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How I Manage My Time - The Trident Calendar System

2023-04-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 19:01 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

Ali explains his Trident method of time management at three levels: a year-at-a-glance Google Sheet for the year, an ideal ordinary week kept as a separate Google Calendar (a method from his CEO coach Eric Partaker), and for each day following the calendar plus three daily quests in work, health and relationships.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why time management matters and the three-pronged Trident method

  • ★★★ Ali calls time management one of the most important skills to build today, because time is our single most valuable non-renewable resource: we can always make more money, but never more time. — 00:00:00 · time management · also in: 8 Simple Habits That Save Me 20+ Hours a Week
  • ★★ For Ali the skill of time management is making the best use of time: using it intentionally and effectively, not only for doing productive things. — 00:00:00 · time management
  • ★★★ Ali presents his Trident method, a three-pronged method for time management. — 00:00:29 · time management

00:00:43 — Part 1: the year at a glance, from the bullet journal to a Google Sheet

  • ★★ Ali kept a bullet journal basically every day for the final four months of 2022. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ The one part of the bullet journal method that changed the game for Ali's time management was the year at a glance: the whole year on one page, 12 columns for the months and the days 1 to 31 down the side. — 00:00:58 · time management
  • ★★ The year-at-a-glance view gave Ali incredible clarity about the rest of his year, because tools such as Google Calendar keep you stuck in the weekly or monthly view. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali made his year-at-a-glance view a Google Sheet: it is too easy to default to fancy new apps, and a spreadsheet does the job fine. — 00:01:57 · Google Sheets
  • ★★ Ali uses the year-at-a-glance sheet to zoom out to a bird's-eye view of his whole year and plan his life, such as group trips with friends and holidays booked in advance. — 00:02:26
  • ★ Ali's year plan for June 2023 includes a stay in Austin, an adventure with friends and a retreat in Los Angeles. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali copies the plans from his year-at-a-glance sheet into his Google Calendar so his team knows what is going on, and finds it a ridiculously effective way to manage time on a macro scale. — 00:02:55

00:03:24 — Part 2: the 112 hours of a week and the ideal week method from Eric Partaker

  • ★★ Assuming eight hours of sleep a night, Ali says everyone has about 112 hours a week to play with. — 00:03:55
  • ★★★ The second part of the Trident method is defining the ideal week, the ideal allocation of the 112 hours; Ali has used it for about eight months, since he started working with his CEO coach Eric Partaker. — 00:03:55
  • ★ Ali says Eric Partaker has coached a couple of hundred CEOs of high-growth companies and asks all his clients to define an ideal week. — 00:03:55
  • ★★★ To plan an ideal week, Ali creates a new, separate calendar in Google Calendar as a fresh slate; it is free for everyone. — 00:04:24

00:04:54 — Sponsor read for Huel

00:06:38 — Building the ideal ordinary week in Google Calendar and how his real week follows it

  • ★★ In Ali's ideal week he wakes at seven on weekdays and keeps the first hour of the day for his morning routine. — 00:06:38
  • ★★ To get eight hours of sleep, Ali's ideal week has him asleep by 11 p.m. — 00:06:38
  • ★★ As a doctor Ali had a nine-to-five shift and could not choose his hours of deep work; as an entrepreneur he decides how he spends his time. — 00:07:37 · deep work (concept)
  • ★★ In knowledge-work jobs, Ali says, you can increasingly tell your boss or manager how you work best and ask to fit your calendar around it. — 00:07:37
  • ★★ Ali's ideal week has blocks for the weekly team meeting, the team lunch, the content squad meeting and two meetings a week with Angus, his general manager. — 00:08:13 · Angus
  • ★★ In Ali's ideal week, Tuesday to Friday mornings hold several hours of deep work for writing. — 00:08:13 · deep work (concept)
  • ★★ If your job involves more than writing and filming, Ali suggests a block once or twice a day for checking Slack or email, batching these interruptions so the day is not derailed by them. — 00:08:42 · Slack
  • ★★★ The ideal week is made of containers of time for using it intentionally, Ali says, based on the constraints of your job and on your own energy levels. — 00:09:11
  • ★★ If you have a slump after lunch, Ali suggests taking calls then rather than doing deep work. — 00:09:11 · deep work (concept)
  • ★★ In Ali's ideal week Tuesday evening is kept free by default for a social dinner with friends, since he is learning to cook and likes having friends over. — 00:09:40
  • ★★ Ali's ideal week has Wednesday evenings for driving home to dinner with his mother and grandmother, and weekends free for friends and family. — 00:10:09 · Ali Abdaal's mother, Ali Abdaal's grandmother
  • ★★★ Ali schedules his personal life into his ideal week: Monday and Thursday evenings are date nights, and those evenings are sacred. — 00:10:39
  • ★★★ The ideal week is a default structure with room for flexibility, such as moving a date night; in eight months of using it Ali has freed up so much headspace. — 00:11:08
  • ★★★ The ideal ordinary week exercise forces us to decide our priorities: instead of "I don't have the time", we say "I'm choosing not to make the time". — 00:12:05
  • ★★ When an ideal week shows no room for something such as a weekly guitar lesson, Ali says you need not beat yourself up about not doing it. — 00:12:05
  • ★★ Before doing the ideal week exercise eight months earlier, Ali did not know how much time he had, took on too many responsibilities and felt overwhelmed. — 00:12:34
  • ★★ While the Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohort runs, Ali's Mondays are taken up entirely by it, apart from a morning exercise block. — 00:13:03 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali is in the final stages of his book, so Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday mornings and Thursday afternoons are book time. — 00:13:03 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali's team does a team training with their coach Eric Partaker on Wednesday afternoons. — 00:13:03
  • ★★ Ali likes to have a one-on-one lunch with every member of his team once every couple of months. — 00:13:32
  • ★ That week Ali recorded a podcast with his internet friend Sahil Bloom. — 00:13:32

00:14:29 — Part 3: following the calendar each day and the three daily quests

  • ★★★ On a given day Ali broadly just follows what is in his calendar. — 00:14:29
  • ★★ On the weekend before, Ali looks at his calendar for the coming week and creates blocks for what he wants to do, keeping his ideal week in mind. — 00:14:58
  • ★★ Ali uses Fantastical, a fancier calendar on top of Google Calendar, which can duplicate events by alt-dragging them. — 00:15:27
  • ★★★ Since working with Eric Partaker, Ali sets three daily quests, one in each of the three most important domains of life: work, health and relationships. — 00:16:34
  • ★★ Eric Partaker calls them daily number ones; Ali calls them daily quests, a term from World of Warcraft. — 00:16:34 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ Ali's team has recently started a Slack group where the whole team shares daily quests for accountability. — 00:16:34 · Slack
  • ★★★ Ali calls running your life from a calendar completely game changing; he has done it in various forms for the last 10 years. — 00:17:14 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Before living by his calendar Ali was disorganised and chaotic; now he follows the intention already set at the level of the year, the week and the day. — 00:17:45 · time-blocking
  • ★★ The more Ali defines containers of time and follows them, the more his life feels balanced, fulfilled and meaningful, and he is happy. — 00:18:15

00:18:44 — Sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: daily quests · Eric Partaker · Google Calendar · time management · Trident calendar system · year at a glance

Also: People: Ali Abdaal's grandmother · Ali Abdaal's mother · Angus · Sahil Bloom

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Concepts: bullet journal · deep work (concept) · time-blocking

Places: Austin · Los Angeles

Products: Fantastical · Google Sheets · Slack · World of Warcraft

Also centred on daily quests: I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to

Also centred on Eric Partaker: I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to

Also centred on Trident calendar system: I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to · 8 Simple Habits That Save Me 20+ Hours a Week · How to Make Next Year The Best Year of Your Life

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