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Join MaryRuth and special guests as they dive deep into the world of health, wellness, and purposeful living. Each episode is a fresh, inspiring conversation with thought leaders, health experts, and everyday changemakers who share practical tips and empowering stories to help you take meaningful steps toward your best self. Whether you're seeking motivation, holistic guidance, or just a little joy in your wellness journey—this podcast is here to help you move forward every day.
We all have 24 hours in a day.
And I believe that
every person who's inching along,
every person
who is making progress
in their own life,
I believe that creates
a lot of happiness.
And so learning
the self-mastery of
how do I use my 24 hour period
when I'm feeling good
or when I'm sick, or when I'm
going through a tough time?
And how can I day to day, week
to week, month to month, year
to year, move forward every day?
Hi everyone!
I'm MaryRuth Ghiyam,
the founder and CEO of
MaryRuth Organics, and today
we are going to talk
about time blocking.
This is the Move Forward
Everyday podcast.
And today's episode will be in
live time.
Exactly
what I have personally done
for about 18 years of
combining time
blocking and the compound
effect together.
What's interesting is that
you may love the whole example,
or you might only take
a few pieces
that resonate with you, but
the key is for about ten minutes,
I will share with you
exactly what I personally do.
Even though my method
I would not recommend to
everyone.
I get asked
this a lot like MaryRuth,
can you please share with us
about time
blocking, the compound
effect your iPhone notes, your
your iPhone calendar,
your paper calendar.
So again, I'm going to
just as transparently as possible
today, share with you what I do.
For almost two decades
now, I think that's over
150,000 hours of time blocking.
And please, please,
please do not feel pressure
to do anything that I do.
But I do think
if you stay with us
the entire episode,
which will be short
and efficient,
I think you will find one
or two or three
things that resonate with you
that you can try to do
in your own life.
I really got this idea
to do this
particular podcast recently
on this topic
because in the most recent
fireside chat,
which is a monthly zoom meeting,
we have. It's free.
We have over a thousand
people from our community,
our consumers
who take our vitamins.
They come on zoom at lunchtime
and then in another
totally different
group of people,
come on at 5 p.m.
that afternoon.
And someone said that
when I was talking about time
blocking.
So this is the time
blocking journal.
They said, you know, MaryRuth,
like last month when you were
when you were talking
about the time locking
all she said, all she did was
just make a list and try to do it
at certain times of the day.
And she said,
she's a mom as well,
that this really,
really changed her life.
So it's very rewarding for me
to hear
how I explained it
on the fireside chat.
And then a month later,
she came back to share
with the group
that she just took a little bit
of what I was already doing,
and it made a big difference
in her life.
The whole reason
I love this podcast
and our team,
the whole MaryRuth Organics
marketing team,
said, MaryRuth, can
you just make very short podcast
is because
I really hope
at the end of this episode,
you will write
in your iPhone notes
or write down in a journal,
or write down on a piece of paper
something that
you are going to do that
will truly change your day to day
life.
The thing that I am
the most passionate about
is this idea that we all have
24 hours in a day,
and I believe that
every person who's inching along,
every person
who is making progress
in their own life,
I believe that creates
a lot of happiness.
And so learning
the self-mastery of
how do I use my 24 hour period
when I'm feeling good
or when I'm sick, or when I'm
going through a tough time?
And how can I day to day, week
to week, month to month, year
to year, move forward every day?
So without further ado,
I am very excited
to break this down for you.
So in no particular order,
this is truly what I do.
And it wasn't
always
this complicated. At first.
I would just literally write
down the hour on a piece of paper
and what I wanted to do the day
before that was like
my first version.
But then over the years, as I had
one child, two child,
and the twins
were born during Covid
and having those four kids
in four years,
plus being with the MaryRuth
Organics team
and just trying to be
a good daughter, a good spouse,
a good friend.
I have added
in all of those layers.
So the first thing
I would encourage
you to do is create
either on a piece of paper
or in your iPhone
notes, your morning
and nighttime routine,
which is something
we talked about
in the very first episode
of the Move for an
everyday podcast, is,
I believe, so
much in the power of a morning
and nighttime routine.
No matter how long, how short,
how big,
how small, it's an anchor
to help you every day.
I remember sharing that
one of my favorite quotes
is I read it
in the New York Times
at some point
a few years ago, is
most people think they need
to feel good
in order to get going,
but in reality,
we need to get going in order
to give ourselves a chance
at feeling good.
And so
I really encourage people
to start in this place.
Creating a morning and nighttime
routine is a micro version
of a macro
pursuit
of where
you want to go in your life.
So some people already know that
they want to be a veterinarian,
or they want to hike
a very tall mountain
in their neighborhood.
Some people do not
have a macro view
or self-awareness
about like what is their purpose?
What is their passion?
So I always say
first things first.
If you have something
that is important to you,
like a purpose
or taking care of your family
like a big view,
a big macro view of what
you want to do every day
and where you're going,
then you can reverse
engineer your morning
and nighttime routine
to be very connected.
So the micro and macro
will be deeply connected.
If you are a person
who's like, I don't,
I want to learn
more about myself.
I want to have more
self-awareness.
I want to figure out
what my hopes,
my dreams are for myself,
my family.
Maybe you're a teenager.
Maybe you're in college.
What's incredible is that you
don't have to know
all the answers,
but the act of creating
a morning and nighttime routine
and trying to execute it
every day in a 24 hour period
will eventually create
so many green lights in your life
and show you a lot
about who you are
and give yourself self-awareness.
But then you will end up having
that North Star in your life,
that macro view.
So first, things are two ways
you can break down your morning
and nighttime routine.
I do it on paper,
and a lot of people
I know also do it on the iPhone.
So the first thing you could do
on the iPhone is create
your morning
and nighttime routine,
then your copy
and pasting it below.
So you write out in your iPhone
notes,
morning routine,
nighttime routine.
Or it could use AI
Whatever resonates with you.
Then you're going to copy it
and paste the same thing
you wrote below.
So if two versions of here's
your morning and nighttime
routine, your iPhone notes,
and then you copy and paste it
as the identical morning
and nighttime routine below it.
And then when you wake up
every morning, you delete
the copy
and pasted version,
like when you've gone for a walk
or had your vitamins or
or had some sunshine
or stretch, you delete it
and then you copy
and paste again for the next day.
So that's the most eco friendly
version of how to do this.
I do something
a little bit different.
I really just have to do this
for survival purposes
of having these four extremely
young kids.
Ethan is eight, Elliot is seven,
and the twins are four and a half
and having them all
go to school, having them,
you know, whether it's school,
whether it's camp,
getting them out the door by 730,
it's a lot.
So I use a piece of paper
and I do photocopy it.
So I write out my morning
routine, which deeply
involves getting my children
ready for school
lunches,
dressing them, breakfast,
what they need,
and I photocopy it.
And then every day,
as soon as I wake up, I'm
the first one up in the house.
I start crossing off
what I can and can't do
related to that morning routine,
and it is
the greatest part of my day.
It is so comforting,
even if I can only do half of it.
I like just
crossing off the things
where, okay, I don't have
a lot of time. This season,
in the summer league,
I coached my son Elliot's
basketball league.
The last game is in September,
but it was July and August,
and on those mornings
when we had to go to the
basketball game all four of us
leave the house really fast
on a Sunday morning,
I would just cross off
some of the morning routine.
I knew
I wasn't going to get to do,
but maybe the day before Saturday
it was
easier and I could.
I'm just
listening to Elliott
in the background, but it's okay.
They don't need to cut this
out of the podcast like it's
okay.
It's real life.
My children are home
from school
and I mean, they're about
to go to school, home from camp,
and we can hear some background
noise, but it's okay. So,
and then it would just cross off
what I want to do.
Same thing for nighttime routine.
I love seeing at 6 p.m.
I start to make dinner.
We all eat together.
Then everybody does the baths.
Then we tuck them in.
I have certain time
I turn off my phone.
I love having camomile tea.
Sometimes I will do a face
mask or paint my nails
once the children are sleeping.
And I love having that
morning and nighttime routine.
So that's
the first part of my day.
My day begins where
I have this locked in.
It repeats the same every day.
Now we're going to hold up
the time blocking journal.
So I'm going to rip out
a piece of this paper for us.
And I'm going to show you here.
Here it is 5
a.m., 6 a.m., 7 a.m.,
all the way to 10 p.m.
at night.
So the day before
the next day is
when I time block
what's happening.
So this is the second tool I use.
So the morning routine written
on a different piece of paper.
The day before
I will write down
taking it from my iPhone notes,
all of my zoom
meetings,
or my Google Meets,
whatever's happening.
And then I will around my work
schedule,
add in anything else
there that's relevant.
Is it, a show
and tell day at school
for one of my children?
Is it color war at camp?
Anything I need to know.
I usually rip out seven of these
every single week.
I like to do it on Thursdays
before the weekend.
So Thursday to Thursday
I have seven of these,
and I write down the day
before the next day
before 4 p.m..
Okay, what's happening?
What are my work responsibilities?
When am I eating?
I went to a mom's school dinner
last night.
It was so fun.
But I am able to see the day
before.
Okay, this is what's happening.
And what's great
is a lot of times
our days do not go as planned.
And so what's amazing, which is,
an expression that's on
the cover of this,
it says Move Forward Every Day.
It also says structure
creates freedom.
Is that so many times,
every single day,
there's going to be things
that happen
that are not part of our plan,
and it allows you to accept it
even before it happens.
Because you have everything written down,
you can move
whatever you're supposed to do
that day to the next day
or the next day,
because it's all there.
So we all want to be able to go
with the flow,
have freedom to do
the things that we love.
And I always say
structure creates freedom
because if you can see
what your responsibilities are,
then if something
fun and amazing comes up,
like your child has a play date
or they want to go to a last
minute birthday party,
you can see what's happening.
So you're still very
grounded and just shift it
to the next day and the
next day, or if you get sick,
it is shift it to the next day.
You don't feel well or shift it
to the following week.
Everything's just inching along.
And I really believe that time
blocking creates a lot of freedom
and should be a tool
that is not about hustle culture,
but about feeling like
you can see the macro
view of your week and shifting
as things come up that you didn't
plan for you
or your children
or your loved ones
or maybe you take care
of an elderly parent.
We want to do something special
for your friend.
So, so far we've talked
about the morning routine
on the iPhone notes
or on a piece of paper
photocopied, time blocking.
AI has a lot of great time
blockers.
Harvard has done
a lot of research
on how time blocking is
one of the best
time management tools.
I have these seven
pieces of paper
that I take my meetings
from my iPhone notes
and write them out
really helps me
get through the days, especially
when I haven't slept.
Really helps me to see like,
okay,
I have like this little bit left
to do before the
next day or before bedtime.
Then I also use a paper calendar
and this is the last tool
that I use.
So the paper calendar allows me
to have deep breaths like I'm
the type of person,
especially with my four
beautiful kids.
Like I need to see
the whole month.
I need to kind of see
my bandwidth visually,
and I can't really see it that
well on a laptop or on my iPhone.
So I also like to write
on my paper calendar,
certain birthday parties,
certain sports games,
certain holidays, certain times.
I have something very important
with the investors at work.
I like to see it all.
Even today,
when Joel and I
were going to film the podcast,
I could visually see it
when I looked
at the month of August,
and it allows me
to feel at peace.
I get whenever
I feel overwhelmed.
I go to the paper calendar
and I say, okay,
I see that last Friday
we took Elliot for his birthday
to Universal Studios,
and then I saw his birthday party
and then I saw
we had basketball practice.
It helps me feel
at peace
and very grounded to have that
large paper calendar
where I can kind
of see the whole year.
When do we have
marketing summits?
When do we have quarterlies?
When do we have
the board meeting?
When do we have
monthly reporting?
Our top two tops?
I love seeing it
and I can feel excited about it.
So just to recap,
I personally use
the morning and nighttime routine
on a piece of paper.
You can use your iPhone.
I use a time blocking journal.
You can use paper
or you can use I.
I also use one very large
paper calendar
that I carry everywhere with me.
I carry it in,
pretty much a duffle bag
in the car
with me.
Okay.
For example, last Tuesday
work ended
and then the dentist called,
and because I had the big paper
calendar, I could see everything.
And I saw, okay,
I could take all of the children
to the dentist
the next day at 9 a.m.,
the week
before they have to go to school.
I love so much
using
all of these tools together,
and I have done it
for years and years and years.
I think the key is to figure out
what resonates with you,
what is practical for you,
what sounds like oh,
I would really like that.
Like I do make very short
to do lists,
and then I try to time
block it in
throughout that seven day window.
Or if there's a little bit
more monthly tasks,
I kind of write that
on the big paper calendar
and then try to time block it
into the individual days.
It is so deeply rewarding
that I have dedicated
so much of my free time.
Whenever I'm doing donations
or volunteering or lectures,
I always talk about time blocking
and the idea
of the compound effect.
The idea that these very small
micro moments can compound
greatly by the end of the year.
And we've spot
we've spoken about that
in the other podcasts.
I think we said
five minutes of stretching a day
at the end of a year is 30 hours,
and your body will thank you
for those 30 hours of stretching.
Then if you didn't do it,
and maybe just stretch the first
five minutes of every show
you watch that year.
So again,
it is
my wish that you will try out
consistently
anything that resonates with you.
Making it to do lists,
adding it into a piece of paper,
just having a to do list
with a big paper calendar.
Just having your morning
and nighttime
routine in your iPhone notes
coupled with your regular
calendar on your iPhone.
Each person is unique and only
you know what is best for you.
But I want to share that
it is absolutely worth it
to create this structure.
I do believe it creates
a lot of peace,
groundedness,
and freedom in your life.
I am able to be a much happier
mom and parent.
I am able to be
so much more present
in everything that I do.
Because of these tools.
Morning and nighttime routines,
time blocking, compound effect,
to-do list, paper calendar,
and look, some months
and seasons of our lives
are going to be
more difficult than others, but
it is always worth the effort.
If your used to time blocking,
you got
you know, life
kind of got away from you
and you want to try it again.
I absolutely encourage it.
And our team,
the MaryRuth Organics team,
and myself were always here.
You can always email
all your questions
at wecare@maryruthorganics.com
That's wecare@maryruthorganics.com
We have The Art of Health For Busy People pdf.
We spoke about that
on one of the podcasts.
So that is the 12 steps
that are free and accessible
to health and wellness.
We have a free PDF time
blocking document
that we can send you
at that email address.