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 They Don't Say About Familiarity
Hello Reader,
“Oh, no… I want to do that trip solo.”
That was what my daughter said to me after I suggested we all go to Southeast Asia as a family. This was after she declared that area of the world was the next place she wanted to experience.
She’d literally just returned from a four-month “gap year” trip to Europe with two of her closest friends, so I’m not surprised that she’d caught the travel bug. I’m not surprised she wants to do the Southeast Asia trip solo, either. But I was surprised at my response to what she said.
I didn’t say anything.
Instead, I felt a series of senses. From loss to melancholy to pride. All of these feelings are familiar to me… just not in that context.
My daughter is pretty much grown up. Those family trips are never going to be the same. That familiarity is gone. I’m now left with a whole lot of unfamiliar, and that’s giving me another type of “un” feeling: uncomfortable.
You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” But I also think it can breed comfort and, sometimes, complacency.
And that can affect various aspects of our lives.
Here are three examples where familiarity breeding complacency can manifest in our day-to-day productivity and relationship with time:
- Workplace Tasks: When we perform the same tasks at work daily, it’s easy to fall into a routine. This familiarity, while efficient, can stifle creativity and innovation. Over time, the quality of our work can suffer as we become less engaged and more mechanical in our approach. We wind up leaning into quantitative productivity instead of balancing it with qualitative productivity. That’s not ideal.
- Learning and Skill Development: In the realm of continuous learning, sticking to familiar subjects or methods can hinder our growth. For instance, a programmer who only focuses on known programming languages may miss out on emerging technologies. This complacency can lead to a plateau in skill advancement and reduce competitiveness in the job market.
- Personal Relationships: In relationships, whether with family, friends, or partners, familiarity can lead to taking each other for granted. The routine of daily life might make us forget to appreciate, explore, and understand the evolving dynamics of our relationships. This can lead to a stagnant, less fulfilling interaction with our loved ones.
Reflecting on these examples, it’s clear that embracing the unfamiliar is crucial for growth and enrichment, both personally and professionally. There’s something different on the other side of unfamiliar in my relationship with my daughter. I’m choosing to respond with curiosity over anything else. It’s not easy to do that, but it is the best way forward.
It’s really the only way forward.
To bring this idea into my work, I’ve introduced a new series within the structure of my podcast where I converse with my good friend, Patrick Rhone, on a monthly basis. This change is a step towards embracing the unfamiliar, keeping the podcast fresh and engaging for you… and for me.
We’re calling it PM Talks.
You can listen to the first episode in this new series using any of the following:
I invite you to challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone as well, both in your personal life and in your professional pursuits. It’s in this balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar that we can keep from “doing” productive and live a full life of being productive.
See you later,
Mike
P.S. I would love to hear how you’re embracing the unfamiliar in your own life. Reply to this email and share your stories with me.
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 14 | May 30, 2026 Hello Reader, "May" is a permission word. Not just the month — the word itself. "May I?" "You may." It's a modal verb, one of those quiet grammatical structures that signals possibility and allowance. When you say "may," you're either asking for permission or granting it. Which means we've spent an entire month named after the concept of being permitted to do something. And most of us didn't notice. We hustled through May. We planned,...
Hello Reader, My daughter comes home from university tomorrow... for one month. Not the whole summer. One month. And one of those weeks, I'll be away at a conference. So the math is already doing what math does. There's a stat that floats around parenting circles — the kind that lands differently once your kid is actually gone. By the time a child leaves home, the percentage of lifetime time a parent has left with them is somewhere in the single digits. Not the teens. Single digits. I've been...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 2, Issue 13 | May 23, 2026 Hello Reader, I watched Jamie Vardy's Netflix documentary last week. He's the Leicester City striker who went from non-league football and factory shifts and an ankle tag to Premier League champion. The whole arc is built around a clock running out and a man outrunning it. But it was his tattoos that stopped me. He has a sleeve — black-and-grey realism, the kind designed to look almost photographic. Pocket watches. Roses. The style...