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
|
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, I took two weeks off this summer. No livestream. Nothing humming along in the background. And when I sat back down, the first thing my brain offered me was a hole to dig out of. Then I caught the assumption underneath it. Falling behind means there was a race, and that I agreed to run it. I hadn't. I'd just stopped. Those are different things. One carries debt. The other doesn't. We collapse the two all the time. A vacation. An illness. A launch. A stretch where life mattered...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 22 | July 25, 2026 Hello Reader, My son turned a year older this week — a little deeper into his teens, a little closer to the door. The house has been quiet most of the month, the kids off living their own summer, my wife and I rattling around in the early draft of a life we'll be living full-time before long. So maybe it's no accident I've had an old Jim Croce song stuck in my head: Time in a Bottle. Croce wrote it in 1970, the night his wife told him...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue I21 | July 18, 2026 Hello Reader, You probably know the story. An American businessman is standing on a pier in a small coastal village when a fisherman pulls in with a few good fish. The businessman asks why he doesn't stay out longer and catch more. The fisherman says he has enough — enough for his family, with time left to sleep in, play with his kids, nap with his wife, and wander into the village at night to play guitar with his friends. The...