I Tried This Life Hack Bob Buford and Coach Raveling Swear By.

2 appointments a day.

Bob Buford and Coach Raveling are probably very different people. This is one thing they both do/did and preached. They both proposed to slow down and selfishly protect time for themselves by limiting the number of appointments to 2–4 a day. Bob reinvested his time to reflect while Coach spends the extra time to read a ton. They both stressed how instrumental this hack was to help then slow down and re-prioritise on what’s really important.

I thought this would be an interesting hack to try.

When I first started, I felt guilty, because I felt unproductive, and I had to turn a lot of people down.

I wasn’t that proactive. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the free time. I spent more time on YouTube instead of meeting people or working on work stuff.

“Free time to plan my free time!”

The first thing I learned quickly was I needed to plan ahead a lot more. This is easily understandable because my availability decreased exponentially. I used to have 5–6 meetings/touch bases/connections whatever per day.

But slowly I started to realize the first gift of limiting the number of daily appointments, was free time to plan your free time!

I find this perhaps the most important aspect of this hack: we never had time to think and plan our free time. When we were busy, we never had time to plan our free time. Think of those weekends where they just arrived and you just went through them, and then Monday came again …. and that cycle would just go on for months.

This is what my typical work day now looks like:

Morning block (8-noon):

• Plan my work calendar 14 days out — review accept reschedule appointments and requests.
• Review my plans for my free time of the day.
• First appointment + time to reflect on the discussion.
• Some work stuff.

Lunch block (noon — 2pm):

• lunch
• First / second appointment

Afternoon block (2–5pm):

• Plan my free time to track my personal goals.
• Second appointment + time to reflect on the discussion.
• More work stuff.

I can go on and talk about how I used my free time, what I gained from them, etc. however I think we all could expect what those are … more time with family, more time for my body and mind, more time to develop a hobby/side gig/second career, etc. you can go find books websites whatever to help give you ideas.

Give it a try. Pace yourself. You don’t have to go down to 2 right away. Just like any hacks, you approach it by following the direction of what the hack intends to take you. Just be intentional on how you might want to use those free times: use your free time to plan your free time.

If you really need some ideas on how to spend your free time, here are some I find quite helpful:

1. Write a biography of your life.
2. Write an imaginary commencement speech.
3. Write a letter to your child to tell them who you are.

Oh and yes, you guessed it right. I planned my free time to use my free time to write stuff. 🙂