The 3-2-1 Work Calendar
Their health effects extend far beyond official death tolls.
The problem with a lot of productivity advice
My biggest gripe with a lot of productivity advice, especially on burnout, is that it often feels like I’m drinking poison, and everyone has their home remedy they swear by.
“Spread out the poison throughout the day!”
“Start with the strongest poison first to get it out of the way!”
“Stop drinking poison on the weekends.”
But not many people are asking, “Have you tried not drinking poison at all?”
In this case, the poison is a constant full work schedule where everything feels like a priority.
A schedule where I don’t have time to do all my work at the quality I’d like, let alone have the mental energy for a personal life.
Over the last nine years, this very common work schedule has led me to at least four periods of massive burnout.
2025 marks my 10th year in business. It was the perfect excuse to shake things up. So, I sat down a while back and did an audit. It made me realize that I could approach it all differently.
I can stop drinking the poison.
Months: Green (Full-time schedule), Yellow (Part-time schedule), Red (Off)
The 3-2-1 calendar
Starting August, I’ll be testing out a new work schedule I’ve dubbed the “3-2-1 Calendar.”
We’re cycling between:
3 months of full-time hours (Green)
2 months of part-time hours (Yellow)
1 month completely off (Red)
The main goal is to create a calm work schedule that allows for deep work and rest periods.
Here how it’s going to look like for us
During Green/Full-time months: Frontloading the heavy work — 1:1 clients, writing blog posts, shooting video content, developing products, crafting social media posts, etc.
During Yellow/Part-time months: Finishing and scheduling content, checking in on past clients, responding to social media posts, and product launches.
During Red/Time off months: Absolutely nothing business related!
Some important caveats
We run our own business. If you work for a company, this might be challenging to implement. But if you own your business or freelance, it could be a viable solution to creating a calmer work schedule.
Our work is predictably seasonal. I run a men’s styling service that creates content on men’s style. We have clear peak and off seasons (people don’t shop much at the height of winter and summer.)
What it’s going to take to implement
This requires completely rethinking our approach to work, especially as a service-based business.
A shift towards digital forms of revenue. Client work can be unpredictable — especially if we have particularly demanding clients during months when we want to slow down. Exploring digital forms of revenue like digital products (courses, guides, templates), ads & sponsors, and affiliate programs means we can reduce the number of clients we need to book, as well as bring in consistent revenue during the yellow and red months.
Doubling down on automations. We’re doubling down on automations like scheduling content months ahead, email auto responders, to more complex Zapier integrations. The more hands-off we can be with the business, the better.
Shift towards “timeless,” evergreen content. This is tricky. Since fashion is a business that is so trend-focused, we don’t want to completely eliminate sharing what’s new and fresh. But we also don’t run a fashion news business. Our business isn’t doesn’t rely on a constant stream of new content. We can slow down, create great work, and schedule most of it in advance. Focusing on evergreen content means we don’t need to update it often.
Use the temporary nature of social media to our advantage. I find it hard to create great content (especially evergreen or longform) on the usual grueling week-to-week schedule many of us are accustomed to. Slowing down on the deeper content and scheduling it ahead of time now frees up time for us to create trendy content. These tend to be quicker and easier to make. And because social media content lifecycle is much shorter, this feels more sustainable.
This month, my team and I are working on setting everything up, primarily the automation.
I’ve also restructured my client schedule to create a buffer between working and off months in case a client goes over schedule.
I’ll post an update in about 4-6 months.
Burnout
Aspiring musicians are churning out tracks using generative artificial intelligence. Some are topping the charts.
After 3 years with my iPhone 12, I finally upgraded to an iPhone 15.
Partially because I wanted a camera upgrade to shoot videos, partially because my iPhone’s battery deteriorated to a max of just under 80%.
It reminded me of what I often experience with my work.
Every few years, I completely burnout.
All the symptoms — disassociation, procrastination, cynicisms.
It’s as if my work is an app that slowly chips away at the batteries capacity.
It’s now deteriorated to under 80%.
And I’ve left my charger at home.
I can still technically do the work, but I’m completely drained before the days end and shut down.
I’m hyper aware of my fast draining battery now.
I’m now procrastinating my work in an attempt to conserve power and make it through the day.
I’m annoyed and resentful at how much battery my “work app” needs.
I spend all day looking forward to getting home to recharge.
All the advice I read says to take breaks, do things that you used to enjoy. But that advice is temporary.
Like the work, the things I enjoy (my hobbies, hanging out with friends, exercising) also use up battery power.
The solution requires two things: a fresh battery, and a new app that doesn’t damage the new batteries' capacity.
Creating my productivity system
Funny to write about improving my productivity after the most recent posts shitting on it. But writing about something helps me think it through.
(A warning: this post is not polished, and is mostly a mind dump.)
My current challenges
I have a lot of different roles - Business owner, writer, stylist, on top of other roles I aspire to have such as artist.
I work mostly alone - I currently can’t delegate a lot of things.
My criteria for a system to get things done
It should be simple
It should be accessible on the go
It shouldn’t require a lot of special tech or tools
The process I’m going to be using
I’ve stolen bits and pieces of from GTD, Cal Newport’s Trello concepts, and Khe’s $10k work.
Sketch of me trying to workout my system
Summary of the system
Main components:
Capture inboxes - You should always have a place to capture tasks, notes, recommendations, appointments, etc so you don’t have to rely on your memory.
Sort & Clear - Set aside a recurring time to sort what’s in your inboxes into the appropriate App (Trello, Pinboard, Notion) The goal is to clear the inboxes at the end of each day or week. This is where you can decide if something is even worth doing.
Assign & Do - Now you can go through each app is assign the tasks to a date to complete.
My pinned Inbox note. A mix of random thoughts, quotes, client tasks to do, post ideas, etc
My capture inboxes
Most recommend having 1 digital and 1 analog “inbox” to capture things (e.g. an App and a notebook you carry around.)
I mainly use a pinned note in my Notes app titled “📬 INBOX.”
If I ever do jot something down on paper, I usually almost immediately add it to the inbox note.
In the rare occasion I write something down on paper because my phone is dead/not with me, I’ll put it in my inbox note the first moment I get.
As you can see in the screenshot of my inbox note above, what I capture is all over the place.
Sorting & The Apps
I found that things I write into my inbox fall into 3 categories.
Things I need to do (e.g. client requests, doctors appointment, reach out to landlord)
Recommendations (e.g. a good keyboard, bar rec, book to read)
Information/ideas (e.g. idea for a blog post, doc I need to write for freelancers, etc)
I narrowed down 3 apps to organize these:
Within Trello
I have boards for each of my main roles:
Personal - For anything related to my personal life. Important dates for my wife, doctor appointments, stuff I need to do around the house
Personal stylist - For client work
The Essential Man - Admin biz things, freelancer work, writing, digital courses/products
I’ll create boards for temporary projects - For example, I’m currently planning a book. So I created a board for that.
Within each board, I use a version of Cal Newport’s column categories
Queue - My version of Cal Newport’s “Backburner” column. Basically tasks for that role that haven’t been assigned yet.
Figure out - Tasks where I can’t move forward without something specific
Waiting to hear back - A task where I’m waiting for someone to complete something before I can move forward (e.g. waiting for a client to schedule a call)
This week - Tasks that MUST be done this week
Today - Tasks that must be done today
Done - Tasks that I’ve completed
Sunday review of coming week’s tasks - Spend 30 mins Sunday morning and move tasks to “This week.”
Do the task - I do the tasks in the appropriate time blocks in my calendar
Pinboard
Pinboard & Notion
For Pinboard items - I’ll add anything from the Inbox and tag it. I’ll assign a task in Trello to review certain things. (E.g. I might add a Trello task to book a reservation for our anniversary with a note to review pinboard restaurant recs.)
For Notion - I’ll assign a task in Trello to create a Notion entry in the appropriate Role board in Trello.
Time blocking calendar
I find I work best with time blocks. I found I need a good amount of time to get into work mode, and I need long stretches of mostly uninterrupted time to work on something.
Current schedule and blocks:
~6-7am: Wake & Breakfast
~7-10am: Deep writing block: Daily journaling and personal blog
10am-3pm: TEM block - either client or writing time
~3:00-4:00: Admin (Emails, etc)
~4-4:30pm: Trello processing
4:30-6:00pm: Gym
I’ll update on how this is working for me over the next few months.
Unoptimized life
I love this article by Evan Armstrong “In Defense of the Unoptimized Life.” It articulates so much of what I was thinking when I wrote about busyness.
I especially enjoyed the Kurt Vonnegut bit about his wife getting on his case for going out to buy envelopes:
“Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy 100 envelopes and put them in the closet?
And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know...And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
Busyness
I’ve been working on refining my systems the past few weeks. And I’m being careful about taking a lot of the advice out there.
Cal Newport points out the rise in “productivity as a hobby.” (There’s been some backlash on “Toxic Productivity” content.)
I speculate like fitness tracking, the “busyness” of sorting, tagging, flipping switches in complex systems and apps scratch that productivity itch.
It’s like running on a treadmill.
You’re doing the work, but technically not going anywhere.
I did some Asana training and found myself even more overwhelmed than I was before.
I ended up making a spreadsheet version that’s basically a checklist. Sadly, I don’t think there’s a lot of content clicks to be made from it.