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.
Why Embracing Tolerance in Our Productivity Practices Matters
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Hello Reader, As you continue to refine your productivity practices, I want to introduce a concept that might transform the way you think about your workday: Tolerance. Often, we equate tolerance with enduring less-than-ideal circumstances, but when applied to productivity, it offers a powerful framework for dealing with the natural variability in our work performance and planning accuracy. Tolerance in productivity involves acknowledging and planning for the natural discrepancies in both the quality and quantity of our outputs. This perspective is crucial, especially given our tendencies to underestimate the time required for tasks—a cognitive bias known as the planning fallacy. By recognizing this, we can shift our approach from rigid precision to strategic flexibility. While specific tools (and TimeCrafting itself) can facilitate this approach, the concept of tolerance itself does not rely on any particular software or system. It’s about adjusting our mindset and planning methods to accommodate the expected and unexpected variances in task durations and outcomes. For instance, when setting project timelines or daily schedules, we might consider building in buffers and flexible deadlines that account for these variances. Here are some practical steps to integrate tolerance in our workflow:
When you embrace tolerance in your productivity practices, you’ll aim not just to manage but to strategically use the natural variability in your performance to your advantage. This shift will help you build more resilient and adaptable work processes, ultimately leading to better outcomes and more satisfaction and fulfillment. See you later, PS: In my latest podcast episode, Patrick Rhone and I discuss the choices we make and how cultivating tolerance can profoundly affect our personal and professional lives. Listen (and subscribe) here.. |
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 | August 29, 2026 Hello Reader, There's a scene in Tony, the new Anthony Bourdain film, that I can't shake. He's getting his photo taken for a book jacket, restless, moving too much for the camera, and he tells the photographer: "It's okay if it's blurry — it's how you see time." It might be invented. Script lines usually are. It's also true, which is the only test that matters. Think about what a sharp photograph actually is: a slice of time,...
Hello Reader, 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 well. There's an older, fuller...
Hello Reader, At some point, our days started keeping score. Steps counted. Streaks maintained. Tasks completed, inbox emptied, boxes ticked. Every evening now ends with a quiet tally, and every tally files the day into one of two columns: won or lost. Most of us couldn't tell you when we agreed to this. We just woke up one day already playing. Here's the trouble with the scoreboard: it can only measure what happened. It has no column for what mattered. So it's entirely possible to win the...