S3 Bonus - Mike Vardy on Time Crafting & Productiveness

Welcome to the Zen Habits podcast, where we dive into how to work with uncertainty, resistance, and fear around our meaningful work. This is for anyone who wants to create an impact in the world and cares deeply enough to do the work. I'm your host, Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog.

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Okay, so today I have a beautiful, special episode for you with a guest expert, Mike Vardy. Mike is someone who I met well over a decade ago — probably 15 years ago — in the productivity sphere. He’s a productivity expert, he’s an author, and he’s a coach. He has 15 years of experience in the field of time management and productivity.

He has a great blog and a podcast. The podcast is called A Productive Conversation with Mike Vardy. Highly recommend it. I'm actually on there, so you can go and check that one out. But he's interviewed all kinds of experts, and he himself has written about productivity from many different angles.

He does a thing called time crafting. He has a book called The Productivity Diet. And one of the things I love about Mike is that he isn’t just about how to get really efficient and churn out more and more, and work the most optimal way, but instead about doing what matters most.

And so, I love his approach, I resonate a lot with it, and I’m really excited to dive in here with Mike.

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Leo

Okay, well, welcome Mike. Great to have you on the podcast.

Mike

Leo, thanks for having me. It's been a long time coming, I think, for both of us to have another conversation.

Leo

Yeah, you know, for people who are tuning in, we just had another conversation right before this, before I pressed record for your podcast. And it was basically just like a refresher 13 years after our initial podcast conversation.

Mike

Yeah.

Leo

Is that right?

Mike

Yeah. And it was right after a conference that we went to—the first ever World Domination Summit. You and I had known each other for, you know, a couple of years, I think, prior to that, and it was just the first time we had a chance to actually meet. And then we just picked up.

It is really interesting to listen to older conversations from when I did before I do, you know, my current podcast, A Productive Conversation, but that was back when I had a podcast called ProductivArty, which was kind of my play on productivity. I've had a history of doing that—playing with that word. And now I have a whole new way to play with that word that I’m sure we're going to get into.

But yeah, it was interesting just to hear our thoughts from well over a decade ago, to see what’s changed and really what hasn’t. So, thanks for popping on and doing that. And if people want to hear that part of the conversation, they can check out my podcast A Productive Conversation.

Leo

Yeah, we'll link to that. And I just want to thank you for, first of all, hosting me 13 years ago, but also just continuing this conversation. In our conversation, you talked about how consistent I’ve been, but you’ve actually been incredibly consistent, you know, in this conversation about productivity and, really, what's underneath it at a deeper level.

So, I just appreciate your consistency, and I'd love to dig into what’s changed for you over the years.

Mike

Well, you know, first off, thanks for that, I appreciate it. It is interesting when, as life progresses, your attitudes change about these kinds of topics. I mean, when I started, I had a five-year-old daughter and my son was basically a newborn. And now, as we’re recording this, my daughter’s off to Montreal for university and my son starts high school tomorrow.

So, I’ve gone through that season of being essentially the stay-at-home dad while running a business. I mean, again, my wife is incredibly involved, obviously, but they would see me all the time, right?

So, I’m about to embark on a whole new adventure of “Oh, wow. Now the nest is half-empty at this point.” And, I’m waiting for my son to be the guy that says, “Hey, I want to go to Vancouver this weekend.” I’ll say, “Great, let’s go to Vancouver this weekend.” And then he’ll say, “Oh no, with my friend’s dad.” And then all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, okay.”

But what I think I’ve noticed over the years, for me specifically, is—and you alluded to this during our conversation as well—is the strength that I have and the resolve I have in a lot of the things that I’ve talked about over the years, just has gotten more galvanized over the years.

Like the example of, I remember having someone say, when I talk about theming your days, “Oh, that seems too rigid.” I’m like, the thing is, productivity has always been very personal, and the rigidity is only as much as you want to give it, right? You know, by putting constraints in place—again, this is something I learned from Steven Pressfield, when he talked about using the foolscap method for his book—if you can contain an entire story on a foolscap, that’s what you should do. If it goes beyond that, you need to condense it.

So, by creating and having those constraints, what I realized is that those constraints actually help me. So, if I have a themed period of time, whether it’s a day or a period of time during the day, that gives me a forced function of, “This is what I should be doing at this time of day,” as opposed to, “I’ll just do whatever”, right?

So, we do need those kinds of constraints. And to befriend them rather than fight them, I think, has been a huge part of what I’ve been teaching, but also something I’ve needed to embrace more fully. Because, you know, we have the comparison stuff that shows up—like, “Well, this doesn’t work for this person,” or someone saying, “This will outright not work.” We’re all human, so I would take that as a bit of an affront, a personal attack. But over the years, I’ve become more hardened to that—probably not the best word—but I’ve become more confident in what I teach and the work that I do.

And it’s managed to stand the test of time, which is what gives me that resolve, that ability to say, “Hey look, people have been theming their days, time crafting, doing all that stuff over the years, and whether it’s focusing on the app within or your approach, then taking it to an app, that’s far more beneficial than just going into an app and figuring it’s going to solve the problem for you.”

So, I think that journey has been important. Plus, understanding that every part of the journey has its own season, and the journey is really what we’re all about here. There’s no endgame. I mean, there’s nothing more frustrating to me than when people are working towards—and you’ve talked about the whole “no goals” idea—when people get to the end and they’re like, “Well, now what? Now what?” Well, the journey is the now what!

Leo

Absolutely.

Mike

Right? So, to me, that’s been another thing I’ve leaned into a bit more over the years. And then there’s the whole idea of what productivity actually means, but I’m sure we’ll get into that.

Leo

Well, actually, let’s get into that. We had a conversation 13 years ago, and it wasn’t the start of your productivity journey, but I’m wondering, has your idea of what productivity means changed from 13 or 15 years ago, or beyond?

Mike

Yeah, it has. I don’t like the term “productivity” anymore. I think it’s broken. I think that we've—and I wrote an essay for Joshua Becker’s Simplify magazine about this, maybe two years ago, called “The Path to Productiveness.” And, I believe we should be trying to get back, now that we have enough technology and things that are actually able to do things for us, that they should do. Frankly, AI could be a huge benefit in a lot of areas. But it should allow us to do things that only we can do.

I want to get back to—not the activity of producing—but the state of being productive. So I want more of a state element. And I prefer the term “productiveness” over “productivity,” which is actually the precursor of the word.

Leo

Wait, say the term again?

Mike

Productiveness.

Leo

Productiveness. Okay.

Mike

So, “Ness” is a state. “Itty” is an activity. So, the suffix at the end—like, productivity—is the ability to produce, especially in abundance, is what the dictionary phrase is. So, we’ve kind of said, "Hey, productivity is about making a lot of stuff." That’s really essential, like just cranking—again, back to cranking widgets—right? Like, get stuff out there. Whereas productiveness is more the state of being productive. So, it’s more balanced between quality and quantity. Whereas I believe that productivity has shifted largely towards the imbalance, where it’s more about how much you do, make, are, than the quality of that.

And I’m not suggesting that we forsake quantity. I mean, there’s a great story in, I think it's called "The Practicing Mind" by Thomas Sterner, where he talks about the Yamaha piano factory and then the Japanese piano maker. The Yamaha factory has to crank out so many, and the supervisor has a quota and all that stuff. Then the author goes to interview the Japanese piano maker, the artisanal maker, and he says "When do you finish your work for the day?" He goes, "Well, when I decide I’m done." And he goes, "Well, how many pianos do you make a day?" He goes, "Well, whatever I manage to get done during that time." And then the author says, "Well, what does your supervisor have to say about that?" And the artisanal maker goes, "What’s a supervisor?"

There’s no—and again, there’s no right or wrong way here. And that’s another big distinction: there are some elements where you have to crank up the speed, right? There are certain elements, but AI is definitely helping with that. But I think that we’ve gotten away from quality. We’ve gotten away from that. And that, to me, is why productiveness is the way forward, as opposed to productivity, because it’s a state, as opposed to the activity of.

Leo

Okay. I love that. So, let’s dig into that a little bit. Tell me more about this state. For you, what is the state like?

Mike

It’s very much like a flow state. But what I appreciate about it is it’s more of a contextual flow or a modality flow than an activity flow. So, for example, I talk about this in "The Productivity Diet"—the idea of, which is the book that, you know, has been taken a while to get out there because I have a lot of things to say, and drawing a line in the sand was really tricky with this one.

But the idea behind it is that if I, let’s say, theme a day, right? So today, as we’re recording this, is my administrative day. So, my overarching focus goes toward all of those administrative tasks across the spectrum of my life—work, home, all that stuff. Which means my brain goes automatically not to "What day is it today? What am I going to do today?" which is a very open-ended question, and our brain hates open-ended questions. The primitive part of the brain goes, "Well, I don’t know, what should I do? I could do whatever I want."

But by having the answer to "What does Monday mean? What’s the definition of it?" I can say, "Well, what day is it?" "It’s Monday." "What’s the theme for today?" "The theme is administrative tasks." "Okay, what administrative tasks am I going to work on?" It narrows down my focus. It narrows down the tasks. So, in essence, I’m in this state of flow, with this theme in mind, as opposed to getting into a state of flow with a project in mind.

You’ve written books—you know what that’s like. It can become very myopic, and then it almost becomes like this ruthless level of productivity. I talk about the three realms of productiveness. There’s ruthless, there’s reckless, and there’s reasoned. If you get so myopic on something that everything else gets ignored, then those things start to fall apart, right? Personal stuff falls apart. Other projects start to fall apart. Not many of us have the luxury of saying, "I’m going to focus on this one thing, and that’s it. This one project, and I’m done." Right?

Then there’s this idea of reckless productivity, which is more based on how the list is sequenced. You’re just going through the list like this, or how you feel. It’s very emotional: "Oh, I should do this. I should do that. Oh, that’s the loudest." And then all of a sudden, the same thing happens, but you’re scattered, you’re overwhelmed in the moment. Whereas with ruthless, you’re overwhelmed only when you come out of it. You’re like, "Oh no, I have all these other things. What did I do? I shouldn’t have done this."

Reasoned is kind of a balance. "Hey, if I have this theme..."—and the theme could be "I'm going to focus on this project, this is what I do this day, my overarching focus for this day is this project", and you can lean into that." Or maybe it’s a time of day. If you’re a night owl like me, if I'm writing a book, later in the day is probably my best time.

So, it’s really about just cultivating this state of making the paths that I follow very simple. So I can go, "Oh, I’m a night owl, so therefore I’m not going to do any heavy-lifting stuff early in the day. It’s administrative tasks on Monday, but it’s still 9 a.m., so I’m going to do some low-energy administrative tasks."

And all my tasks have this easy categorization, whether it’s in an app—using tags or labels—or on a paper bullet journal, where I put an up arrow next to high-energy and a down arrow next to something that’ll take five minutes or less. I put a five around it with a circle. I can quickly recognize those things, so that my primitive part of my brain, the oldest part, goes, "I don’t want to do this." "Well, it’ll only take five minutes." "Well, how do you know?" "Well, see this five? This five says five minutes. So you only have to"—"Okay, fine."

It’s this constant battle between the higher reasoning part of our brain and the part that just wants to do any of those Fs that we’ve talked about, you know—food, fight, flight, all of those things. You’re in this constant tête-à-tête with these two parts of your brain. And, what time crafting does, and what the pursuit of productiveness does, and really the path of productiveness, is kind of like guide you.

You can go off and do side quests if you want, but ultimately you still have this thing that you can rely on that says, "Okay, well I’m tired. What can I do when I’m tired?" "Oh, Mike from months ago said these are all the things I can do when I’m tired. Let’s go down that path." That’s essentially it.

By the way, Leo, that’s how we operate anyway. Like, it really is. We often like… So all I’m doing is giving it a framework, and then people can follow that framework. And again, you can theme seven days of the week, you can theme one day of the week, you could use all five attention paths that I talk about. You could use one of them. It’s very much a modular system. That’s why it’s called time crafting.

So, for me, what I’ve noticed—and I guess this is probably the biggest thing—is, you know, you learn over the years that to say to somebody, "You should never check email first thing in the morning" is a classic. It’s an absolute. And there’s no such thing as absolutes. So for me to say, "Hey, you should never check email first thing in the morning," and then there’s this customer service rep that goes, "That’s the main part of my job." So already you’ve lost me.

Or when someone says, "I work from home all the time, and I just block out my calendar with a no-meeting day," you’ve got this one person saying, "There’s no way that my boss is going to go for that." So, you know, there is this nuance. And I think that’s ultimately what productiveness offers—the ability to add nuance to the equation. Because that’s the world, the world is nuanced.

So, when we try to make it black, white, left, right, we have these polarities that are pulling. You end up not getting a lot of the right things done. You end up checking off boxes. Maybe someday you check off a lot, maybe other days you don’t check off that many, but then at the end of it, you’re asking yourself, "Well, why did I check off these boxes in the first place? Did I check off the right boxes?"

And I think with the way that I’ve crafted this framework, it’s allowed people to say, "Well, I didn’t check off 30 things today, but I checked off 18, and nine of them were really, really important. So I’m glad I did that." And thanks to this guidance, I was able to do that.

Leo

Okay, let’s… so many questions. Let’s see. Let’s talk about that. So, it sounds like besides just the state of productiveness, there’s also a kind of awareness of like, "This is actually what I want to be focusing on. This is what I want to be using that state for." And so, let’s talk about that. How do we, in the system that you’re teaching, know that we’re focusing on the right things? Like, "This is the stuff that I actually want to be productive with"?

Mike

Typically… I mean, the hardest part initially is the idea of capture, right? Which is something we all learned from David Allen, the Getting Things Done days, right? Like, "Get it out of your head and in front of you in some place that you trust." And I think that’s where this all really starts, the trust aspect.

We don’t talk about that enough. We talk about next actions, we talk about, you know, if you’re in the Getting Things Done parlance, the horizons of focus. But ultimately it’s about trust. And if you’re not cultivating a capture habit, then what happens is there will be this sliver of doubt. This sliver. And you can’t give yourself a break on that front until you’ve actually established trust.

It’s kind of like when you meet somebody for the first time, you go on that first date, there’s no trust, right? Like, you’re kind of taking a chance, but then over time, trust gets established. I mean, you’ve been married a while, I’ve been married a while. Now, trust is there, right? When you break it, that’s a whole other thing. And you can break trust with the frameworks that you’ve got as well, but you wouldn’t take your foot off the gas, necessarily, in the early stages of building trust, because you want to make sure that it’s there.

So, I think the biggest thing is capturing things in a way that makes sense to you is the best way, initially. So, when I say "makes sense to you," you need to… "Okay, I’m going to have a notebook with me wherever I go. I’m going to use reminders on my phone. I’m going to use Todoist." Whatever that looks like. I obviously will provide guidance on that when I work with clients, but there are lots of people out there who tell you how to capture things.

The biggest thing is you get a lot of clues that way, too. So first off, when you capture something, you want to activate whatever you capture. And activating it is basically by putting a verb in front of it. And Leo, I mean, how many people don’t put verbs on their to-do list to start things off? Like, this is fundamental stuff. It’s like, if they just put "bill"—well, do they pay the bill? Do they call about the bill? What’s the… Or just a phone number, a random number, right? So if you put, "buy milk," guess what? You know you’ve got to buy milk.

You want to give your brain as many breaks as possible. And interestingly, when we start there, you can start to see some of the patterns. Like, "I do a lot of buying of things." Well, maybe I need to have a thing called "errands" that I want to have as an attention path. That’s an activity type. So today, on Saturday, when I have lots of time, I will go and look at the "errands" attention path and go, "Oh, well, here are all the things I need to buy." And then you can add other layers to it. Like, "Well, this is not a good day to buy it, but you have your default day," as opposed to, "Well, I’ll just get to it when I get to it."

Other things you can look at—and this is where I normally start with people is: Are you more of a calendar-driven person, or are you more of a to-do list-driven person? And it’s a pretty simple, basic quiz where it’s like, if you put all your stuff in your calendar, including tasks, chances are you’re a calendar-driven person.

So, that’s where I’ll start with theming, like, "Hey, well, we look at your days of the week and notice that, oh, Monday you have a lot of meetings. Okay, so you’re going to be able to get any deep work done that day? Probably not. Okay, so Monday should be your administrative day, like it is for me, where you focus on these little things that you know you need to get done in between meetings, so that way you’re directing your attention to where it needs to go."

For me, Wednesday is a podcast day. The reason I came up with that is because, number one, there are no holidays on Wednesdays, right? I work from home, my wife occasionally works from home, but on Wednesday, she’s not home. So I looked at all the days of the week and said, "Wednesday is the day that I do my podcast." And then I geared everything over time so guests can only book on Wednesdays, I do all my production work on Wednesdays.

So, you’re basically creating this neural pathway. And, essentially, if you’re a to-do list person, you’re going to have very little on your calendar or only appointments on your calendar, and then your to-do list will tell you what to do. This is where: "Are you more of an early riser?" "Yes, I am." "Okay, great." So, which tasks are your high-energy or high-intensity tasks? Maybe put an up arrow next to those on your to-do list. Or, "Oh, you’re using something like ClickUp? Great. Create a tag called 'high-intensity' or use flags, right? Like, the red flag means high intensity, and the orange flag means—again, this is where personal preference comes into play.

But then you can look at your list and go, "Oh, these are the things I need to do before noon, and these are the things I need to do after noon." And once you get one of those things going, all the dominoes start to fall. Because people will realize, "Oh wow, I’m at my best early in the day, and my list tells me when to do this stuff," or "My calendar tells me, 'Hey, this is when I should be focusing on this stuff.'"

And then we start adding other elements like, "Okay, well, you’re in between meetings and you’ve got 30 minutes. What do you do?" "I check my email." "No, no you don’t, because email is going to send you down a hole. Is that where you want your attention to go?" "No, I don’t." "Okay, well, where do you want your attention to go? What’s your daily theme?" "Oh, it’s administrative." "Great. Let’s look at your administrative tasks then." And that should be your default, not email. That kind of thing.

Leo

So, you’ve talked about capture, and you’ve talked about theming, and I’m trying to see if there’s anything in between there where you say, "This is the direction I want to be on this year, this month, this week."

Mike

So basically, when we’re talking about time crafting, there are three critical elements to it: time theming, attention paths, and reflective practice, which is what we haven’t gotten to yet. Reflective practice is probably—again, it goes hand in hand with the capture habit—but it’s the stuff you do after the fact, right? It’s often like the after-action reports that our friend Charlie Gilkey talks about from the military. They do things like that, like, "After you’re done, this is what we talk about."

Journaling is one of the most undervalued and underused elements of cultivating a great relationship with time and managing that relationship. Not only that, but cultivating productiveness. Because, at the end of it—the day, the week, the month—whenever you’re going to do this, and you could do all three: journal at the end of the day, have a weekly journal, have a monthly journal. And it says, "Did I do the things I set out to do?"

By the way, theming can help with this because if you’ve got a daily theme for Monday, at the end of the day, you ask yourself, "Did I do most of my tasks associated with the daily theme?" "Yes, I did." "Great." "No, I didn’t." "Why?" Right? So this introspection, this reflective practice, is something I highly recommend. And when you build a capture habit, of course, you’re already capturing things, so it’s a lot easier to go into that once you’ve started to build a capture habit.

But to me, reflection comes before and after every action. You reflect before you do something, it might be a very minor reflection, and then after it. Sometimes it’s like, "I did a great thing," or, "Oh my God, I wish I didn’t do that." Right? But the thing in between is the devotion of time to it. So the devotion of time to the action is critical.

Because if you know that you need a lot of time to work on something big—like a big goal, or you want to work on a book, or you've got this course that you're building, or you just want to plan an amazing family vacation—the amount of time you devote to that will ultimately, depending on your level of concentration, will make the outcome, the quality of that experience, better. So the reflective practice is you being honest with yourself and saying, "Am I doing the right things at the right time?"

I do an annual planning thing where we talk about, and again, speaking of theming, we have what’s called the annual axiom, which is kind of like your slogan for the year or your mantra. Mine is "Reason my path, refine my pursuits, and respond with purpose."

So, when I’m putting projects, goals, etc., through that lens, I’m like, "Okay, is this the right thing to do? Is this reasoned? Am I applying reason to this? Yes. Okay, great. So this does make sense." "Am I going to refine my pursuits? Is anything going to have to be removed or downplayed to do this?" "Yes, okay, permanently or just for this month?" "Well, the monthly theme this month is to focus on promoting your book." "Okay, so everything else gets downplayed. That’s fine, as long as I know that."

And then "Respond with purpose." Well, if I’ve decided that the book promotion in September is key, or October, and I’ve minimized everything else so I can focus on that, then responding with purpose is naturally like, "Yes, Leo, I will gladly appear on your show," or, "Yes, I’ll..." So, it makes it easier to say those things, and then you can, again, craft your time accordingly.

When I work with people, we start with the basics: daily theming, the five types of attention paths, but then over time, it's like "Okay, do you want to think bigger? Let’s talk about your annual axiom, let’s talk about monthly themes." Most people when they come to talk about this stuff or they're interested in this stuff, they are coming from a place of, "I need results quickly, I need to get this done fast, I need this to get done," you know, what have you. So, their problem is just getting through today.

Then, eventually, it's like "Okay, let's talk bigger." By the way, people can approach time crafting from the other element too, where they're like "You know what? I really have these massive goals that I want to accomplish," or, "I really want to make sure that my year ahead..." Because, as we're recording this Leo, my year just started. I start my year in September. At least for now, while the kids are still in school. We'll see, maybe they'll go to my birthday.

But the bottom line is, you can actually start with, like, "I want the bigger annual axiom stuff. Then I'll choose my monthly themes based on that. And then I'll choose my daily themes based on that." So, there’s kind of a top-down or bottom-up approach that you can take to any of this.

But a lot of it is just fundamental, simple stuff, right? Like, capture, use verbs. You don’t have to have a fancy app. Just, "Oh well, I’m a night owl, great. So, what can I do after 4 p.m.?" "Oh, these are the things." It’s about removing friction from your choices. Once you do that, everything else, as long as you trust the system and trust what you’ve been doing, it makes it a whole lot, I wouldn’t say easier, but it's simpler. Because, simple and easy, as you know, are not the same thing.

Leo

I still have so many things I’m curious about. I don't think we have enough time to cover all of it. Your annual, you said annual axiom, right? And you shared the one you're on this year. How do you come up with that?

Mike

Typically, I think about… I used to use alliteration. So, I actually used to use Chris Brogan’s three words for this, so I’d choose words like “focus...” And then eventually, as I embraced meditation more—especially TM, transcendental meditation—I wanted something that was more like a mantra, right? And three words can be a mantra, but I wanted something that had more power to it.

The one I had before this one was “Whatever it takes, no matter what.” It came for me just watching The Avengers movies, and they’re saying, “Whatever it takes, no matter what. We have to solve this problem.” And I thought, “Okay, let me write this down.” So, I will often... we talked about this in the flashback episode—the idea of comedians. Because I came from a comedy background and did stand-up and improv. I have a hard time not paying attention to things that I can then bring into my own field to discuss, metaphorically.

And I think that comes from me just like—comedy is making the extraordinary ordinary, and the ordinary extraordinary—so when I’m watching a film, or TV show, or reading a book, I will go, “How does this apply to managing one’s relationship with time?” or “How does this apply to productiveness?” And that’s kind of what happened with “Whatever it takes, no matter what.” Now, the one I chose last year, and it’s also the one I’ve chosen for this year, so I've kept it two years in a row, I actually asked AI to help me with it this time.

Leo

Oh, cool!

Mike

So, I'm like, "These are the things that I really want to make sure that I don't overcommit." Because, again, when I talk about overwhelm, there's overcommitment, there's overchoice, and there's overload. And, any combination of those can lead to overwhelm, and your overwhelm heightens based on, you know, are you overloaded and overcommitted? Well, guess what? You're going to be overwhelmed. If you're overloaded. You may not be as overwhelmed, but it's a warning signal.

So, I want to make sure I stay out of that. But I also want to make sure I make wise choices. And, to me, reason is the balance between logic and emotion. It's the middle. Logic is, again, we go back to that idea of being ruthless that's very logical. "I've got to get this thing done. I've got to focus on this thing." But then again, you're not taking emotion into account. Recklessness is when emotion is running the ship. You want to have reason in there. So, I'm like, "I want reason to be a part of this thing."

And then purposefulness, because that's really what—and again, we alluded to this a bit in the flashback episode that we recorded—is this idea of... As my kids have gotten older, and this really only dawned on me probably in the last few weeks, it's like, "Wow, one of my kids is now moving on their own, and my role has shifted. There's this time that could now be a vacuum if I'm not careful with it. I'd better have some purpose for that, right?"

Because the thing is, we often fill time with things that have—again, I've said this before, I'm like, you know, what is it? Attention without intention... I'm going to butcher this because I've said it so many times before. So, attention without intention is directionless, because you're kind of scattering your attention. Intention without attention is powerless, right? Because you're not directing it.

And there are different layers of attention, right? There's noticing, and then there's... I touch on this in the book, the idea of noticing, then focus, and then concentration. So, I'm like, I want to be able to... When it comes to purpose, that to me is a level of concentration.

So, I basically was asking ChatGPT-4... I just took it to ChatGPT-4 and said, "I want to come up with something that I can say quickly and easily that encapsulates not just work, but life stuff." And after a back-and-forth conversation, knowing full well—and this is a good example of where it can be helpful—that it's got confirmation bias coming out the wazoo, right? Because it's you. You say, "What do you think of this idea?" and it will say, "It's a great idea!" It won't tell you that anything you've said is bad unless you tell it to.

We probably went back and forth for about 15-20 minutes. Just me dictating, and it coming back. And we came up with this, and I was happy with it. So again, it's not like I took the messy first draft that AI throws out there. I kind of went through it. And when I do these retreats with my members of my community—we call them the "Ready Retreat"—that's one of the things we sit down to do. Like, "Come up with your annual axiom. Here's some ways you can do it. Think of words that resonate with you. Think of this." And, you know, if you've got a favorite sports team, maybe you want to use something like theirs. Or, like Nike with their "Just Do It," right?

There are lots of different mantras and axioms and slogans out there. Make one for yourself. And a lot of people will, when they do this, choose one word. One word to represent their year. Or they'll choose an entire sentence, or they'll go with the three words. But that's kind of where it starts.

And then once I have that annual axiom, then it's like, "Okay, well, what should I dedicate my months to? How many monthly themes should I have, and what would those projects be that I would want?" Well, does—oh, you know—"work on time crafting in Notion," right, as an example. Well, does that fit into the annual axiom? Reason my path? "Well, yeah, it makes sense. From a reason perspective, Notion's the most popular productivity app out there right now. That makes sense. Okay, great."

Refine my pursuits. "Can I afford to drop other things? Am I willing to drop it? I don't know." Respond with purpose. "Oh my goodness, Notion's overwhelming right now. Maybe I need to take a step back." Just those things alone help guide me. So again, if you're taking that top-down approach, the annual axiom would be where you'd start. Then you'd go to your monthly themes, and then you'd likely go to daily themes. And then attention paths kind of fill in the blanks. "Hey, I'm tired. What can I do when I'm tired? Oh, wow, it just so happens that I can do a really quick thing for this bigger, larger monthly theme project," right?

Leo

I think my next question—I'd like to go back to the state of productiveness, because I think that's a really fascinating approach. And so, you've talked already about some ways to set up that state, you know, with theming and a lot of other things you've mentioned.

But I'm curious, is there a way... Like, one of the hardest things for people is to enter into the day that they've planned for themselves and get into that state of productiveness. So, I'm wondering if you have anything around that, about how to get into the state as you start your day?

Mike

Well, I think that the bookends to a day are really important: your morning and evening routine. I'm not a fan of planning my day first thing in the morning. And again, daily theming kind of helps with this because my brain wakes up and goes, "Well, what day is it?" "Oh, it's Monday. What does Monday mean? Oh, Monday's admin." And then it kind of helps predefine what the tasks associated with that day will largely be. And remember, it doesn't mean that you only do administrative tasks on Mondays. I don't just do that, but it's my overarching focus, and that's what theming provides.

But by having kind of a bulletproof morning routine and a bulletproof evening routine—and what I mean by that is, you know, you want to make it small and compact, right? So, you don't want to have like a seven-step morning routine. You don't want to have it where it's dependent on, "I need to be in my house for this thing."

So, for example, if you're going to journal first thing in the morning and you're traveling, you may want to make sure that you have something portable, like a journaling app, like Reflection or something like that. Or maybe you're going to use Apple Notes or whatever. Or maybe you've got a little journal that you bring with you everywhere you go, which is totally fine.

For breakfast, I will typically have a smoothie. Well, if I'm in a hotel, I don't have my smoothie machine, but I can go down and get a smoothie because they're generally pretty easy to find. So, to me, if you have a small, compact morning and evening routine, your brain goes, "This is familiar. Now let's go into the unfamiliar." And the unfamiliar isn't really all that unfamiliar because you have predetermined, essentially, "Okay, well, what today will look like?"

Well, the night before, I prepared. Whether it was at five o'clock before I left the office, or if it's me, I do this evening examination where I write my journal entry, I plan the next day, and I, of course, highlight the tasks that are both related to the daily theme but also maybe some that aren't. Like, "Oh, I need to get to this today, and I know it's not related to the daily theme, but I'm going to do it." And I'll use an attention path to kind of make sure I get there, whether it's a priority level or what have you.

But to me, it's like, if you don't have those morning and evening routines—and I think they're both equally important, perhaps even the evening routine is more beneficial, because it allows everybody to get out of bed in the morning and hit the ground running, no matter what time you get up—I think that allows you to get into that state a lot simpler. Because you've got familiarity, and you've got to trust in not only that routine, but whatever that routine leads to.

So, for those that are like, "I don't know what my day is going to look like," well, you plan it the day before. And if you have a daily theme, it makes it easier. If you don't, then you still prioritize. You could use any method you want: Getting Things Done, the Ivy Lee Method, which is like choosing six things—whatever it needs to be. And then, when you start the day, you've got it ready.

I used to—actually, I don't do this anymore—but I used to write a letter to myself every night that would be like, "Here are the things. Mike from yesterday, who is now dead and gone, Mike today, you're susceptible to distractions, so here's what you need to work on." And that's what I would do. A daily planner essentially does that for me now, the daily driver that I use.

But beyond that, I mean, that's kind of what gets you into that modality. And once you... I hate to say it, but the repetitive stuff, while not necessarily the sexiest of things, it does keep you on the straight and narrow more often than not. And it's that framework that fosters the freedom that you have, right?

And that to me, when people say, "Oh man, that's really rigid. You have the same morning routine and the same evening routine?" I'm like, "Yeah, but it's kind of like when you turn on a computer. It has a system of protocols it goes through. Then you shut it off, and it has a system of protocols it goes through at the end." I just want that same kind of freshness when I start my day.

And I mean, part of that—I don't care what you put in your morning routine or evening routine—but I think if you've got a seven-step morning routine, one of those steps, if not more of them, will fall apart at some point. So, by having like three, that might be the way to go, right? Because that's what habits really are. I mean, routines are really just habits stacked upon one another, right? That's really all they are.

So again, having that familiar will help you deal with... you know, the certainty will help you deal with the uncertainty that awaits you every single day. And then when the day is done, that certainty will help you close out the day because you know, "Hey, at least I know at the end of the day I get to write my journal, I get to make my lunch for the next day," and these things kind of set the table back to zero.

Leo

Okay, so you've a couple of times now talked about this, you know, one objection that people have to theming, for example, or structure, is the rigidity of it. And I think that's a really interesting thing I'd like to touch on because a lot of people really struggle to stick to theming or structure or anything that feels rigid.

You've talked about some of the benefits of it, but how do we, if I'm someone who struggles with that, is there a way to, I guess, open myself to that or create a shift so that I can just trust that kind of rigidity or theming?

Mike

Yeah. So for me, again, the idea of theming is super helpful in this regard because it doesn't just tell you what you can do if you have a wide-open schedule, but it also creates constraints just by the definition of the way your life unfolds anyway. So let me use an example. Let's use monthly theming as an example.

Leo

Okay

Mike

So, December. If I'm working with someone or talking to someone, and it's like, "Well, what's your monthly theme for December?", they're like, "Oh my God, I’ve got so much going on in December." Like, "Well, what's certain in the month of December? What happens in December no matter what", people will say, "Well, the holidays."

Okay, great. "How much does that take out of you?" "Well, yeah, you know, all of a sudden it's two weeks of December gone." I'm like, "So will you really be able to focus on something big during that month?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yeah, I don't think so." "Okay, great. Well, what are some of the things that go along with the holidays? Think of some stuff." "Well, family, friends..." "So, relationships, right?" "Yeah, you know, that's part of it."

So, what if your monthly theme for December was just to focus on relationships? Send those cards out. Connect with some colleagues. If that's your monthly theme, then you could just do something every single day for that, and know that you are living up to that theme. Plus, you're not overwhelming yourself with this major project that you know you're not going to be able to do because of the holidays.

Another example: what happens every April 15th in the United States, Leo?

Leo

Taxes. Our favorite day of the year.

Mike

And in Canada, it's the 30th, right?

Leo

Okay.

Mike

So, April is tax month. Now, people say, "Well, I'm going to make April my tax month." But I'm like, "Isn't tax narrow? Is it too narrow?" Because when you pick your themes, you don't want to make them too narrow, but you also don't want to make them too broad. Because if it's too broad, then you don't end up doing, you know, you have too many things to choose from. If it's too narrow, you don’t have enough.

So, I'm like, "Well, here's the thing: taxes, if you're doing them in April, April 1st is—now you are now giving it your overarching focus—you only have 14 days to get all that stuff together. If you have an accountant, you don’t even have that much time." So we start to walk through it, and I'm like, "What if April was just finances? What if it was a broader appeal? Taxes are part of that, but you want to get your financial house in order." "Well yeah, but when do I focus on my taxes?" I'm like "What if you did something for your taxes every single week starting today? Just 5 minutes, 15 minutes."

So, all of a sudden, we start to add elements of time crafting to it, where they're like, "Oh, this is a 15-minute task", but what day should you do that stuff? "Well, I should do it every Monday." "Okay, great. So, you're going to do something related to your taxes every Monday because that's your administrative day." "That's all right." "Okay. Well, what other administrative tasks do you have?"

So, all of a sudden, we start to unpack this stuff. And because we’re working through the details and not going broad, they’ll say, "Oh, I have all these administrative tasks." And I'm like, "Yeah, what other tasks are there?" "Oh, there are these, these, and these." "Well, what if you dedicated a day where your overarching focus were those administrative tasks? Wouldn’t you be able to...", and they are like, "Yeah."

And, again, going back to the idea of family stuff. I have a family day, and people will say to me, "Why do you have one day that you dedicate only to family? Shouldn’t you dedicate every day to your family?" And I'm like, "Yes, but I know I won't." They're like, "What? That makes you...?" I'm like, "Listen, how many times have you forgotten to do things because life just happens?" But by having something like, you know, a family day, when my kids used to come to me and say, 'Dad, can we go see a movie?' they would eventually just say, 'Dad, this Saturday can we go see a movie?' And they knew what the answer would be: Yes, because that's my family day."

But family didn’t just amount to time spent with family. I also broadened that to be friends, and I also said, "Well, any household stuff would happen on a Saturday." Why am I doing that household stuff? To help the family, right? So basically, the rigidity only exists until you put yourself inside of it. And that's what I try to do. I say, "Okay, well, when's your birthday?" "Well, my birthday is in July." "Okay, so maybe July should be your self-care month." "Oh my God, I never thought to dedicate... shouldn't I give myself self-care every single day?" "Yeah, but do you?" "Well, no, not really." "Well, what if you did?"

So, it becomes this way of progressing through life as we're on this journey with time. Because again, I don’t like the term "time management" either, Leo, because time moves on whether we want it to or not. How can you manage something that moves on with or without you? You can manage your relationship with it, though.

And so, by applying personal preferences to this framework, this approach, it allows you to decide how deep you want to go, how rigid—lack of a better term—you want to be. And for some people, it's like, "I want to theme one day a week on this project and that’s it." Okay, great. Or, "I want to just follow the attention paths of energy, because I struggle with... I have a traumatic injury, and I need to look at my energy levels as a way of making my way through time." Perfect. Here’s how you do that. Or, "I have a lot of meetings, Mike, and I don’t really have a chance to catch my breath." Well, great. What if we use increments of time to give you a sense of, "Hey, this is going to take you five minutes. What are all the five-minute tasks you can do?"

And so, it’s just about building this. That’s why it’s called time crafting, Leo. And that term comes from when my son and I were walking to school one day, and he was trying to explain how Minecraft worked to me, and it's just adding layers, adding different elements. And it's not like you can out of nowhere, when you first start playing Minecraft, build the most amazing structure. You have to take time, you have to gather materials, you have to get better at it.

And that’s kind of how this all works. So, if someone’s asking me, that’s why life hacks... like, "What’s the life hack?" Oh gosh, you know, the term "hack" means to cut without care. So, do you really want to cut your life without care? I don’t think you do. So, it’s more about sustainable, consistent practices, which put you in that state. Because I'd rather be in a state of productiveness than to be in this activity of doing, because that’s where we can get tripped up. That’s where we end up doing the wrong things at the wrong time.

So, it's not a magic pill, it's not an overnight thing. Which is why in the book, "The Productivity Diet", people are going to assume out of the gate, "Oh, it’s like THE diet." I’m like, no. The term diet is not like a crash diet; it's a sustained... well, you know enough about this, Leo. Like, it’s a sustainable diet over time. A diet is not about a crash or a quick win. It's about a lifestyle choice.

And that's really what productiveness is. It's about making a choice about making your way through time, aligning your intention with your attention as much as possible for as often as possible or as long as possible. And you're never going to get it 100%, because balance is not 100% either. And balance is not 50-50 either.

So, to me, the rigidity shows up when you don't slow down and take thoughtful introspection as to "What does my time really looks like. What do my days really look like?" That’s where people go, "I can't do this. Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous." Or, they try to do it all at once, which we know doesn’t work.

If you try to apply all the principles of Getting Things Done all at once, something's going to break. Every single time, something breaks. So it's about just adding layers as you make your way through time that will allow you to craft your time in a way that works for you.

Leo

I love that. You’ve mentioned your book, which I think by the time this episode comes out, the book will be out.

Mike

Finally, this has been a long time coming.

Leo

Well, we’ll see if it actually comes out.

Mike

No, it’ll be out, it’ll be out. I’ve promised it long enough. I had a Kickstarter campaign that was supposed to have it out earlier, and there was just... So, it’s called "The Productivity Diet: A Practical Guide to Nurturing Your Productive Potential". And again, I bring up a lot of these elements of time crafting in it. There are recipes I touch on.

Basically, the way I look at this book, Leo, is it’s kind of my... I wouldn’t say swan song to productivity, but to the term, for sure. Because if you follow—you know, if you cultivate your own productivity diet by using some of the things I bring up in the book, then you will be on the path to productiveness. You will be in more of a state, as opposed to this constant, like, again, cranking of widgets or feeling overwhelmed.

You will be able to make your way through time as a partner with time, as opposed to trying to manage it. And you will be able to feel like you're truly being productive, as opposed to doing productive.

Leo

I love that. So, we’ll put a link in the show notes to that book. And I think we’re also going to link to a free book that you’ve given, which is "The Gift of Time".

Mike

Yeah, so it's... we’ll put the link in there. It’s mikevardy.com/freebook, I think, is what it is. Or gift—I can’t remember which one it is.

Leo

Free is always a good thing.

Mike

Free is always good. And that's a book that I wrote a number of years ago. It kind of explains a bit of... it probably is some of the genesis of all this stuff. It’s so funny when we go back and look at the work that we’ve done over the years, the stuff that kind of stands the test of time, and then the other stuff, you're like, "Man, this didn’t last. Like, I shouldn’t have written about Newton Mail so much," or something like that.

But yeah, again, it’s a pleasure to be able to keep talking about this stuff. Because, someone said to me, especially when we were talking about COVID, I mean, COVID-19... it didn’t hit as hard as I would have thought because time still was moving on. So, in essence, when someone said to me, "Well, you're always going to have something to talk about because time... you know, we always have time." I’m like, "Yes, but is it the other way around? Does time always have us?" Because, I mean, we're gone, time will continue to flow. So, to me, yeah, there’s always going to be something to talk about, write about, share. And this book is just one of the ways that... my hope is there will be many more to come.

Leo

I love that. I look forward to it, because I know that whatever you put out is amazing. I really appreciate the value that you’ve given us today in this episode.

Mike, thank you so much. I’m looking forward to your book and everything that you do going forward. I think we're going to be having this conversation for at least another 13 years, hopefully a lot longer.

Mike

Yeah. Thank you, Leo. This has been a treat. And again, it's always great to connect with you, so thanks for having me.

Leo

Thanks, Mike.

***

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