The Lantern is a thoughtfully curated weekly email from Mike Vardy designed to help you craft a better relationship with time. Each edition brings you insights, inspiration, and practical tools through a simple yet powerful framework: Look (a thought-provoking video or visual), Listen (a compelling podcast or audio insight), and Learn (a deep dive into a key concept, article, or book). Designed to inform, inspire, and illuminate, The Lantern helps you navigate time with clarity and intention—without the overwhelm.
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 Lantern: A Weekly Guide to Navigating Time with Intention
The Lantern is a thoughtfully curated weekly email from Mike Vardy designed to help you craft a better relationship with time. Each edition brings you insights, inspiration, and practical tools through a simple yet powerful framework: Look (a thought-provoking video or visual), Listen (a compelling podcast or audio insight), and Learn (a deep dive into a key concept, article, or book). Designed to inform, inspire, and illuminate, The Lantern helps you navigate time with clarity and intention—without the overwhelm.
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 23 | August 5, 2025 Hello Reader, This issue’s arriving a few days later than planned—and that’s no accident. My usual rhythm was interrupted. At first, I thought I didn’t have anything to say. Then I realized: I did. I was just saying it elsewhere, dedicating my attention to other places, other people. And today—on a day themed around Connection—I felt the resonance of sending this out now, not waiting. We often talk about Routine and Ritual,...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 22 | July 26, 2025 Hello Reader, It starts with a moment: you're in a grocery store, navigating your cart like it's a bumper car. You stop. You look around. And you realize—no one else seems to be aware of where they are, either. Spatial awareness used to be instinctual. You’d step aside when someone approached, feel the rhythm of shared space, make micro-adjustments without thinking. But now? It's like everyone is moving through fog—detached from the...
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 21 | July 19, 2025 Hello Reader, We often treat attention like a switch: on or off, focused or distracted. But attention isn’t binary—it’s directional. It moves. It loops. It fades and returns. And over time, it carves grooves—patterns that shape how you work, how you think, and how you feel about both. If you’ve ever had a day where you “worked all day” but accomplished very little… or a moment where you were technically off the clock but couldn’t stop...