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 27 | September 5, 2026 Hello Reader, The calendar is dragging its feet this year. Labour Day always lands on the first Monday of September, and this year that Monday is the 7th. That is as late as it can possibly be. Summer got a two-day extension nobody asked for, and the long weekend that usually kicks off the "real" year is still sitting out there past this Saturday morning. Because let's be honest about what Labour Day actually is. January 1st gets...
Hello Reader, Picture a party, or a conference lobby, or the school pickup line. Someone extends a hand and asks, "Who are you?" Notice what they didn't ask. Nobody asks "What are you?" That question would land strangely, almost rudely. We save "what" for objects. A chair is a what. A person is a who. The grammar assumes there's a someone standing in front of you before there's a something, and it makes that assumption on your behalf every time. So far, so good. Being comes first, right there...
Hello Reader, Productiveness is out today. I've spent most of my working life inside the word "productivity." I've taught it, built frameworks around it, made a career of it. And for years, something about the word itself has chafed. Productivity is a factory measurement. Output over input. It was designed for machines, and somewhere along the way we started applying it to people, and then to ourselves, and then we wondered why our days felt mechanical even when they were technically going...