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.
Two lines a night
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Hello Reader, Last week I left you with a question: if someone who watches you closely was asked what they've learned from you, what would you hope they'd say? And I suggested you write your answer down somewhere. This is the somewhere. In September of 1858, Leo Tolstoy wrote in his diary: "Decided that one must love and work, and that's it." The next day: "Tired, didn't love, and didn't work." Two lines. A whole day, held honestly — the intention and the miss. Most journaling fails because it turns into a report. Word counts, streaks, apps that summarize your day back to you. A report exists to validate or excuse. A rhythm just notices. And you don't need an app for a rhythm. You need a pen. Any pen. So here's the whole practice, two sentences long.
Try it tonight. Tomorrow night too. The nights it feels pointless are usually the ones with something to say. And if you want to take the practice deeper — the prompts, the structure, the thinking behind a reflective practice that holds up — that's what The Journaling Course is for. At your own pace. No streaks to maintain. – 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.
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 35 | October 31st, 2026 Hello Reader, Happy Halloween. It’s the one night a year we invite fear in on purpose, dress it up, and hand it candy. Tonight, most clocks fall back an hour. Mine won’t. Where I live, the time stays put this year, which is new. So tomorrow the calendar turns to November while the clock on my wall carries on as if nothing changed. It feels like subjective and objective time colliding: the season says one thing, the clock says...
Hello Reader, In 1997, Elliott Smith put out an album called Either/Or. It's quiet and close, mostly one voice and a guitar, and for years I assumed the title was a mood. It wasn't. He borrowed it from a book, Søren Kierkegaard's Either/Or, from 1843. Kierkegaard's book is about two ways of living. One drifts from pleasure to pleasure and never commits to anything. The other chooses, and keeps choosing. His point was that the hard part isn't picking the right side. The hard part is choosing...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 34 | October 24th, 2026 Hello Reader, Last week I wrote about watching the Foo Fighters play for three hours, and how nobody in that stadium was counting. I’ve kept thinking about what was powering that set. It wasn’t a schedule. It wasn’t a quota. Whatever kept them going that long came from somewhere deeper than discipline. That question sent me back to the name of this newsletter. When I told you why I called it The Lantern, I talked about carried...