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.
Either/or
|
Hello Reader, In 1997, Elliott Smith put out an album called Either/Or. It's quiet and close, mostly one voice and a guitar, and for years I assumed the title was a mood. It wasn't. He borrowed it from a book, Søren Kierkegaard's Either/Or, from 1843. Kierkegaard's book is about two ways of living. One drifts from pleasure to pleasure and never commits to anything. The other chooses, and keeps choosing. His point was that the hard part isn't picking the right side. The hard part is choosing at all, because drift feels like freedom right up until you notice you haven't decided anything. I've been thinking about that because November is almost here, and I've given it a name. I call it NOvember. It's the month I say no. No new projects, no new programs, no new promises. The things already in motion get my attention and everything else waits. (Officially, the theme is Grounding, which is the same idea said more gently.) Every year someone asks me the same question, and it's a fair one because of what I used to do with the month: is November a month for no, or a month for now? For a long time I treated that as an either/or. Either you close the door, or you live in the present. I don't think that's right anymore. The no is what makes the now possible. A day packed with things I agreed to months ago is a backlog with a date on it. Saying no clears enough space for the present to show up at all. And most of what I end up saying no to was never ringing in the first place. It was humming. The standing commitment that renews itself, the project that rolls over like a subscription I forgot I had. Nothing wrong with any of it, exactly. It just stopped making a sound I could hear. The question I use to sort them is simple: if this arrived today, brand new, with everything it costs, would I choose it? What passes gets re-chosen and feels different for it. What doesn't gets the no. Two principles from Productiveness sit underneath this. Nuance is the reminder that most binaries are false, and that the interesting answer is usually in the middle. Will is the quiet, repeated choice to keep heading toward what matters, which is Kierkegaard's second way of living in fewer words. Put together: no and now aren't rivals. One is the choice. The other is what the choice buys you. So that's what NOvember is for me. The first word is practice for the second. I'd rather you not take my version of it, though. Here's the question I'm sitting with instead: What would you have to say no to in November for now to have any room? Reply and tell me. I read every email I get. – Mike P.S. That sorting question comes from a Lantern Lyceum I gave in September called "What Rings True," about the difference between the things in your life that ring and the things that only hum. Tomorrow it goes out as an episode of A Productive Conversation. If you're trying to figure out what gets the no this November, it's the tuning fork I'd hand you. And since we're on the subject of saying no: the Lyceums were one of mine. The last public one happened earlier this month on YouTube. From here on they live inside the TimeCrafting Trust, so if you've been waiting for the next one on the channel, that's where it went. |
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.
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 34 | October 24th, 2026 Hello Reader, Last week I wrote about watching the Foo Fighters play for three hours, and how nobody in that stadium was counting. I’ve kept thinking about what was powering that set. It wasn’t a schedule. It wasn’t a quota. Whatever kept them going that long came from somewhere deeper than discipline. That question sent me back to the name of this newsletter. When I told you why I called it The Lantern, I talked about carried...
Hello Reader, A line came to me out of the blue last week, after a couple of days that asked more of me than usual: Soft days make for hard landings. Hard days make for soft landings. By "landing" I don't mean the end of the day. I mean the moment something hard shows up. Days that test you are rehearsal. When the next test arrives, you've been somewhere like it before, and the impact gets absorbed. A long run of easy days leaves you out of practice, and the same challenge hits like a drop...
Hello Reader, In 1996, a band called Eels put out a song called "Novocaine for the Soul." The person singing it keeps saying everything is fine while asking, almost politely, for something to make it stop hurting. He doesn't want it fixed. He wants to stop feeling it. The song somehow found its way back into my head recently, and I've been thinking about it a lot – because I think we've gotten very good at making our own novocaine. Novocaine doesn't fix the tooth. It lets the work happen...