When you just need to get it on the calendar

It started as a joke. Sort of.

Just another one of those half-teasing, half-true moments that happen in every marriage.

Are you talking to Heather again? How come you always have time to talk to her about everything, but no time to talk to me?

At first I just rolled my eyes. Because—as my husband Chuck is well aware—Heather is my Number Two, or as I like to call her, the other half of my brain. She was the first person I ever hired, way back in 2010, and we’ve worked together ever since. 

So every Thursday at 7am, we have our scheduled weekly call while we’re each walking our dogs.

And while we do mostly talk about business stuff during these calls, usually by the time I come back inside, we've drifted fully into friend mode, talking about the kids and life and all the things.

Even so, his complaint caught me a little off guard.

Why does she get that time and I don't?

It wasn't a contentious thing. But it did make me pause.

Because when it comes to my work schedule, I tend to live and die by my calendar. I time block everything, but especially my recurring tasks and meetings. Which means that if something is on the calendar, it happens. If it's not, well, then it doesn’t.

Heather gets Thursday mornings because she's on the calendar.

So I asked, half-joking, "well, do you want me to put you on the calendar too?"

It sounded so silly. Because it’s not like we don’t spend plenty of time together. We’re both home all day, we eat dinner together, and in the evening we either play games or watch TV. Honestly, sometimes it feels like we’re together all the time.

But he still said yes.

So I added a new time block to my schedule. Coffeetime with Chuck. 8am to 9am, every day. 

That's it. No grand plan, no big emotional expectation. Just a simple time block.

And yet, two months later, I honestly can't believe the difference such a tiny shift has made.

It’s not like we have some big heart-to-heart conversation every day.

Sometimes we do Wordle. Sometimes we talk about what's on our plates for the day. Sometimes we talk about the kids or the dogs or current events or what’s happening with our friends.

But sometimes that turns into bigger conversations, about projects we've been avoiding, things that have been quietly stressing us out, or ideas we've been too busy to land on together. 

But little by little, this daily coffee hour has somehow led to bigger changes.

We've made more progress in the last two months than we had in the previous two years, on a variety of fronts, just from actually talking about it.

We feel more connected. We fight less (not that we fought a lot before, but there's just less room for misunderstanding when you actually know what's going on in each other's head). 

We've started being more intentional about having people over, hosting little dinner parties, reaching out to friends we've been meaning to see. 

It's like the intentionality in one area quietly spilled over into everything else.

I didn't expect any of that. Because we weren’t really trying to fix anything.

Annie Dillard once wrote "how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." My friend Michael Hyatt put it a little more succinctly when he said “what gets scheduled gets done."

In other words? Sometimes it’s the tiny changes to your rhythm that shape everything.

We often think change has to come from big sweeping gestures or dramatic life overhauls, but that’s not always true. Sometimes it’s just the quiet, ordinary, on-purpose moments you show up for every single day.

I’ve spent the last sixteen years being incredibly intentional about my work time. About protecting my focus and building systems that make the important things happen whether I feel like it or not. And somehow it never occurred to me to apply that same logic to my personal time.

Not because I didn't care. But because it felt fine.

Yet it only took one small tweak to make it so much better than fine.

So I guess that’s my challenge for you this week, too. To ask yourself whether there might be something in your life right now that's fine, whether it’s a relationship, a friendship, your health, your faith, your finances, or anything else.  But something that you've just been assuming doesn’t need any extra effort right now. 

Then ask yourself what might happen if you made one small tweak to make it better.

Not because it's broken. But because it matters.

Live with purpose, friend, and have a wonderful week!

xoxo, Ruth

P.S. IMPORTANT UPDATE: I just wanted to give you a heads up to let you know that I am in process of transferring newsletter platforms from Beehiiv to Substack.

It will still come directly to your inbox on Tuesday evenings, just like always, but once the transfer is complete, you’ll also be able to read it (and share it) directly on Substack. There is no action required—your subscription will transfer to the new platform, but I just wanted to let you know what’s happening, since the full transfer will take a couple of weeks to complete, and in the midst of this switch, you may be receiving emails from both platforms.

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