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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 27 | September 5, 2026 Hello Reader, The calendar is dragging its feet this year. Labour Day always lands on the first Monday of September, and this year that Monday is the 7th. That is as late as it can possibly be. Summer got a two-day extension nobody asked for, and the long weekend that usually kicks off the "real" year is still sitting out there past this Saturday morning. Because let's be honest about what Labour Day actually is. January 1st gets...
Hello Reader, Picture a party, or a conference lobby, or the school pickup line. Someone extends a hand and asks, "Who are you?" Notice what they didn't ask. Nobody asks "What are you?" That question would land strangely, almost rudely. We save "what" for objects. A chair is a what. A person is a who. The grammar assumes there's a someone standing in front of you before there's a something, and it makes that assumption on your behalf every time. So far, so good. Being comes first, right there...
Hello Reader, Productiveness is out today. I've spent most of my working life inside the word "productivity." I've taught it, built frameworks around it, made a career of it. And for years, something about the word itself has chafed. Productivity is a factory measurement. Output over input. It was designed for machines, and somewhere along the way we started applying it to people, and then to ourselves, and then we wondered why our days felt mechanical even when they were technically going...