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.
What are you choosing to care about?
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Hello Reader, We tend to believe that doing more will get us where we want to go. More effort. More output. More improvement. You likely know Mark from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck. His work has reached millions by challenging the idea that we need to fix everything—and instead asking us to focus on what actually matters.In this conversation, we’ll look at the tension between effort and meaning, why caring about too many things can quietly work against us, and how choosing differently can change how we live and work. Bring your questions. This one should be a good one. |
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 4 | March 21, 2026 Hello Reader, I spent part of this past Tuesday in a state of flow. The kind where you look up and realize hours have passed and something meaningful has moved forward. In my case, it was podcast work—episodes reviewed, refined, and pushed ahead. By the time I stopped, I’d carried things nearly to the end of June. On paper, that’s a win. But in practice, it gave me pause. Because while I was doing important work, I wasn’t doing the...
Hello Reader, One of the ideas that stuck with me years ago from Getting Things Done by David Allen is simple: if something goes on your calendar, it’s a commitment. Not a suggestion. Not a possibility. A commitment. That’s why GTD (David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology) encourages us to reserve the calendar primarily for appointments — things that must happen at a specific time. Most tasks belong somewhere else. But over the years I’ve noticed something about the handful of things I...
Hello Reader, I watched One Battle After Another the day that it won the Oscar for Best Picture, and one line has stayed with me ever since. “Time doesn’t exist, yet it controls us anyway.” In the film, the resistance uses it as a code phrase. That alone is interesting — a sentence about time acting as a kind of signal between people trying to move freely within a system that seeks to control them. But the line stuck with me for another reason. If time doesn’t exist in the way we often...