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
|
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.
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 36| November 1, 2025 Hello Reader, October always feels like a month in motion. The days quicken, the light shortens, and the world seems to collide with itself — baseball finishing, basketball and hockey beginning, football and soccer in full stride. It’s a season of noise and momentum. And then November arrives. A quieter month. A slower breath. It starts with no — but I like to add a W. For me, that turns it into NOWvember — a reminder to shift from...
Hello Reader, October 30 — sometime known as Devil’s Night. A fitting time to talk about what haunts so many of us: the details. The calendar gives us the directory of our days—where things live.The to-do list gives us the details—what fills them.And that’s where the devil often hides. We stare down a swarm of half-done projects and open loops. Fear sets in—the fear of forgetting, of not finishing, of facing too much at once. But fear fades when we can see clearly. That’s what Attention Paths...
Hello Reader, I have this bright orange coffee mug that says ignore negativity in black script. It holds just enough coffee to get me through the first stretch of writing, but lately, it’s been holding more meaning than caffeine. Because here’s the thing: ignoring negativity only works for so long. Whether it comes from others—or from inside your own head—sooner or later, that voice you’re trying to tune out starts humming in the background, asking to be heard. When I chose The Productivity...