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.
Some weeks you retreat.
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Hello Reader, You may have noticed things were quieter than usual from me this week. That's because I've been in it — three days of The READY Retreat with the TimeCrafting Trust community, working through the same process I've been refining for years. Reflecting, eliminating, attuning, choosing, yielding. When you step back to retreat, your usual patterns get disrupted. Intentionally. That's the point. Emails wait. The work doesn't. Now that the retreat is complete, I'm turning my attention to what's next — and there's something I want to make sure you don't miss. The READY Return is going public. The READY Return is a shorter, focused session that happens a few weeks after the retreat — a chance to check in on your themes, recalibrate your cadence, and course correct before the next season arrives. It's always been for community members only. This time, we're opening it up. The READY Return will be live-streamed on YouTube — free to attend, open to anyone. And June is shaping up to be a month worth paying attention to. We're exploring the idea of retreating itself — why stepping back is one of the most productive things you can do, and how to build it into the way you work. The Lantern Lyceum session goes deep on that. Then the READY Return brings it home. If you want to be there for the livestream, the best thing to do is subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the notification bell so you don't miss it when we go live. Subscribe to my YouTube channel (and turn on notifications) More details coming soon. But I wanted you to hear it first. — Mike |
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, There's a word I've been sitting with lately: Prudence. It sounds old-fashioned, maybe even a little prim. But the original definition — mid-14th century — has nothing soft about it. Prudence means intelligence, discretion, foresight, and the practical wisdom to see what's suitable before you commit to action. It's one of the four classical cardinal virtues. And it's something most of us are already practicing — we've just never called it that. Laying out your clothes the night...
Hello Reader, Eight years ago today, we lost Anthony Bourdain. I've been thinking about him a lot lately. Not just because of the anniversary, but because of a piece I came across that's stayed with me. It was written just two days after his death by J.D. Roth, someone who, like me, admired Bourdain deeply and found himself unsettled in ways he couldn't quite shake. In it, Roth shares something Bourdain said in a Wall Street Journal interview not long before he died. When asked whether he...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 15 | June 6, 2026 Hello Reader, There's a quote you've probably seen attributed to Picasso: "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away." It's not actually Picasso — it's most credibly traced to a psychiatrist named David Viscott — but that's not what interests me about it. What interests me is that it's not even the full quote. The version that circulates drops the middle line. What was originally written reads:...