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 ants are busy too
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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 tells you something about good questions. The second is that nothing she named came from a system. What gets passed on isn't the planner or the app or the perfectly themed week. It's the way you are with your time while someone is watching. Nobody inherits your counted hours. They inherit how you filled them. So here's the question I'd hand you this week, parent or not, teacher or not: if someone who watches you closely was asked what they've learned from you, what do you hope they'd say? And does the way you spent yesterday point there? That's not a productivity question. That's the whole point. – Mike P.S. If you want to sit with that question, write your answer down somewhere. More on that next week. |
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 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...
Hello Reader, A few weeks ago my daughter Grace sat me down in a studio in New York and asked me questions about Productiveness that nobody else has asked. That conversation has become the most-watched thing on my YouTube channel in months. It also made something hard to ignore. I've been slack on YouTube. For a long while, the only thing happening there was a Wednesday livestream. That changes tomorrow. Starting Friday, October 2, there's a new video on the channel every Friday at 8 AM...
Hello Reader, When I started writing Productiveness, I knew what it wouldn't be. It wouldn't have exercises in every chapter. It wouldn't hand the reader a system. It wouldn't end with a 30-day challenge or a downloadable worksheet. I said so on page fourteen, because I thought the reader deserved to know what kind of room they were walking into. The room is a quiet one. The book explores nine principles, humanness, grace, prudence, nuance, tolerance, efficacy, cadence, trust, and will, not...