The Trident Calendar System: Explained for Time Management

A guide to The Trident Calendar System, a three step method to help you optimise and organise your time management to advance in your work, life and motivation.

The Trident Calendar System is a technique for optimising your calendar and allowing better time management. Creating more time and space to help you work on goals.

What is the Trident Calendar System?

The Trident Calendar System contains three main areas of planning and organisation. These three areas help you plan your year, week and day efficiently using your ideal schedule and timetable.

This system works because it's so simple, and anyone can do it. All you need is a calendar app you enjoy using, and some time set aside to set up the basics.

The idea is to create your "Ideal" year, week and day.

This is based on what you want to do, and what you already know you have to do. So for example, maybe this year you want to travel, you can add that to your ideal year, but you also know you need to attend that work trip at some point, so you add that to your calendar too.

From here you plan your ideal week, containing the things you have to get done like work, and general self-care things, and then events, tasks and habits you also want to implement into your life. Of course, then this helps create your ideal day.

The Trident Calendar System is set to motivate you to achieve your goals. If you stay the same, and keep the schedule you're on with no future planning, you're less likely to achieve your goals, or it's going to take a much longer, messier time.

Let's dive into the three sections of The Trident Calendar System.

Best Productivity Apps for the Trident Calendar System

Here are some of the best apps to get stuck into for using the system:

Notion Calendar

Notion Calendar is a calendar app owned by Notion for managing events & meetings.

View ToolVisit Site

Fantastical

Fantastical is a calendar app that handles events, tasks & meeting scheduling in one.

View ToolVisit Site

Morgen

Morgen Calendar wants to help manage tasks, calendar & scheduling in one.

View ToolVisit Site

Part One - Planning The Ideal Year

First, you need to plan your ideal year.

Now if you are starting this halfway through the year, I would recommend creating your plan for the rest of this year and then starting a new year plan in January.

That being said, you can always just plan for the next 12 months at a time. It can be your preference. Either way, you want 12 months' worth of planning written down.

You can use a bullet journal for this, or a simple spreadsheet to make it digital.

The Basics of Planning the Ideal Year

Let's break it down, here's what you need for step one to plan your year.

• Open a spreadsheet, or choose to physically write this down.
• Create 12 columns for the 12 months of the year.
• Write the numbers 1-30 down the columns for the days of each month.
• Now fill in what you know is already planned and what's happening inside each month.

This will help you see your entire year's view, a great way to visualise what's happening and what you want to happen this year. It also allows you to be more aware of how you're spending your time.

Part Two - Planning The Ideal Week

The next step is the plan your ideal week, but first, it's a good idea to figure out how many hours, or how much "free time" you have.

If you're someone who works from home, an entrepreneur and works for yourself, you can probably be a bit more flexible about where you spend your time. If you are someone who works set hours each day, you will of course need to add this in and plan your ideals around that.

Keep in mind that life can derail your ideal plan, but using this method does force you to choose your priorities wisely, and replace events with more thought.

Creating Your Ideal Week

Here's how you can easily set up your ideal week. Remember, this is just your "ideal" subject to change depending on what's happening.

• Choose a calendar app for this, one that's simple and gives an easy overview like Fantastical 3 or Google Calendar.
• Create a fresh week, a new calendar for your ideal week and call it 'NAME Ideal Week'.
• Now add in all the areas you would like to ideally spend your time, start with your morning and nighttime routine so you can see the space in between.
• Now add in the hours you work, to also get that out of the way.
• If you work from home, plan to work when your energy levels are at their best.
• You can then see the spare time you have for everything else like working towards goals, socialising, exercise, and more.
• Fill in your ideal blocks and you have your entire ideal week planned.

This will help you stay motivated and finally get that thing done you've always wanted to do. Say you want to start dance lessons, you can have a look at your ideal week and find a spare hour to fit it in.

Planning your ideal week like this allows you to have a default list of things to do, and avoid taking on too much you can't fit in, causing you to stress.

Part Three - Planning The Ideal Day

Finally, it comes to planning the ideal day. You can use your year and week plan to help sculpt your day to include the things you want to achieve. Again, use your calendar application to plan your day, you can drag in elements from your ideal week to help.

It's a good idea to sit down the night before to go over your next day's plan to make sure you're including everything important. You may also need to adjust your ideal day depending on what's happening in your life.

Your ideal day is just the basis you want to go off, it gives you a better structure to follow, leading to more productivity and motivation.

A good way to make sure you're adding in tasks and events that are important to you is to justify your three daily number ones.

The Three Daily Number Ones

These are the three important things you want to achieve each day that you can fit into your ideal day plan. This helps with structure and again, having a fulfilling, productive day.

This is an example:

• Work = There might be important aspects of your work you have to fit in, include this into your ideal day.
• Health = It's important to add in a task that positively contributes to your health, this could be going to the gym, prepping your lunch or just drinking enough water.
• Relationships = Adding in a social event or aspect to your day like seeing friends, calling a family member or spending quality time with someone helps disconnect from your work day.

This method has been popularised by Ali Abdaal, popular productivity expert.