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.
Time isn't money. (Tomorrow, live.)
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Hello Reader, You've probably said it. I've definitely said it. "Time is money." It's so embedded in how we talk about productivity that we barely notice it anymore. But that framing — time as currency, something to spend wisely and not waste — is quietly working against us. Because money is something you can earn back. Time isn't. And yet we've built entire systems around that metaphor. We measure, optimise, audit. We ask "was that worth it?" about things that were never supposed to have a return. Tomorrow I'm going live for the second Lantern Lyceum, and that's exactly what we're getting into. Stop Treating Time Like a Currency. Start Treating It Like a Relationship.
We'll look at why the transactional approach to time quietly costs us — and what changes when we shift from asking "what's this worth?" to "what does this need to grow?" It's not a lecture. It's a conversation. Bring your questions. If you can't make it live, the replay will be there. But live is better. See you tomorrow. — 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 particular kind of frustration that comes from knowing your relationship with time and productivity could be better — calmer, more intentional, less of a daily scramble — but not having a place to actually work on it. That place is TimeCrafting Trust. And until June 20th (World Productivity Day) your first month is $1. Here's a sampling of what a dollar gets you for a full month: The Monthly Challenge, a shared focus to work through with the community Weekly Check-Ins...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 14 | May 30, 2026 Hello Reader, "May" is a permission word. Not just the month — the word itself. "May I?" "You may." It's a modal verb, one of those quiet grammatical structures that signals possibility and allowance. When you say "may," you're either asking for permission or granting it. Which means we've spent an entire month named after the concept of being permitted to do something. And most of us didn't notice. We hustled through May. We planned,...
Hello Reader, My daughter comes home from university tomorrow... for one month. Not the whole summer. One month. And one of those weeks, I'll be away at a conference. So the math is already doing what math does. There's a stat that floats around parenting circles — the kind that lands differently once your kid is actually gone. By the time a child leaves home, the percentage of lifetime time a parent has left with them is somewhere in the single digits. Not the teens. Single digits. I've been...