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 words I didn’t mean to send
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Hello Reader, If you read Saturday’s edition of The Lantern closely, you might have spotted two words in the middle of it that had no business being there: “Ad placeholder.” That was a note to myself. It marks where a sponsor message goes, and it was supposed to be gone before the issue went out. It wasn’t. So there it sat, right after the bit about Jeff Lynne sitting in the fog, and right before a paragraph that begins, “That’s the part of ‘out of the blue’ we tend to skip.” (I’ve since fixed the web version, so if you go looking, you won’t find it.) Once I got over the wince, this is what stuck with me. [Only a few of you mentioned it.] Most people read straight past it, which is exactly what the next paragraph was about. Two words were sitting in plain sight, and the eye slid over them because they weren’t what it expected to find. I think we read the holidays the same way. We know roughly what the season is going to say, so we skim it: gatherings, gifts, travel, the year-end push at work. We gloss over the parts that don’t fit until, somewhere around December 22, they’re the only thing we can see. Two small words were enough to break up an issue of a newsletter. I wonder what one hour could do for a season if you spent it reading the season slowly before it starts. That’s the idea behind the 1 Hour Holiday Action Plan. A week from today, on Tuesday, November 17, I’ll sit down live for one hour and look at the weeks ahead with you: what’s actually coming, what you’re carrying into it, and what you want to leave room for. You’ll leave with a plan you made yourself, not one I handed you. It’s open to everyone. I’ll be doing my own plan alongside you. I can already see a few places in my December where I’m going to be tempted to skim. Oh, and hit reply and tell me whether you caught those two words. I’m curious. See you later, P.S. If you’d like a head start, Garland Coulson is leading today’s Grand Productivity Group session, “Unwrap Your Productivity: Holiday Time Management Secrets,” at 3 PM ET (noon Pacific). It’s about making room for work, gatherings and family traditions so December doesn’t turn into a race, so it’s a good warm-up for next week. I’ll be there too. Guests join free, and you can save your spot here. |
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 36 | November 7th, 2026 Hello Reader, I recently shared a line that came to me out of the blue. Then I caught myself on the phrase. Out of what blue? The sky, it turns out. The full version is “a bolt out of the blue,” and it means lightning from a clear sky, the one place you’d never expect it. Newspapers were using the long form by the 1860s, and by 1879 someone had clipped it to the three words we use now. The bolt fell away. The blue stayed. I like...
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...