Hello Reader, I’ve got a quick favour to ask. TEDxVancouver is currently accepting nominations for speakers, and I’m putting my name forward to speak on this year’s theme: Clarity. The talk I want to give is one I feel uniquely equipped to deliver—an idea I’ve been refining for years, and one that I believe is ready for a broader stage. It’s called “You Can’t Own Time—But You Can Know It.” It builds on the TEDx talks I gave over a decade ago and reflects my evolution since—shifting from...
4 days ago • 1 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 20 | July 12, 2025 Hello Reader, Every day, your attention moves. It shifts between tasks, screens, conversations, internal noise. Sometimes you guide it. Often, it gets pulled. And rarely—rarely—do you pause to ask: Where is it going? And why? Attention isn’t just focus. It’s not about trying harder to concentrate. It’s a finite resource. A vote. A signal of value. When you give your attention to something, you give it your time, your energy, your...
6 days ago • 3 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 19 | July 5, 2025 Hello Reader, We talk a lot about hard work. And smart work. And sometimes even deep work. But there’s another kind of work that often gets overlooked—maybe because it doesn’t look like work at all. It’s the kind of work you do not because you have to, but because you want to. The kind that lights you up instead of wearing you down. It might be writing a line you don’t plan to publish. Or mapping out a new system not because it’s...
13 days ago • 3 min read
The Lantern by Mike Vardy Vol. 1, Issue 18 | June 30, 2025 Hello Reader, Last year, my 50th birthday didn’t quite go as planned. We had renovations happening—dust in the air, timelines shifting, rooms half-done. The idea of a big celebration faded quickly into background noise. And for a while, I felt a little disappointed by that. But as the day came and went, I realized something: maybe it wasn’t the party I missed. Maybe it was the marker—a moment to pause and say: This matters. I’ve made...
20 days ago • 3 min read
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...
27 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....
about 1 month 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,...
about 1 month 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...
about 1 month 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 2 months ago • 2 min read