Bill Gates has told how Warren Buffett once showed him his calendar, which had days with nothing on them. In a 2017 interview with Buffett, Gates said: “I had every minute packed and I thought that was the only way you could do things.” He added: “It’s not a proxy of your seriousness that you fill every minute in your schedule.”
In May 2024 Gates returned to the lesson: “It took far too long for me to realize that you don’t have to fill every second of your schedule to be successful.”
American professors hold office hours, fixed times each week when students can come to their office. At California State University, Long Beach, policy requires one regularly scheduled office hour per week for every three weighted teaching units taught, up to four hours. The hours must be posted by the office door and listed on every syllabus.
The policy adds that the required hour “cannot be met, entirely or in part, by stipulating ‘by appointment only.'”
Even the time for dropping in is a fixed slot.
In 1998 Rabbi Yaacov Deyo in Los Angeles invented what he called round-robin dating. Aish HaTorah, the organization that ran the program, described it as “the ultimate in a 8 minute date.” The format quickly spread around the world as speed dating.
At the Academy Awards, winners have 45 seconds for an acceptance speech. When the time is up, the orchestra begins to play them off the stage.
Some stars keep talking anyway. In 2001 Julia Roberts spoke for about four minutes while the orchestra leader stood ready to play her off. In 2025 Adrien Brody spoke for 5 minutes and 40 seconds, the longest acceptance speech in the history of the Oscars.
In July 2009 the investor Paul Graham published an essay called “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.” The manager’s schedule, he wrote, “is embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals.” To meet someone, you “find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.”
Graham argued that programmers and writers need long blocks of time without meetings. A single meeting in the afternoon can break it into pieces too small for hard work. His own solution was to set aside fixed times each week for meetings with the founders he had funded.
Calendly was founded in Atlanta in 2013 by Tope Awotona. He had worked in sales and found that scheduling meetings with people was a problem. A Calendly user shares a link that shows the open slots in his or her calendar. The other person picks one. By November 2023 the service had more than 20 million users.
In his Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes his rule of Order: “every part of my business should have its allotted time.” One page of his little book held a “scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a natural day.” He rose at five. He worked from eight to eleven and from two to five. From twelve to one he read or looked over his accounts, and dined.
Franklin admits that Order “gave me the most trouble.” A master of a business, he wrote, “must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their own hours.”
In the final presidential debate of 2020, on October 22, each candidate had two minutes of uninterrupted time at the start of every 15-minute segment. During those two minutes, only the speaking candidate’s microphone was open.
The Commission on Presidential Debates made the change after the first debate, in which President Donald Trump had frequently interrupted former Vice President Joe Biden.
On the floor of the House of Representatives, speaking time is allotted in minutes. A member who controls the time gives some of it to others: “I yield two minutes to the gentleman from California.” Unused time is handed back: “I yield back the balance of my time.” When the time runs out, the chair announces that it has expired.
A member who has yielded time to someone can take it back with the words “Reclaiming my time.” On July 27, 2017, Representative Maxine Waters used the phrase repeatedly while questioning Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The video spread widely, and the phrase became a popular saying.
At the Supreme Court of the United States, an oral argument is scheduled for one hour, with 30 minutes for each side. The Court’s guide for counsel says that the justices generally do not question the lead counsel for either side during the first two minutes of argument.
The Marshal of the Court times every argument. A white light means that five minutes remain. When the red light comes on, counsel may finish answering a pending question but “should not present a summation.”