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 Lives Everywhere
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Hello Reader, The latest monthly essay I write for Medium — The Sound of Time — started as a small reflection on why vinyl feels better than streaming. But beneath the surface, it became something else: a meditation on how time behaves when we stop trying to control it. Then there’s this week’s episode of A Productive Conversation with James Kimmel Jr. — an episode we recorded months ago that finally drops in audio format today. (Want to watch the full, unedited video interview? Here you go.) On the surface, our conversation was about The Science of Revenge. But listen closely, and you’ll hear time there too. Revenge is a kind of looping—an attempt to replay the past until it bends to our will. Vinyl and vengeance couldn’t be more different, yet both reveal how deeply time lives in everything we touch, think, or feel. When you start to look for it, you find it everywhere—spinning beneath a needle, lingering in memory, waiting in silence. See you later, P.S. What’s been replaying in your life lately—something you’re ready to flip to the next side of? |
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, 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...
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...