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.
Three Ideas I Keep Returning To
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Hello Reader, Thanks to the TimeCrafting Trust Book Club, I’ve been spending time with Meditations again. Not reading it straight through, but returning to it—letting certain passages meet me where I am, rather than trying to extract something from it all at once. Three ideas have stayed with me. These three ideas don’t feel new. In fact, they feel familiar in a way that’s almost unsettling—like they’ve been quietly shaping how I think and work long before I could name them clearly.
Taken together, they form something simple, but not easy: Direct your attention, show up well to what’s in front of you, and let the rest fall away. What struck me this time is how closely these ideas align with the work I’ve been doing for years—often without realizing I was circling them from a different angle. Yet if I’m being completely honest, it’s the second one that feels most prescient right now. Not what I do. Not how much I do. But the state I’m in while doing it. As I continue to lean into this shift—from productivity to productiveness—that distinction feels less like an insight and more like a calling. Not to do more, but to become someone who can do what matters… well. |
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 5 | March 28, 2026 Hello Reader, There are moments when procrastination doesn’t feel like avoidance. It feels… reasonable. A pause. A pivot. A moment to gather thoughts before beginning. In those moments, it’s subtle. Almost supportive. It creates space. And sometimes, that space is useful. It allows for reflection. It introduces just enough tension to sharpen attention. A form of eustress—pressure that prepares rather than overwhelms. But left...
Hello Reader, I released a conversation yesterday with Jon Acuff about procrastination—and one idea kept surfacing: It’s not laziness. It’s friction. Sometimes that friction looks like overwhelm. Sometimes it looks like fear. And sometimes… it’s just not knowing what to do next. If you want to dig into that, you can listen here. But below is something simple you can try right away. Write down six tasks. Roll a die. Do the one it lands on. That's it. It sounds almost too simple—but it works...
Hello Reader, We tend to believe that doing more will get us where we want to go. More effort. More output. More improvement.But that belief rarely gets questioned.What does get overlooked is this: What are we choosing to care about in the first place?That’s what I’ll be exploring in a live conversation with Mark Manson. You likely know Mark from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck. His work has reached millions by challenging the idea that we need to fix everything—and instead asking us to...