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The Practice of Productiveness

The Real Problem with Productivity | The Lantern

Published 20 days ago • 1 min read

The Lantern

by Mike Vardy

Vol. 2, Issue I17 | June 20, 2026

Hello Reader,

Earlier this month I posted a short video calling World Productivity Day paradoxical. A man named Kevin commented on Facebook, thoughtfully, and with some heat.

His argument was economic: that productivity, in a capitalist context, is really just a sophisticated way of asking the poorest people to work harder so the wealthiest can accumulate more. And that the antidote is redistribution: returning more value to the people who actually produce the wealth.

He’s not wrong. That critique is valid and worth sitting with.

But I think the problem runs deeper than economics.

Even outside of capitalism, productivity as a concept tends to reduce people to their output. It measures what you produce, not how you live. It asks how much, not whether it matters. And that root problem — output as the measure of a person — doesn’t disappear just by redistributing the gains. You can fix who benefits from the system without fixing what the system is measuring.

That’s what I keep coming back to on a day like today.

World Productivity Day isn’t a conspiracy. It’s just a mirror. And what it reflects back is a world that has quietly decided the most important thing about you is what you get done.

Productiveness is the refusal of that premise. Not a political one... a personal one. It’s the decision to let meaning, not output, be the measure. To do what actually matters, on purpose, in the time you have.

You can watch the short and read the full exchange here. I’d love to know where you land on it.

The Final Flicker

The most subversive thing you can do on World Productivity Day isn't to work less. It's to refuse to be measured by what you produce at all and to spend the day, deliberately, on what actually matters to you.

That's not a productivity hack. That's a life.

See you later,
Mike

P.S. The $1 offer for the TimeCrafting Trust closes tonight. If this resonates and you've been sitting on it, click here to join us.

Thanks for reading.

Your time is valuable, and I don’t take it for granted. In a world pulling us in all directions, thanks for choosing The Lantern.

Productivityist Productivity Services Inc. | 1411 Haultain Street, Victoria, BC V8R 2J6
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The Practice of Productiveness

Thoughts and practices for working with time—not against it.

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.

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