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's your novocaine?
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Hello Reader, In 1996, a band called Eels put out a song called "Novocaine for the Soul." The person singing it keeps saying everything is fine while asking, almost politely, for something to make it stop hurting. He doesn't want it fixed. He wants to stop feeling it. The song somehow found its way back into my head recently, and I've been thinking about it a lot – because I think we've gotten very good at making our own novocaine. Novocaine doesn't fix the tooth. It lets the work happen without you having to be there for it. You sit in the chair, the drill does its thing, and you walk out a little lopsided with no real sense of what just happened inside your own mouth. A lot of what passes for productivity works the same way. The cleared inbox. The checked-off list. The day packed so tight there's no gap for anything to seep through. None of it is bad on its own. But I've caught myself using it like an anesthetic, staying busy enough that I don't have to notice how I feel about the work or the people in it. Busy feels like fine. Fine feels like good. Then one day you realize you can't remember the last time a day actually landed. The first principle in Productiveness is Humanness, and it starts from a plain reminder: you are not a machine. A machine doesn't feel the drill. You do, and that isn't a flaw to engineer around. Friction means something in you is trying to get your attention. Fatigue is a signal. Even the silence between projects is data, because it shows you what you've been avoiding. I used to rush to fill that silence with email and noise. Some days I still do. Novocaine is easier than listening. So when I notice I'm reaching for the numbness, I've started asking a different question. Instead of "what's wrong with me?" I ask "what do I need right now, honestly?" Sometimes the answer is rest. Sometimes it's the hard conversation I've been scheduling around. Sometimes it's just to sit in the chair and feel the day for a minute. I don't have a tidy fix for this. I'm still in the chair myself some days, happy to take whatever dulls the edge. But I'll ask you the same thing I've been asking myself: What's your novocaine, and what is it keeping you from feeling? Reply and tell me. I read every email I get. – 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.
Hello Reader, There's an old story about Thomas More. A friend showed him a book he'd written, and More suggested he turn it into verse. The friend did. More looked it over and said something like, "Now it has rhyme. Before, it had neither rhyme nor reason." I can't say whether it happened exactly that way. But the phrase has lasted 500 years, and I have a guess about why. Rhyme is what feels right. Reason is what makes sense. More's joke works because we expect anything worth our time to...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 33 | October 17th, 2026 Hello Reader, A few weeks ago I took my son to see the Foo Fighters in Vancouver. It was his first stadium rock show. It was also one of the best I've ever been to, and I've been to a few. They played for three hours. Three hours is a long time to do almost anything. We had seats, but some people didn't have that luxury, and they stood through the whole thing. If you'd told me beforehand the set would run that long, some part of...
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...