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Hello Reader, David Allen’s quote, “You can do anything but you can’t do everything” is popular in productivity circles…. but it’s misunderstood. He’s not saying you can’t do everything you want to do, just that you can’t do it all at once. Not to mention that “everything” can mean something to one person and something else to another (and another). So how do you actually do everything? Well, if you actually want to do everything, then I’ve put together a 7 step process that you can follow starting today. The 7 Step Process for Doing Everything You Want
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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 35 | October 31st, 2026 Hello Reader, Happy Halloween. It’s the one night a year we invite fear in on purpose, dress it up, and hand it candy. Tonight, most clocks fall back an hour. Mine won’t. Where I live, the time stays put this year, which is new. So tomorrow the calendar turns to November while the clock on my wall carries on as if nothing changed. It feels like subjective and objective time colliding: the season says one thing, the clock says...
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...
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...