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Good morning. This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's episode is going to be a longer one, part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us.
So today I'm excited to be interviewing Mike Vardy.
Mike is a productivity expert.
He is the author of the new book, The Productivity Diet, which he will tell us about, all about sustainable practices.
So, Mike, welcome to the show.
Laura, thanks for having me.
It's been a while since we've chatted.
It's been a while. I'm glad to be chatting with you again.
Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
So I am a, as you mentioned, a productivity expert.
I went from being like a kind of enthusiast to a specialist to a strategist. And now, having done this for 15 years now, I'm in that philosophical era to a degree.
You're in your philosophical era?
But I mean, this book, The Productivity Diet, A Practical Guide to Nurturing Your Productive Potential, it came out in early 2025.
And it's kind of the, you know, again, it leans into the how -to, how I'm able to do, you know, be simple, flexible, and sustainable with my productivity practices.
And that's kind of what I teach. So I write about it, I have a podcast, which you've appeared on, on a number of occasions.
And I have LinkedIn learning classes, I have Skillshare classes.
So I've been out there for a while just teaching people how to stop doing productive and start being productive.
And unlike you, well, two things I'm like, number one, I'm Canadian.
Number one, well, I guess three, because I'm a guy.
Number two, I'm Canadian.
Also that. And number three, I am not a morning person.
Yes, well, we will get to that for sure.
Because, you know, that does change how we go about our days and how we schedule things.
And it's important to know ourselves with that and to, you know, adjust how we approach things based on who we are.
But I want to talk a little bit first about what time crafting is, because one of your big ideas is time crafting.
So maybe you can explain to people what you mean by that.
Sure. Sure. So I'm not a fan of the term time management because time has been here before we arrived on this planet and it will be here long after.
And I think it's rather arrogant for us to say we can manage something that is beyond us.
Right. Instead, what I suggest we can do is we can manage our relationship with it.
And when when when people who are trying to kind of change that mentality from like, I'm going to manage my time to manage my relationship with it, really what it boils down to is crafting your time.
You know, we will never stop crafting our time until we no longer have have a relationship with it, which means we are no longer with time, right?
And it came to me through the title, time crafting, the name of the practice came to me through a conversation I had with my son a number of years ago, we were walking to his elementary school, he's now in high school.
And, you know, one of the things you're taught as a parent is don't ask your kids, like, how's school going?
Or what are you doing today?
Because they're like, fine, like they shut down, they don't really talk a lot about it.
But he had been playing Minecraft. And I didn't know a lot about Minecraft. So I said, Well, can you explain Minecraft to me?
He goes, Well, dad, you take these basic elements, you know, you know, earth, stone, all these basic elements, and then you put them together, and you craft something at a crafting table, and you get something useful out of it, you can make a weapon, you can make a house.
And, of course, as somebody who has spent a lot of time writing, creating over the years, I do have a background in comedy.
So I always look through things and try to find the funny and everything that's kind of transferred to my life that I live now.
And I mean, I'm not going to say that as he was telling me about it, you know, when you watch a movie, and the person's vocals kind of drift into the distance, and you're in your own head, at that point, you know, and they kind of like this mother, and you're like, what's going on in my head, that's kind of what happened, where I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's what I've because that's what I'm teaching.
I'm teaching people how to take things like their calendar, and their to do list and these different things, and put them together to craft their time.
And really what time crafting is made up of is three core elements, and they all involve the three kind of basic areas that I think help us craft our time, which are time theming, which is directly related to the calendar, theming your days, your weeks, your months, even your year or seasons.
Then there is attention paths, which are kind of, they're, I would say, an evolution of getting things done's contexts, right?
There's a bit bit more categories to them, there's types of attention paths.
And so for the people who are driven by their to -do list, that's kind of the place that I start with them when I'm coaching them or working with them.
And then the third element is a reflective practice.
So journaling, which is something that we tend to bypass a lot when we're making our way through time.
And realistically, it's probably one of the most undervalued and underappreciated elements because it allows us, I mean, you've talked about this, tracking your time is a form of of reflective practice, right, like that kind of thing.
But again, nuance has to be applied to all of this.
So when I talk about time theming, it's not quite the same as time blocking, right, there's a bit more flexibility built in.
When I talk about attention paths, it's not quite the same as context, because there are some elements to it, like energy plays a role in it.
And then reflective practice doesn't have to be, you know, tracking your time, it could be, you know, chronological journaling through a daily log, it could be, you know, just basic interstitial journaling, It could be the one line a day journal that James Clear does.
So those three elements, essentially, if you do any or all of those with great regularity in a consistent and sustainable way, then you are time crafting.
And that's what I teach. And I go into it in the second part of the book, right?
I want to get people's mindsets in order before we go down this path.
Because when I say time management is a fallacy and a myth, it immediately, people are like, what are you talking about?
We've been managing time for years.
Have we though? So no, we're really just all playing Minecraft with our time, I guess, is what I mean.
You mean we hear like the ideal week, you know, the perfect week that is such. I mean, it's great to aspire to that.
But life happens. There are so many external forces and our attention is really the thing like the things that we should be trying to manage are things that we actually have some agency over a greater deal of agency over expectations, boundaries, again, your relationship with time, things things, attention, right?
Like those kinds of things.
And so what timecrafting does is it kind of allows you to use time and your relationship with time kind of as a framing device, right?
And space as well to make your way through your days, your weeks, your months, your years, and ultimately your life.
Yeah. Well, you talked about it being more of a partnership with time and the idea that productivity is, you know, you and time working together to get things done.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I also have strong opinions after being, again, I told you, in my philosophical phase of productivity is broken, right?
I mean, you know, the speed, speed is not the end goal when it comes to being productive, yet, it's being kind of rammed down our throats in a lot of ways, like get things done, like check off as many boxes as possible, be efficient, be efficient.
Yeah, but efficiency is a byproduct of being productive.
It's not the it's not being productive.
Right. So So to me, I think that what I try to do in a productivity Diet.
And I've been trying to do this over the years since I left Lifehack, because Lifehacks really have been both a blessing and a curse, right?
The idea of, hey, we can shortcut some of this stuff, but then we end up lifehacking and lifehacking and lifehacking, and all of a sudden, we've hacked our life to death.
You know, hacking essentially is derived from a Latin term, which I'm not going to necessarily be able to translate right now, but the idea of hacking is to cut without care, right?
So this is more of a deliberate intentional kind of pruning and curating.
And so to me, productivity isn't about being efficient and effective.
Like I said, those are byproducts.
Productivity is about the active link between your intentions, big or small, and your attention and that partnership.
So those two, like if you can think about productivity and time in a different way, and that's why the productivity diet, I'm not talking about a diet isn't like a crash diet, like quick, it's a lifestyle.
And that's what this book kind of purports to help you with is to craft a lifestyle that allows you to craft your time in a way that allows you to live a fulfilling life, where, you know, you keep in mind things like cadence, rhythm, you mentioned listening to yourself, listening, you know, living with nuance.
Yeah, I talked about in the book, the idea of absolutes.
And I mean, for somebody who's a a night owl.
We can't help but hear all the time, oh, you got to get up early, you got to do this, you got to do that.
So many health issues with people who, you know, stay up late, but we don't look at the underlying or the underpinning elements of that.
There's nuance to all of this stuff.
And that's what I try to get into in the book is the idea of like, let's keep nuance in mind as we make our way through time.
Absolutely. Well, we're going to take a quick ad break, And then I will be back with more from Mike Vardy.
own head. We're talking questions like, what are the 10 best foods for your memory?
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What's the key to finally changing your life?
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I am back with Mike Vardy.
We are talking productivity and the different ways we can do time crafting.
I want to talk a little bit about time theming because you have different levels of this.
And the idea roughly is you're choosing different kinds of tasks to do at different intervals or, you know, assigning a theme to a different length of time.
Sure, sure. Sure. So the way I look at it is time theming is giving an overarching focus to a, like you said, a type of task, maybe a role that you have, maybe a category, right?
So to me, I think the first off, a lot of people will say there's no way that I can theme my time, my days are too dynamic, etc, etc. Whenever I start talking about time theming, I immediately go to things that are certain, because that's what we look at, right?
So when I'm working with clients, or I discuss this with people who have kids, I'm like, well, do your kids go to school on Saturday or Sunday?
No, no. Okay. So therefore, you know that your kids don't go to school on those days.
So you may not want to be doing things like, I don't know, recording podcasts on Saturdays or Sundays, if you're running your own business or things that require you to tell your kids to keep down, keep it down, so on and so forth.
You can orchestrate your time around that.
And that's really what we're talking about here.
So yes, there's daily themes.
There's also what I call horizontal themes, which are increments of time throughout the day.
So as a night owl, I do all of my writing tasks in the afternoon.
So I have a writing theme that goes from 2 to 4 p .m. Monday through Friday.
So at 2 o 'clock, no matter what my day is looking like, it's like, all right, 2 o 'clock, it's time for me to work on my writing.
It means nobody can schedule meetings during that time, all of that stuff.
The distinction between time theming and, say, time blocking, especially in those smaller increments, is that it is a consistent time.
time. It is, it's not like you're patch working it, which can happen with, with time blocking plus time theming, because it's an overarching focus.
You're looking for kind of like the just right.
You're not trying to be too narrow with your focus.
So if I was to say my two to four time is to focus on book writing, but I'm not writing a book, then it's useless.
Right. Or you want to make it not too narrow, but not too broad as to be exactly, which, which by the way, also, you want to do with attention paths as well.
Because I mean, one of the things that and I love David Allen's work, he was a mentor, I've had many conversations with them.
But when people use a context like home, especially during the era of COVID and remote work, not a terribly helpful context in a lot of ways, because what they should do is they should act as filters.
And that's what time theming does.
So if I know that, like today, as we're recording, it's my connection day.
So this is the day where I will do outreach. It's where I will actually send a bunch of these books looks out in the mail to people to say, hey, here, check out this book.
It's where I will do that sort of thing, both personally and professionally, because it's covering my entire day.
You and I are having this conversation right now, this would be an abstraction.
So I stopped focusing on that.
And once we're done having our conversation, my brain doesn't go, well, now what?
My brain goes, okay, hold on, what day is it?
Oh, it's Tuesday. Okay, what does Tuesday mean?
Oh, Tuesday's connection.
What are my connection tasks?
And then I can go from there.
So yeah, it is, it is essentially giving you an overarching focus.
You don't theme all seven days of the week, especially not out of the gate.
Start with the one that you know that you can have the most success with.
And then if you want to add more, you're going to have two daily themes, maybe a horizontal theme.
That's kind of what time theming is.
And again, there's monthly themes and so on and so forth.
Well, what are some other useful themes?
I mean, you said connections.
I think that's one that would be broadly useful for a lot of people.
Like this is when I reach out.
This is when I have my nice to have conversations.
What might be an administrative admin day?
Um, a horizontal theme would be, let's say, actually, I'll tell you a great one.
Uh, when I was working with a client who was an administrative assistant, not just for the CEO, but for, I mean, and what would happen when they were working with their CEOs and invariably others would ask this person to do other things.
And so they said, I was having a really hard time doing my things and I was doing all these other things.
I said, well, what if you had a horizontal theme?
Well, first off, we work backwards from their certainty.
So I said, when do people stop bugging you?
Yeah. Like that was the first, which no one has asked her.
She's like, Oh, well, you know, the afternoons people are kind of in there.
I'm like, okay. I go.
So people, that means they're primarily bugging you before lunch, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, well, what if you're, what if your morning time from let's say eight to noon is serving?
That's your, that's your, your theme.
So it means anything you're doing is serving others, whether it's the CEO, whether it's, that's what you're focusing on.
And then lunch access kind of like that boundary.
And then after lunch, your overarching focus is the self -serving stuff.
And I go, by the way, if you're doing the self -serving stuff right, you're serving others anyway, especially in your role.
And what she had to do then was look at her to -do list and just put S next to the tasks that were serving others and then SS next to the tasks that were serving herself.
And then all she would do is look at her list. And instead of looking at the details of the to do list, which is where we can get caught up, she was looking in that lap at the end of the task saying, oh, these are all my ass tasks.
Let me batch those.
OK, that's what I'm going to do in the morning.
So that's that's a very nuanced approach for an individual.
But I have a day called Household Day, you know, and that means that that's when I do household tasks, which we all do anyway.
way like you know I think I read a meme recently that was like the weekend the weekend is either a day where we do all the things we love to do or all the errands we have to run and we hate both options like we regret both options right but but I've you know if you are somebody like let's say a light bulb burnt out in my study here I could stop and do that but it's not affecting the light in my house so if I wanted to I could just write it down on my list kind of I the day I would would probably, the default day would be Saturday, let's say.
And then you said there's like an annual theme, too, like an annual axiom is sort of an overarching theme.
I'm very curious what your annual axiom is this year.
OK, so the annual axiom acts as kind of like a North Star, right?
So it's very much like all of my projects have to serve that.
If they don't, then probably going to be pushed aside or they better serve a monthly theme at the very least. So my annual axiom, which I've returned to, and I mentioned this in the book, is redesign, rebuild, reclaim.
And I've had them in the past. One was called whatever it takes, no matter what.
I've had three words, I've used the three words that Chris Brogan has used in the past. And what the annual axiom does is I'm the only thing I'm resolute about is following my annual axiom.
So if I want to, I'm turning 51 this year, I can't eat what I used to be able to eat very, you know, I have to start to take care of myself.
So I'm going to, okay, redesign, rebuild, reclaim.
Does getting myself in shape and building a habit around exercise make sense?
Absolutely. Okay. So what does that look like?
like, um, I've been in this business now for 15 years.
And sometimes there's some reinvention that goes on sometimes, you know, when you've been writing a book and you've kind of been, well, you know, this, you've written books and you kind of go away for a little while.
Then you come back out, you know, I've got this book, right?
You're kind of peppering things out there, but you're, you're, you're in the weeds with the book.
Uh, all right. Well, what things can I do that, that are project related that will live up to redesigning, you know, maybe where I'm at rebuilding, you know, maybe I've been gone for a while.
I want going to build my reputation back up or my presence back up, let's say, and then reclaim, you know, hey, you know, being on this show, like you saying, Mike, would you like to be on this podcast?
Number one, you know, you and I have known each other for a long time, and I've got a book to market.
So there's no question it makes sense.
But also, it does serve that axiom, right?
It does. So what I often recommend if people are tired of New Year's resolutions, and I'm also a big believer in not, you don't have to start the year on January 1, either.
I start my year you're typically in September because my kids start school in September, but do like slogans, work mantras, like anything like that.
And it really is helpful.
You can pair this up with reflective practice too.
I don't get this into the, into this in the book, but if you like meditation and you've got a mantra and your annual action can be that mantra that you chant when you're doing like TM or something like that, it can actually allow you to kind of choose the kind of work that you want to do, the projects you want to take on the initiatives that you want to bring to life, the annual action can kind of steer you in the right direction as opposed to you just going, okay, well, what do I do?
How do I, I mean, that's because our brains will do, we, as we make our way through time, we can either do the primitive stuff, you know, like just survive, or we can thrive, right?
So by giving our, the newer part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, some kind of help along the way, a bit of a compass, and that's what, you know, time crafting can do.
And it also can short circuit any arguments that the older part of your brain, the amygdala can kind of go, Hey, well, I don't really feel like doing this.
Yeah. But you know what, it's Tuesday and Tuesday is your connection day.
All right, fine. Or I'm tired.
What can I do when I'm tired?
Oh, I can do all these things.
Yeah. But you know, uh, it's, it's the afternoon and, or sorry, it's the evening and work's done.
Okay. Well, let's look at our personal projects that that are low energy and do those.
All right, fine. I'll come back later to scrap with you again so I could figure out, like that's the war that's constantly going on in our head and having an annual action with any of these themes kind of give us a place to go.
Absolutely. All right, well, we're going to take one more quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Mike Vardy.
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Well, I am back talking with Mike Vardy, and we've been talking a lot about different time theming.
I wanted to switch gears a little bit here and talk about your night owl status, because, you know, this is a podcast called Before Breakfast. And a lot of folks have found that, you know, using their mornings is is a key part of getting the things done that they would have trouble finding time in the rest of the life to do.
And when somebody is a night owl, you obviously have to work things a little bit differently.
A lot of the world is set up for people who are more likely to get up earlier in the morning.
So I'm curious how that affects your schedule and any advice you'd have for other night owls.
So, Laura, I remember and I share this story a lot.
I distinctly remember us being on a panel years ago with Daniel Gold, Craig Jarrow, myself and you and Hal Elrod, Miracle Morning.
morning. And I think it was Daniel Gold who asked us like, when do you, when do you, when do you get going?
When do you start? Like, how do you, and you actually, I expected to give like a really early response, but I think you're like, well, no kids have changed things.
So I've had to shift it a little bit, but everyone's like 3am, 5am, all that stuff.
Yeah. There's no 3am or 5am over here.
For me, I'm like, when do you start your day?
It was like, I go the night before.
That's what you have to do as a night owl.
You have to be a bit more proactive because Because you're right, in the world that we live in, it's very much geared towards the 9 to 5, the early riser, right?
But I also look at the phrase, the early bird gets the worm, but the second most gets the cheese.
So if I was somebody getting up early and my brain isn't wired, I would fall into a trap.
There's no question, right?
So I have to set myself up the night before.
So the way I kind of flip my time around as a night owl is I kind of look at the afternoon afternoon as really the beginning of my day.
And then I go to sleep and I, you know, if I'm taking like seven hours sleep, it's almost like I take a really long nap.
And then when I get up the next morning, it's like the second half of my day.
Have you ever seen, have you seen that, uh, video that has kind of gone viral on Tik TOK with Ed Milick going, I take my day and it's 24 hours, but I did divide my day into four.
And so, so now I have four days instead of one, cause it's six hours, like, okay, you're really just, I mean, I get it.
Time is subjective, but we try to make it objective mainly for things we're doing right now so we can agree to meet.
But for me, I have to do things like journal the journal the night before.
So that when I wake up in the morning, my brain goes, well, what do I do?
And I've left kind of a letter to myself to go, Hey, this is what you should do.
I know you're going to be susceptible to shiny.
No, this is what, and, and I will start off my day with low energy tasks.
If you're an early riser, you'll start off with high energy tasks.
So for me, that's why attention paths have been so helpful, especially the energy based ones, because I can look at my list and go, oh, it's Tuesday, it's connection day.
That's great. But kind of tired.
Okay, well, do I have any low energy connection tasks that I can start with?
And that's where I go.
So I'm able to make progress while honoring my body clock at the the same time.
And that's kind of how I've always navigated it.
Now, to be fair, I'm also not staying up as late as I used to, I'm getting older, you don't I mean, that's what happens.
But after talking with folks like Dr. Michael Bruce, and others that are, you know, well, steeped in circadian rhythms, and the science around it, is that night owls will never not true, like in his case, wolves, all that happens is your bedtime shifts earlier, but you still can't get up and go.
You're not wired that way.
So even if I'm going to bed at, say, midnight instead of two or whatever, it doesn't mean that at 7 a .m. I'm like, all right, it's time to go.
No, my brain is still foggy.
So you have to listen to your energy levels when you are a night owl, probably more than anything else.
And also, I think anybody, whether you're an early riser or a night owl, having the evening routine is incredibly helpful.
Because number one, For a night owl, it sets you up so that you can start the day with a bit of focus, a bit more clarity.
But for early risers, it allows you to hit the ground running.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mike, I always ask my guests this question, which is what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Ooh, oh, wow. Okay, so this is really interesting thing is, um, one thing I started to do in the mornings, uh, is I go for a walk to start my day.
And what that does is it kind of gets me moving both physically and mentally.
Um, and I think I remember reading, it was probably a Japanese, like it might've been Murakami or somebody like that, that they go running first thing and then they go writing or whatever.
I think it's, it's what I I think about when I run, or I think that's the name of the book.
But I thought, well, if I go for a walk in the morning, just a 25 minute walk, a Pomodoro, like, I'll use all of the tricks that we've learned over the years to kind of go, okay, well, if I take a 25 minute walk, especially now that we're in, as we're recording this in the summer months in Victoria, the rain has kind of slipped away.
It really does affect the shape of the day.
And so what I think think that, and again, we have the technology.
It's not like we're sitting here going, oh, I can't, you know, I can't do anything.
I bring my phone with me and I will dictate things into my phone and look like a crazy person probably while doing it.
But again, the one, the beauty about getting older is that you don't care as much if you look crazy, if you're wandering around doing any of that stuff.
And it actually gets, so my ideas start flowing.
I'm like, okay, well, when you get back, I have to do this.
So honestly, that that morning walk has taken, any day I don't do it, let's put it this way, any day I don't do it, it takes me that much longer to get the day to where I want it to be.
Whereas that morning walk, which, you know, cup of coffee, I'll even walk around in my pajama pants.
I don't even care in my neighborhood.
As long as I'm out there doing it, it does turn that, it does transform that day for sure.
Yeah, from great to awesome and a day is less awesome if it doesn't happen.
Well, Mike, where can people find you?
Well, if you want to get the book, for example, just go to mikevardy .com slash lit.
It not only lists the productivity diet, but the other books I've written as well.
You can find me on social media, Mike Vardy.
And if you want to subscribe to my weekly newsletter, it's mikevardy .com slash light.
I send a newsletter out every Saturday, every weekend called The Lantern.
And it's just some insights.
I mean, again, like I said, over the years, I've gone from being this enthusiast all the way to being a bit more philosophical about things and still offering practical.
practical guides and takeaways.
So that's where you can find me.
Yeah, we all have our eras.
We do. We do. The different eras of the productivity expert.
Exactly. Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback about this or any other episode, you can always reach me at laura at lauravandercam .com.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam .com.
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