The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 17 | June 21, 2025 Hello Reader, Sometimes the fix isn’t finesse—it’s force. Not reckless. Not violent. Just… assertive. Immediate. Intentional. There’s a term for this in the physical world: percussive maintenance. You’ve likely done it. A smack on the side of an old TV to fix the reception. A gentle nudge to a stuck printer. That calculated tap to get something—anything—working again. It’s not precision engineering. But it works. The most famous...
11 days ago • 3 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 16 | June 14, 2025 Hello Reader, There’s been construction happening a few doors up from my house for months now. Not major, city-wide, earthmoving construction—just the slow, relentless transformation of a single home. A retrofit. A rebuild. But a little over a week ago—after a few days of being completely sidelined by a migraine—I finally felt like I could ease back into some focused work. And right as I did, the trucks came back. Engines idling....
18 days ago • 2 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 15 | June 7, 2025 Hello Reader, Sometimes life makes you lie down—literally. That's because this week I had a migraine. I haven’t had one in years. It took over the left side of my head, brought a heavy fog of nausea, and flattened two full days I thought I had plans for. And because it had been so long since I’d had one, I did what many of us do: I tried to figure it out. Was I dehydrated? Had I been overdoing it? Was it stress, sleep, screen time,...
25 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, If you’ve ever wondered why some days flow while others feel like a slog, the answer might be above you—literally. In this week's episode of A Productive Conversation, I speak with Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a circadian science pioneer who’s spent decades researching how light affects our health, energy, and attention. He helped locate the human circadian clock and has led efforts to reshape the lighting environments we spend most of our time in. We explore how the wrong kind of...
27 days ago • 1 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 14 | May 31, 2025 Hello Reader, You’ve started something. A habit. A project. A shift in how you think or work. At the beginning, everything feels clear. Motivation is high. You’ve got a plan, a spark, maybe even a fresh notebook or system to keep it all together. But then comes the middle. No launch. No milestone. No applause. Just the day-to-day repetition of effort without the novelty of starting or the payoff of finishing. This is where most people...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Here’s something you might not hear often: Rejection is a skill. In this week’s episode of A Productive Conversation, I sit down with Alice Draper—founder of Hustling Writers and host of My Rejection Story—to unpack how building rejection resilience can quietly fuel your productivity, creativity, and clarity. One idea that really stuck with me? “Imposter syndrome is a form of self-rejection. And that’s the most insidious kind.” If you’ve ever talked yourself out of hitting...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 13 | May 24, 2025 Hello Reader, The hustle promises momentum, validation, and progress. But it rarely delivers without a cost. Move fast. Keep going. Do more. Before you know it, the pace owns you. Because when you’re always in motion, you stop noticing direction. And when your worth is measured by output, you become easier to manipulate. That’s how you get hustled. So what’s the alternative? Pace. Presence. Proportion. Choose what fits—not what...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 12 | May 17, 2025 Hello Reader, In a world obsessed with quantity, quality is a quiet rebellion. We're told to do more, produce faster, and ship sooner. There's a rush to fill time, fill feeds, fill calendars. But quantity without quality? That’s just motion without meaning. Noise that fades fast. It’s easy to confuse productivity with progress. But what you check off your list isn’t as important as how it moves the needle—on your work, your values,...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is… let go. That became crystal clear last week during a capstone presentation in the Maximize Your Minutes program. One participant shared that their biggest breakthrough wasn’t about doing more—it was about releasing what no longer served them. That idea has surfaced in a few ways for me recently: The Podcast: I’ve let go of the traditional podcast model—no more sponsor breaks or ad reads. Just open, focused conversations. The...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read