

morning as a deep work block for writing

and in my ideal week I'd like to do a

gym session Tuesday afternoon Thursday

afternoon and maybe Saturday morning if

I happen to be free on the Saturday

morning now the other main thing I need

to do in my workday is filming and so

I'm going to put in my various filming

blocks into the calendar and obviously

this workday schedule is very specific

for me because basically all I have to

do in my job is writing and filming but

if your job is a little bit different

than that then maybe you might have a

block for checking slack or checking

emails and you you might do that once or

twice a day so that you're batching

those interruptible activities and

you're not just spending your entire day

being like derailed by all the various

emails coming your way alternatively

maybe you have more meetings than I do

and therefore you have more meetings in

the calendar at all the different blocks

the point is mold this to whatever works

for you but the point is we want to

create these containers within our ideal

week where in an ideal ordinary week we

would be intentionally using our time in

this way and what you can base these

containers on is firstly what are the

constraints of your job but also how are

your own energy levels like if you're

managing your own energy do you do your

best creative work in the morning or in

the evening do you have a slump after

lunch and therefore maybe you want to

take calls then rather than do

particularly deep work and the great

thing about this and what I do is that I

also intentionally schedule in the

personal life and relationship stuff

that I want to put into my ideal week so

for example in my case ideally every

Thursday evening is date night so I know

that I have that fully scheduled in the

calendar and now the the rest of my life

can fit around that and then on Monday

evenings as well I'd like to go to a

kickboxing class and have a mini date

night as well in my ideal week Tuesday

evenings would for example be a social

dinner with friends cuz I'm trying to

learn how to cook and I like having

friends over and so I've decided just by

default every Tuesday evening is going

to be free so that I've got an easy slot

where if a friend is visiting London or

if I want to invite people over just by

default I don't have to think too hot

about it it's a Tuesday evening and

conveniently the cleaner rocks up on a

Wednesday and so I can leave the kitchen

in a mess and then the cleaner will sort

it out that's fantastic stuff and I

decide on Wednesday evenings by default

I'd like to drive home to have dinner

with my mom and grandma and I might

decide to leave weekends completely free

for friends and family and other things

in life that are happening now having

this laid out in front of me is

incredibly useful and this is in fact

the system that I follow basically every

week and then obviously there's other

stuff that kind of derails this

sometimes sometimes there's an urgent

meeting that can't be missed or

sometimes I have to go pick up my mom

from the airport and then a filming

block gets derailed but the point is I

have defined the parameters of my ideal

ordinary week and now I don't need to be

fully wedded to them but at least I've

actively decided that on average on a

Wednesday morning I'd like to be doing a

deep work block of writing because

that's the main thing that moves my

business forward and it makes sense to

do that in the morning while I have more

creative energy similarly the fact that

I've basically decided that Mondays and

Thursdays are going to be date night

that that means that those evenings are

sacred and like if someone says hey do

you want to hang out and it's Monday or

Thursday night then my default option is

no sorry I can't make it can you do

Tuesday instead or Friday instead and if

it's super super urgent and it's like an

internet friend visiting London and

they're only here on a Monday then I can

say to my girlfriend hey do you mind if

we switch date night to Tuesday or

whatever that week so the point is this

kind of system allows a level of

flexibility and I found that over the

last8 months of using it it's just freed

up so much headspace from my life having

to think about these things because now

at least I have a default structure that

I can follow the other cool thing about

this is that it really shows where

genuinely where is the free time like I

might decide you know what I'm really

interested in the guitar I want to get

better at the guitar and therefore I'd

like to have one guitar lesson every

week now the question is where am I

going where am I going to fit this one

guitar lesson every week I have these

112 hours that I can play with like

everyone else does and so I might decide

you know what I'm going to finish work a

little bit earlier on a Wednesday to

have my guitar lesson but I can do that

because I'm an entrepreneur and I

control my own time but if this is what

my calendar looked like and I was only

getting home from my actual job at like

6:30 every day and I knew that I wanted

to have a social evening with friends

once a week go home for dinner with my

parents once a week and have date night

twice a week it's like I actually don't

have that much time to play with to fit

in a guitar lesson and that means I

don't need to beat myself up about it I

might think you know what at some point

in my life when I have more free time on

the calendar I will fit in that guitar

lesson but it's just not a priority

right now and what I love about this

ideal ordinary week exercise is that it

forces us to decide what are the

priorities in our life it means we can't

say oh I don't have the time we can

instead say I'm choosing not to make the

time I currently choosing not to make

the time in my life life for guitar

lessons or singing lessons and I'm

currently choosing in my life to only go

to the gym two or three times a week

because I've decided that that's what

the priority is in the future maybe once

my book is done and I have fewer writing

blocks or maybe I decide you know what I

want to take a break from filming four

times a week for a month and see what

happens I'll free up more time but the

point is I now know how much time I have

to play with but until I did this

exercise 8 months ago a I would not have

known that and I was kind of taking on

too many responsibilities and too many

too much stuff and then feeling

overwhelmed and B on a given day I

didn't really have a default list of

things that I wanted to do and so i'

have to think every single day I was

like okay how do I want to spend my time

today and that's just quite a lot of

thinking now this is how this actually

translates to what my ideal week looks

like in real life so right now we're in

the midst of our part-time YouTube be

Academy so Mondays are literally taken

up entirely from with PT stuff except an

exercise Block in the morning Tuesday

morning Wednesday morning Friday morning

Saturday morning and Thursday afternoons

are all booktime because I'm in the

final stages of my book and so I need to

make the blocks for that I have various

meetings in the calendar so we've moved

our team meetings to Tuesday so we've

got our team meeting and our content

meeting on a Tuesday afternoon we're

doing a team training thing with our

coach Eric and so that happens on

Wednesday afternoon and this week I've

had various lunches with various team

members because I like to have a

one-on-one lunch with every member of

the team once every couple of months or

so similarly this week I did a podcast

with my internet friend SEL Bloom so

that happened on a Tuesday and then we

went out to a restaurant so you can kind

of see how this calendar evolves over

time and it evolves depending on what's

happening in a given week but this week

I've broadly stuck to the calendar I've

done booktime when I intended to

currently I'm in a filming block which

is why I'm filming this video and then

later today I've got book time for the

rest of the afternoon so I can focus on

making those final edit and it's just so

liberating to have this kind of system

I'll put the template for the Google

Calendar ideal week if you want to check

it out down in the video description

again it's completely free you just

click the link and you can download the

template and if you try any of the

strategies in this video I'd love to

hear how you got on please can you drop

me an email Ali al.com I read absolutely

everything even if I can't reply to

everything and I just love to hear kind

of what are the strategies and tips you

found helpful and maybe you can even

leave a comment down below if you try

any of this stuff out again I'd love to

hear what are the pros what are the cons

what are the ways you've adapted it to

fit your own system and your own life

all right the final component of the

trident method is what we do on a given

day so we've talked about annual

planning and what our annual Life Plan

yearo of glance looks like and we've

talked about at the level of the ideal

week how we're trying to make the most

of these 112 hours in the week that we

have to play with and how we can use

them more intentionally and so now the

third component of the Trident method is

what we're doing on a given day and so

the way I manage my time on a given day

is broadly I follow what is in the

calendar and again having the calendar

just makes it so easy it is a Thursday

right now and I just literally follow

whatever blocks I've put in my calendar

and generally on the weekend before I

will look for forward and my calendar

for the upcoming week and I will create

blocks of time for the things that I

want to do and so for example let's say

I'm looking over to next week I've

already got a lot of this stuff penciled

in because it's recurring events or it's

ideal week stuff and because I know that

basically every morning I want to do

book stuff and every afternoon I want to

do kind of filming stuff and I want to

go to the gym to a 3 times I just need

to add in those blocks and normally I'd

have those in as like repeated blocks

that's just in every week but right now

things are very derailed thanks to the

YouTuber Academy and so I'm kind of

going week by week but keeping in mind

what does my ideal week actually look

like so for example right now 7:00 a.m.

badminton is not happening so let's

decline this one let's create a book

time block on Wednesday

morning let's create a book time block

on Friday morning this app is

Fantastical by the way it's just a fancy

calendar version of Google Calendar the

nice thing is you can duplicate event so

it makes it super easy to like literally

hit alt and then drag and now I can just

duplicate an event rather than having to

recreate it like I would in Google

Calendar let's put in my filming blocks

and now this is currently a bit of a

problem because I don't have enough time

for exercise here so I'm going to have

to create some size blocks but then

genuinely on the level of day planning

let's say it was Monday I would

literally just follow whatever I have

planned so I know for example at 8:00

I'm going to be doing my content

planning for the session of the parttime

YouTuber Academy I've got my call with

the exact students at 9:00 and then

another one at 5:00 I've got more PTY

prep happening from 10: till 12:00 I

have a YouTuber's Mastermind that I'm

part of I have the 2-hour keynote that I

deliver on a Monday and then I'm going

for afar and dinner at a friend's house

that evening and so on one level that's

just what I do on a given day I just

follow whatever is in the calendar but

there's another thing that I do and

again this is one of those things that

I've started doing for the last last

eight months ever since starting working

with Eric and it's basically defining

three daily quests daily quests I mean

he calls it daily number ones or

whatever I call it daily quests because

it's terminology from World of Warcraft

and basically the idea is that in the

three most important domains of life I

have three quests that I'm doing every

day and that's in work in health and in

relationships and we've actually

recently started a slack group where we

do this with the whole team so that

we've got some level of accountability

on this and so for example today my

health daily Quest is to go to the gym

after my book Squad call and then I make

sure it's SCH in the calendar so I

already have my exercise block scheduled

in the calendar after my call with the

book team my work daily Quest is I want

to film stuff which is literally what

I'm doing right now and that's already

in the calendar and then my relationship

thing is that I want to call my grandma

and calling my grandma is not yet in the

calendar and so I'm literally just going

to add it in here as a task cor Nani and

that will show up in my calendar and now

I know that that's going to get done

because I look at my calendar multiple

times a day because my calendar tells me

literally what I'm doing in fact you

know what I'm going to be a good

grandson and I'm going to call my

grandma straight after filming this

video and I can literally drag that task

straight onto the calendar and it's very

convenient because it overlaps with the

events and it means that I again ensure

that the things that I actually want to

do are in the calendar now this method

of like just live literally running your

life based on a calendar is completely

gamechanging I've been doing it in

various forms for the last 10 years and

before I started literally living my

life based on my calendar I was so

disorganized I was so chaotic but now

that I live my life based on my calendar

and on the level of annual on the level

of weekly and monthly and and on the

level of daily I just follow the

intention I've already set that's been

one of the main drivers of my

productivity for the last 10 years and

specifically this trident method thing

that I've been doing for the last8

months since working with Eric in terms

of the annual thing the weekly thing and

the daily thing has been hugely helpful

in moving me forward and even though I'm

I think at this point one of the most

followed productivity experts in the

world like these three strategies are

just have just been genuinely

gamechanging in terms of helping me make

the most of my time and helping me boost

my time management skills because as

we've already talked about time is the

most valuable resource that we have we

can always make more money but we can

never make more time and if we can use

our time more intentionally again it

doesn't have to be about being more

productive with every single hour it's

about just being more intentional with

it intentionally calling my grandma

intentionally making the time for date

night or for having dinner with my momth

and the more I find that I Define these

containers and then actually follow them

the more I find that like life is

balanced and fulfilled and meaningful

and I'm happy and then it's like I don't

have to stress about things because I

know that the important things are

getting done because fundamentally they

are on the calendar now if you enjoyed

this video and you'd like some more time

management tips then check out this

video over here which is 10 specific

other strategies that I found helpful

over the last decade for managing my

time thank you so much for watching hope

you enjoyed the video and I'll see you

hopefully in the next one bye-bye