I’m Mike Vardy, and I help people build a better relationship with time — not by controlling it, but by working with it. Through my writing, courses, and community, I explore how intention and attention shape a more meaningful life — one rooted in the original idea of productiveness over productivity.
Don't let July just end
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Hello Reader, Most months don't end. They get interrupted by the next one. We sprint through the last few days, or we ignore them entirely. Then Monday shows up wearing a new month's name and we wonder why nothing feels different. A month deserves a close. Not a ceremony. A close. Ten minutes and three questions will do it. What actually moved this month? Not what kept you busy. Busy and moved are different ledgers. Name one or two things that are genuinely further along than they were on July 1st. That's the month's real record, and it's almost always better than the noise in your head suggests. What did you tolerate in July that August shouldn't inherit? A commitment that went stale. A tool that fights you. A yes that should have been a no. You don't have to fix it today. You just have to name it, because whatever goes unnamed gets carried forward by default. What deserves your first hour on Monday? Not the whole week. The first hour. August 3rd will arrive holding an inbox and a dozen small demands, all of them happy to decide your morning for you. Deciding now is how you open a month on purpose instead of on defence. That's it. Nothing to download, nothing to buy. Just ten minutes on Thursday so Friday can close July properly. See you in August. – Mike P.S. To everyone who signed in, searched "Vardy," and voted for my Podcast Movement session: thank you. "The Podcast Isn't the Point" made the program because of you. I'll share more details on what else this could mean for me in NYC soon. |
The Practice of Productiveness
I’m Mike Vardy, and I help people build a better relationship with time — not by controlling it, but by working with it. Through my writing, courses, and community, I explore how intention and attention shape a more meaningful life — one rooted in the original idea of productiveness over productivity.
Hello Reader, Robert Redford would have turned 90 today. It's the first birthday since he died last September at Sundance, the place he built and never left. I keep coming back to a scene of his that has nothing to do with mountains. In The Candidate, he plays Bill McKay, a guy who runs for Senate mostly because he's told he can't win. So he says what he actually thinks. And then he starts climbing in the polls. So he says a little less of what he thinks. He gets slicker. He gets handled. He...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 25 | August 15, 2026 Hello Reader, Tomorrow, a show called Lanterns arrives. And every Saturday, something called The Lantern arrives in your inbox. I figure that small collision is as good an excuse as I'll ever get to finally tell you why this newsletter has the name it has. Call it lighting my own lantern the night before theirs comes on. Some history first, because I've been waiting for this one a long time. Fifteen years ago there was a Green...
Hello Reader, Most of the rules you live by were never chosen. They arrived with a job, a family, a version of you from years ago, and they've been running quietly ever since. Some still serve you. Some just have seniority. And here's the trouble with rules, even the good ones: a rule is a switch. On or off, kept or broken. Miss the 6 AM workout once and the day feels cracked. Miss it twice and the streak dies, and the practice usually dies with it. Rules fail loudly, and they take things...