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.
One regulation before fall
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Hello Reader, Most of the rules you live by were never chosen. They arrived with a job, a family, a version of you from years ago, and they've been running quietly ever since. Some still serve you. Some just have seniority. And here's the trouble with rules, even the good ones: a rule is a switch. On or off, kept or broken. Miss the 6 AM workout once and the day feels cracked. Miss it twice and the streak dies, and the practice usually dies with it. Rules fail loudly, and they take things with them when they go. A regulation works differently. A regulation is a thermostat. It reads conditions and adjusts while still holding the temperature. "I write at 9 AM" is a rule, and one sideways morning can end it. "I write before I open email" is a regulation. Same intent, same structure, room to breathe. A late start doesn't break anything. It just adjusts the day. There's a seasonal reason to care about this now. September doesn't ease in. It lands all at once, and every rigid rule you're carrying is going to get pressure-tested by it anyway. New schedules, new commitments. The rules will snap on September's terms unless you convert them on yours. So that's the invitation: one regulation before fall. Pick a single rule that's been running you, the kind that only counts if it happens a certain way, and rewrite the command as a condition. Then live with it for the rest of August and let it bend when the week does. By the time things speed up, you'll have something that holds without breaking, which is the only kind of structure worth bringing into a busy season. If you want help choosing yours, yesterday's Lyceum covered exactly this, and The Regulation Book that goes with it is free alongside the replay at mikevardy.com/lyceum. See you later, P.S. About next month's book: there's something happening alongside it, too. Details when they're ready. For now, the only assignment is the regulation. |
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 24 | August 8, 2026 Hello Reader, In October 2020, I published a short piece on Medium called "Be a Goldfish." Two minutes to read, maybe less. The world was inside out that fall, and a new show about an American football coach coaching English football was making a lot of us feel better than we had any right to feel. There's a scene early on. A player can't shake a mistake he made mid-match. It's written all over him, play after play. Ted jogs over and...
Hello Reader, Somewhere along the line, momentum became another word for speed. Get moving, pick up the pace, don't lose it. Physics never agreed to that. Momentum is mass times velocity. Two things, multiplied. Speed is only half the equation. The other half is weight: how much you're actually moving. This is the season of velocity plans. August arrives, fall comes into view, and the instinct is to get fast. Earlier mornings, tighter days. But a velocity plan with nothing behind it behaves...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 23 | August 1, 2026 Hello Reader, I use AI all over the place. ClickUp Brain inside my work management. Recipes built from whatever I dictate is actually in the fridge. Conceptual drafts of emails like this one. But there's a version of that story I want to be careful not to tell: the one where AI does most of it and I tidy up at the end. That's not what happens. I bring the fodder (the idea, the angle, the why) and I shape it as I go. AI carries bulk....