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.
Moving, or being moved?
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Hello Reader, I’d been looking forward to VisionQuest for a long time, and the first two episodes didn’t disappoint. No spoilers here, but they left me with a realization I didn’t see coming. When you build for long enough, you can end up with a full record of what you did and no felt sense of what it was all for. All the parts, none of the thread. I noticed it in a small way this week. One idea for a story made me feel more alive than weeks of output had. The next day the feeling was still there, buried under everything I’ve built and feel I have to keep running. Then I noticed what the story was about: a creator who never does the thing, because something else always seems more urgent. Sometimes we write the warning before we realize we need it. I’m bringing that into this month's Lantern Lyceum, alongside two books written by men who knew their time was short. Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture asks what you’d say if this were the last time, and who you’d really be saying it to. Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? says your real strategy isn’t what you say matters. It’s where your time actually goes. It’s called The Last Lyceum, because it’s the last one I’ll hold on YouTube. (Not the last Lyceum. Just the last one there. I’ll explain why on the stream.) It happens Wednesday, October 14 at 9 AM Pacific, live on YouTube. Click here to be part of The Last Lyceum If you’ve been to one this year, I’d love for you to be in the room for this one. If you never have, this is a good one to start and finish on. One question to bring with you: Am I moving, or am I being moved? See you later, |
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 32 | October 10th, 2026 Hello Reader, It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. Ours has always been a harvest holiday first, which is why it lands in early October, while the fields are still being cleared and the leaves haven’t finished turning. I’ve been thinking about what a harvest actually is. A farmer plants the seed, sure. But the farmer doesn’t make the rain, or the soil, or a season that happened to be kind this year instead of cruel. Most of...
Hello Reader, A while back, I sat down with my daughter and recorded a conversation about what she's learned from me. Not the frameworks. Not the acronyms. I wanted to know what actually made it through. Two things stay with me from that conversation. The first is that somewhere in it, I credited a line to Oscar Wilde that belongs to Thoreau: "It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?" She didn't care who said it. The question landed anyway, which...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 31 | October 3rd, 2026 Hello Reader, A few weeks ago in New York, my daughter turned the tables on me. I was there for Podcast Movement, Grace came down from Montreal, and we sat in a studio at Kit with her asking me the questions for an episode of A Productive Conversation. (You can watch the episode here or listen to it here.) One of the questions I didn’t see coming: of the nine principles of Productiveness, which one is hardest for me to actually...