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.
I’m sick and tired of this…
I’m writing this at 12:26 in the morning. I’ve just finished writing several other pieces, spent time working on my Daily Theme tasks already, and I’m about to head off to bed after a really productive day.
That’s why I’m sick and tired of people saying that night owls aren’t productive.
Whether it’s imperative to align your body clock with the magic hours of sleep or night owls simply not existing, there is a stigma against night owls and their ability to not just be productive but to sustain productiveness throughout the day.
I’m a productive night owl. Have been for nearly all of my life. And I want to break that stigma and help night owls be just as productive as their early bird counterparts.
If you’re a night owl then reply to this email and let me know. I’d love to hear from you because I know I’m not the only one that’s sick and tired of this.
See you later,
Mike
P.S. I’ve already developed a short email series for night owls, so if you’d like to receive that just click here and you’ll be good to go.
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 released a conversation yesterday with Jon Acuff about procrastination—and one idea kept surfacing: It’s not laziness. It’s friction. Sometimes that friction looks like overwhelm. Sometimes it looks like fear. And sometimes… it’s just not knowing what to do next. If you want to dig into that, you can listen here. But below is something simple you can try right away. Write down six tasks. Roll a die. Do the one it lands on. That's it. It sounds almost too simple—but it works...
Hello Reader, We tend to believe that doing more will get us where we want to go. More effort. More output. More improvement.But that belief rarely gets questioned.What does get overlooked is this: What are we choosing to care about in the first place?That’s what I’ll be exploring in a live conversation with Mark Manson. You likely know Mark from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck. His work has reached millions by challenging the idea that we need to fix everything—and instead asking us to...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 4 | March 21, 2026 Hello Reader, I spent part of this past Tuesday in a state of flow. The kind where you look up and realize hours have passed and something meaningful has moved forward. In my case, it was podcast work—episodes reviewed, refined, and pushed ahead. By the time I stopped, I’d carried things nearly to the end of June. On paper, that’s a win. But in practice, it gave me pause. Because while I was doing important work, I wasn’t doing the...