Ep202: Let’s Stop Talking About “Productivity” and Start Talking About Balance | with Mike Vardy

Zack Arnold

I'm here today with Mike Vardy, who is a father. He's a husband, he's a writer. He's a productivity strategist. And he's the creator of the time crafting approach to time and tasks, which you're we're definitely going to dive into. Because there are a lot of things that you talk about in your approach that are very, very similar to mine. Your work is also been featured in Life Hacker, Fast Company, Huffington Post, and Forbes. And you've also taught productivity practices on online education platforms, such as Creative Live, Skillshare and LinkedIn learning. And I cannot emphasize enough how excited I am about whatever's going to come from today's conversation with Mr. Mike Vardy. The Productivityist Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Vardy

Thanks for having me, Zack, I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

Zack Arnold

Yeah as we talked about a little bit offline before we started, anybody that's looking to get the latest hacks in Trello, or Evernote or Notion, or how do I automate through doing seven different zaps? This is not going to be the conversation for you today. Not because you and I couldn't have that conversation. And I have a feeling that one might last us about seven hours. However, I get the impression from your background and your journey similar to mine, the you're kind of over a lot of that stuff, not because it doesn't work. But because you're starting to realize there's a bigger picture around what it truly means to be productive, and really value your time and to get the more out of your life. Why would that be a fairly accurate assumption about where you are in your current personal journey?

Mike Vardy

Absolutely. And it's interesting, I was talking to Alan Henry, who was the editor in chief at life hacker. And I think he was a staff writer when I was the managing editor of life hack. And Alan's got a new book out, as we record this called seen, heard and paid the new rules for the marginalized worker. And we've we've crossed paths, but never actually spoken before. And we finally I had him on my podcasts on an upcoming episode. And we basically chatted about we're both in the same place, we both worked for websites that largely propagated are purveyors of what you would call probably productivity porn, right? Like this idea of like, you know, and I remember when I left life hack, the reason I left is that we reached the goal that we set out to reach, and then they wanted me to triple what I had done. And that involves publishing more hacks. And I'm like, and that was kind of I was already feeling the pull of life. Like, when you think of the term hack, it means to like to cut and to often cut without care. I'm like, do we really want to be doing that with our lives in every aspect, and really, what a life hack should be is it should speed up the things that, you know, should be sped up so that you can have time to do the more deliberate thinking and the deliberate work, the qualitative stuff. And so yeah, like, you know, as much as I wrote for The Next Web, and cult of Mac, and know all the apps inside, you know, an hour at least I used to, there's something bigger there. And frankly, it's more of an edge, there's more edge cases around that, like the bulk of people out there aren't going into notion and building like these elaborate, you know, quantitative measuring tools, or, you know, they need something simple, they need something that will help them get through today. But also to help them look ahead and make sure that they can get through tomorrow and the next tomorrow and the next tomorrow night that I think that's where I want to spend more time as opposed to well set up the Zap, or, or here's how you can create very elaborate, you know, kind of workings inside of whatever app, you're choosing, oh, sorry, that app is now out of business. Now you need to go to something else. Like it's just the things I want to talk about a more timeless,

Zack Arnold

yeah, and I'm very much in the same place. And when I saw that you had done things for like LinkedIn learning and Creative Live. I'm had been known for years on LinkedIn learning, formerly lynda.com Is the Trello. Guy. So if you want to learn Trello, I'm the guy. And it's now like clockwork, every 18 months paying email in my inbox. So Trello is completely changed and outdated. And we need you to redo the entire program. Three, four years ago, I was excited about that. Now I'm just like, Okay, I've kind of moved on from like, you know, the Trello automations. And building the list and the boards and to be very clear, still love Trello still use it to manage my life and my tasks. But there's so many, much more important things that I want to talk about when it comes to the value of time because you, you talked about this concept of productivity porn. It's very similar to the way that I now talk about this as the cult of productivity. Yeah, where essentially, because we're learning all of the tools and all the apps and all of these apps and all the automations what happens is that yesterday's miracle just becomes today's expectation.

Mike Vardy

Interesting. It's interesting because we talked about I wrote a atomic essay, I was in this ship 30 for 30 program that's very popular for writers digital writing. And you had to write an atomic essay every day and I did it mainly just to kind of get back into the them of writing something that was more public because I read a lot of you know, working on books and stuff like that I'm doing more more hidden stuff. And then I've got my podcast and all that stuff, where stuff's it's not quite ready for release yet. But with these atomic essays, I was kind of forced to do it. And one of the essays, it was about like the the one thing you don't want to hear about productivity that you need to hear, and I said, productivity is fundamentally broken. Like it really is. And I think that it's more apparent now, the post, well, we're not even post pandemic, because we're still in it. But in like, in this pandemic era, we're going to talk about it that way. Because people are really trying to ramp things back up to that pre pandemic level. And things have changed so radically in a lot of ways. There's not as many people doing the same jobs. People recognize that, hey, you know, what the world didn't stop, like, completely, like I didn't, you know, there were things that definitely did happen. But I think it was kind of a people talk about the great reset and all that stuff. I think that it opened our eyes to like, what, to what end? Are we doing these things right into your idea of the cult of project? Like, what, to what end?

And I think that that people need to know that it's, there is another way, there's a better way, there's a more, you know, forget work life balance. Let's just talk about balance. Forget, you know, like being reckless or ruthless with the kind of things you're trying to tackle. Let's let's do something reasoned. Right, let's bring that back into play. And you can't do that with apps because apps, ultimately, while they are great tools, what's this? Was it Thoreau that said men have become the tools of their tools? That's kind of what happens with them. And at the end of the day, like I mean, Trello is owned by what are they owned by now? I'm at Atlassian. Yeah, we know, at some point in time, something's going to change, right? Because look what happen with Wunderlist, a few years ago, Microsoft acquired it, what's happened to Wunderlist? It's not what it was, and all the all the people that were like, but you took my app away, I'm like, but that's, that's not the problem. The problem is, you should have something that you could either, if you had a napkin, you should be able to do it. And I think that we end up talking about the wrong thing. And that's why like, even productivity can be the maybe we should be talking about prioritization instead of productivity, because some people think that, you know, productivity is more important and prioritization, like, but that's the exact opposite thing. If you're producing things that don't matter, are you being productive, right, so these conversations are the ones that need to happen, as opposed to, again, like you updating that Trello course or me, when we released do better with Asana, me and Jeremy Roberts a few years ago, literally weeks after we put the book out, they changed their entire user interface. And I was like, I don't want to chase the dragon anymore. Like, it's just too. I mean, there's people that do it. And I like Francesco, on keep productive. You know, God bless him like him, he's made it work. But he's also doing other things like building apps like bento and things like that. So there is a place for it. But I think that it's been given too much.

Too much space. Yeah.

Zack Arnold

Other than the glasses and the full head of hair feel like I'm talking into a mirror right now. This is kind of creepy. I'm sure that my producer Debbie, who's on the mic is thinking the same thing. As soon as you mentioned, work life balance? No, let's stop talking about that. Everybody thinks of me as Oh, you're the work life balance guy. And I'm like, No, I'm not, I don't want to be the work life balance guy. Because it's a myth, it does not exist. And you're working towards the wrong thing. So the concept that I talked about, and you might have a different variation of it. But I talked about this idea of work life presents, I'm never going to have a balanced amount of I'm working an equal amount of life. And I have an equal amount of energy for my family versus for my job. It's a matter of choosing, like you said, prioritizing where I want to put my energy and I'm being present with my kids, I might not have a balanced amount of number of hours versus my work. But when I'm with my kids and with my kids, when I'm on a podcast interview, I am on a podcast interview when I'm with a client and with a client. When I'm not with a client, I'm doing something else. And so for me, it's all about developing the skill of presence. And that requires prioritization, because you need to be competent. This is where my attention is required.

Mike Vardy

Right? And you brought up attention, which is really important because people think productivity is about efficiency, efficiency, and effectiveness and all that like that. No, those are byproducts. That's not what it is. productivity in its the way I define it is productivity is the active linking of your intention with your attention. So what do I intend to do? How am I going to pay attention to it? And the problem is, we often we often have one without the other, right? So we have all this attention, but it's going to nowhere where we intended, which is like, I'm going to go on my phone and oh, look this thing and all of a sudden you're like wait a minute, what happened? I didn't do the thing. I was You don't have a way for your brain to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Right now I should be I know I should be doing this, how do I make sure that my attention goes there as opposed to the thing that's vying for my attention via social media via email, be it whatever. Conversely, you could have, you could have all the intention in the world like so that's, that's the problem is if you have this intention, I'm gonna work on a book, I'm gonna do something creative, whatever it is, but you don't have that that waypoint to say, here's how you're going to pay attention to it. So you make measured progress on it, then that intention is powerless. And conversely, if you have all this attention, but you're not giving it any intention, it's directionless. And so at the end of the day, then you start to if you start to link those things together, then you get more efficient, then you get more effective. It's the same thing you mentioned, like work life presents, I love that idea. Just presents like we don't need adjectives in front of it anymore. I mean, we're at a point, I think one of the things that I came to realize is I stopped fighting the battle that the industrial complex kind of put in place. So prioritization is a good example. You've read Essentialism by Greg McEwan, right, those are, ya know, how we show twice. Yep. Right, right. So Greg talks about priorities and how there's no such thing, because the word priorities didn't exist until the industrial revolution where they there was designed to get people to do more stuff, right? Because priority literally means the next thing. You can't go into any large organization now. And, you know, go in, wave in your on your soapbox and say, no, no, no, you can't have more than one priority, because they're going to look at you like you're a crazy person. Like, we know that anyone who studies this stuff knows that, but the average person that we're trying to help, whether they're at the top of the chain, or in the middle, or whatever, they're like, no, no, no, I've heard of that product. Why would we have to have prioritization, if there's only one priority, we would need it, which is true. Same thing with work, life, balance, work life. We're at a point now, where work and life are so seamlessly integrated in a lot of ways. There's, it's almost like harmony would be a better term, right? Because you have too much of it, it sounds crappy, you have just the right amount. It's perfect. So rather than put the adjective work life, the only reason you would do that is if you felt you were trying to focus on work and life, that was the thing you were trying to balance. But if you're trying to lead a balanced life, that's gonna involve things like, you know, life, and then all of a sudden expands. It's not just life, it's friendships, it's relationships. It's all that stuff. Work. Same thing. I mean, creatives, especially, I'm a writer, first and foremost, I know you're in the creative industry, too, right? Like, so you can't, you can't turn that off. Like, I can literally like I was reading that that diary I was showing you earlier, the assassins cloak. And the first line is about how the diary is like a drink. And it basically described how it's like addictive. And you often say things in there that you shouldn't say, or you don't have any authority to speak about. Now, this book called The assassins cloak, which was put together in 2000, was during the very genesis of social media. So when he says this about the diary at this quote, I don't think that's about a diary that's about social media. No one's really sitting now, going, I'm addicted to journaling. But they might be addicted to social media, which, when you think about it, social media is a form of journaling, it's, you're just doing it for the whole world. So you can't, when you start putting adjectives in front of things, it's designed to draw attention, which I think is great. But when it's done too much, it loses its power, it loses its weight, and then you might end up oddly enough, imbalanced as a result, like you said, if you work in life, don't mean they're never going to be 100% Eat like 5050, it's not going to work that way. So I think, and I know I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent here, but I imagine you'd be doing the same if you're looking in the mirror. Is is this idea that productivity being fundamentally broken? Is because we focused on the way that productivity has evolved over there being productive the term literally means in its genesis is to bring into being that's what produced to produce that's what was then productive is to having the quality of being able to produce but now if you look up the word productive, and therefore productivity, it means the power or quality to produce comma, especially in abundance. So now all of a sudden isn't it isn't just about making something or bringing something into being, it's about bringing lots of things into being it's about so now now people are confused and naturally we have to make a lot of things. The only way you're productive is if you do a lot of stuff.

But that's not true. That's not true.

Quentin Tarantino has made nine films so far right? He's got a 10. He there are people who have made way more films than he has. I can't I don't necessarily like all of his films, but they all are impressive pieces of work. And when he's done those 10, he knows I've made 10 things that I can really say that were I was productive. Right, as opposed to the person who makes 40 films. And there, there's there's a couple of hits in there. But you know what I mean? So I think I think that if we can get and when I say we, I'm talking in general, can get people thinking differently about productivity, reframing it a bit, I think we're going to be in a much better place tools can help, but we need to reframe it first.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And one of the most important words that I've thrown as a caveat or a qualifier to just about any sentence when it comes to productivity, time management, whatever it might be, especially with my clients, is the word sustainable. Thank you, if I want to build a productive life, or I want to build a career or whatever, like I want, like for me, I've got three major huge kind of, you know, buckets in my life, one of which is creative professional, one of which is entrepreneur, one of which is American Ninja Warrior. Oh, by the way, totally forgot, I also have to be a dad, I've got to be a husband like, it never ends, right? This idea that if the only way for it to be considered successful, in my mind is to do all of it sustainably. If I can't do that, I feel like I failed.

Mike Vardy

So what's interesting is what's the word that people focus on instead of sustainable? What do they when they think about like, I've got to do something and be productive. It's sustainable is the word they should be using, but they use consistency instead. Problem is, if you do think you can't, like if you're doing something. So the podcast, we talked about this before, like, I've done over 400 episodes of this, to have a productive conversation, which used to be called the productivity as podcast. That's consistency. I've been doing it consistently, but there's things I have not done. Part of that, like marketing it all that stuff. And the reason I haven't done that is because I couldn't sustain it. So I have to be okay with, okay, there's certain things I'm not going to be able to do because it's not sustainable. And I think what happens is we put the cart before the horse, we're like, I need to be consistent. That's all that matters, being consistent, being consistent. But if you can't sustain it, then you won't be consistent. So if you say, what can I sustain? Then you can be consistent with that thing. That's why when I when I made time crafting when I kind of forged this, this philosophy slash approach it was I wanted it to be simple, flexible, durable, and sustainable. Like it had to have all those qualities. And if it didn't, if it didn't, then it's so easy for things to fall by the wayside, like getting things done is a phenomenal productivity framework. But so many people fall down when it comes to the weekly review. Or they never get past the 20 to 30 to 40,000 feet, you know the horizons of focus that is that sustained? Like does that mean that it's sustainable. And when we talk about the call to productivity, there's a cult of GTD, there's a cost of getting things done. And if you don't do all of it, it becomes an absolutism, right, like, if you're not doing it all, then you're not GTD. And then all of a sudden, you start to have productivity, shame and regret, like all these other things that show up. You need to be able to look at things simply and sustainably. And that's why it's it's hard I think for creatives, especially, because they want to create, and they want to create so much. And they also want to do it when they've made something I don't know if you're like this, but I know I am. And I've worked hard to get past it. Once I've made something. It's like my brain goes, Okay, I've made that now I need to make something else instead of promoting the thing I made or because my brain goes well, it's out there. So everyone's seen it, which is total nonsense. But that's what the brain does. So instead of making it better, reshaping it, repurposing it, I just tried to make something new. And I did that for a long time. And guess what? That wasn't sustainable. It wasn't. So if you can get I think another big message is you can't do consistency. First, you need to do sustainable first and then get consistent after the fact. Right?

Zack Arnold

So we've transitioned from me looking into a mirror to me staring into the depths of my soul. As soon as you said this idea of as soon as I'm done with something, it's now out of my head that therefore everybody knows that it exists, and everybody understands it. Time to make something else. You just described the last eight year journey of me building an online business, hey, I've got this online course I'm working really hard on and I've got all these ideas. If the ideas don't get out of my brain, I'm going to go crazy. So I'm going to put all this into frameworks and lessons and modules and I'm going to build a Until then I'm going to get people into a funnel, and I'm going to launch it. I've got people in the course awesome time for the next course, not so much. But that's a pattern that I'm continually stuck in. Because it's hard for me to stop and not take the ideas out of my head. Because the noise is just never ending. It's like you said, it's very hard to separate work from life. Because they're the same thing. Now, because of the technology because of working from home and zoom and our phones and everything else. There is no separation of work in life. So for me, it doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing. If I have the idea must execute on idea, oh, I can't execute on it today. Well, then it needs to go on Evernote, but no one needs to go and do a mind map because that's part of my sit well, does this need to be a card and Trello? I'm not sure. But the idea just cannot separate from nope, hold this idea until tomorrow at 9:30am. Right? And so

Mike Vardy

You do capture though, right? Like I got you relentlessly. Like I've got to know I mean, last night, I was sitting at a pub with a with a buddy, I wouldn't saw some art. And I have like, I keep like little mini Field Notes style notebooks in my pocket. And I wrote down, I wrote down my journal entry because I didn't want to put my phone out. And then I wrote down what I called my six standards. So it's like, these are rules that I think I'm going to try to follow. And I wrote them down. And I wrote like rules for a night owl. And I just started noodling that stuff. I think that the mantra of capture everything, regret, nothing really applies, I think if you get it, because then, and this is one of the things that again, David Allen teaches and getting things done like mind like water, right? If you can get it out of your head, then and put it someplace that you trust, that's the key, then you can get back to whatever it was you were doing. So I mean, I wrote down rules for a night owl. And then I'm like, Okay, it's done. I can leave it there. And I mean, obviously, I have to have a mechanism to go back to look in this notebook, which I do, I put it in. It's the mundane stuff that matters. In those instances, like in my to do list app, it says review things in inbox. Okay? Shouldn't I know to do that, probably. But I don't trust myself to do that. So let's, and it's the same thing with Halloween decorations, we're recording this just before Halloween. And I have every October 1, it's like decide when to put put Halloween decorations up in Todoist. And every October 1, it shows up this is where tools can be super handy. Because I don't have to think about it anymore. It's been captured once and comes back to me every time I needed to. And it's this mundane silly stuff that my brain would easily go, it's time for me to work on this thing that I'm really excited about. That's going to be hard, you know what I should do? Instead, I should go get the Halloween decorations and bring them out from under the house. So So when it comes to the the the you know, and you talked about how been your journey over the last eight years, it's the same for me like my, you know, I've got to build this new thing. It's, it's out there. So it's new. So I have to, I have to get it out there or worse, I capture an idea. And I announced it.

So I'm like, I'm gonna build this thing. And then either I don't, or I don't, or I give myself unrealistic timelines to do it. And we're all we're all, we all tend to take on more than we should. And I think that's ultimately, again, back to this idea of productivity being about doing lots as opposed to doing right. And that's where, you know, it's it's an ongoing struggle. Again, when it comes to this idea of work life balance, or just balance in general and having like, you know, the reason, I think the problem happens for a lot of people when their work is their calling, or that's purposeful or meaningful, right? I have a friend of mine who still works for Costco, which is where that's what brought me out west here to Victoria BC. And he is still a forklift driver for Costco. And I say still, it sounds like I'm being you know, kind of downplaying it. But he knew that working for Costco was just a means to an end, it was to earn money. He basically plays online poker, I think he's still but he's done by like 383 pm every day, maybe even sooner now. And he gets to spend time with his family. And that's what he wants to do. And that and he doesn't need Mike, tell me about like how this thing works or what my framework needs to be. Not everybody needs it. But I think if your work if you're if there's like this purposeful element that takes you beyond especially entrepreneurial, or creative, you can't turn that off. And that's why like keeping a notebook with you or having like an this were an app like drafts for iOS can be super helpful or Evernote or something like that, or and maybe reading Thiago is building a second brain book or any of that stuff can be super helpful because it gets it out of your head. And I've said this before your mind was meant to be a factory, not a warehouse. So if you can, if you can get things out of here, then the mind can be the factory it's meant to be.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And when it comes to all those ideas, I go back to something you said very, very early in the conversation about how if you rely on the apps or you rely on the tools, they're inevitably going wanna let you down. If you have a system, it doesn't matter what the tools are, and you said, you know, you can do it on a napkin, mine's a lot more vivid. I tell my students that if you don't want to use Trello, fine use Asana use notion, I don't care about any of that. But you need to have a system, such that if all you have is post it notes in your own blood, you can still be able to work through the process. And be very clear on this is the one thing that I should be doing that's actually intentional and meaningful, and it's a good, productive, effective use of my time based on my values and the things that I really want to accomplish in life. But I think that the here's here's the challenge that I have, which you brought up sure is that when you mentioned somebody that is doing a forklift job to make a living, so they have time for other things in their life. My My only response to this man, that sounds wonderful. I'm not wired that way

Mike Vardy

No, no, no, I get it

Zack Arnold

Right? I wish that I understood it. But you're right when when your work is your calling. And your work is what fulfills you. And for I would say, for most, I don't want to make a blanket generalization. But I bet the vast majority of highly creative people, their work needs to be some form of their calling, because their identity is wrapped up in my ability to create and generate new ideas. It can either be your superpower, or it can be your kryptonite. And for me, it vacillates between both where every once in a while, it's clearly a superpower, this is my calling, I'm having an impact on the world, I'm helping people. And then I'll have one day off. I'm like, but I'm not having an impact on people. And I'm not creating something and I'm worthless, right? It can be it can be a double edged sword very much so

Mike Vardy

well. And that's why people like I was blogging every day for a while.

And the when I stopped, my brain went, it went to that place, which is like you didn't make anything today. And that's what you do. So you didn't do anything like it literally. And it's that it's that weird battle between like the higher reasoning part of your brain. And then the the primitive part, the part that which, and that's an ongoing battle, like most people, that's why habits work, right? Because habits help short circuit that that, you know, that battle that's going on. But all I had to do was say, but I'm a writer, so I shouldn't be. So I went, I'm a writer, I should be blogging every day, I'm blogging, like I'm writing. So therefore. And I eventually decided that first off, again, not sustainable.

I said, Well, wait a minute, I'm a writer, it doesn't mean I have to publish daily, it just means I have to write daily. And the only time you can have those conversations with yourself, is when you're not doing anything else. But having those conversations with yourself. So you need to take a beat you whether it's meditation, which I think is going for a walk actually one of the rules, one of the rules, I wrote down. Rule number three, when in doubt, go for a walk or a run or something in between, which basically means just get out of the space, right. And I think that, again, we're so predisposed. And there's a propensity to like, if we're not actively doing something like in then we're not doing anything. And there's that old adage about, I remember this, I read a story once about a writer and his wife, and the wife would go to work, and she'd come home every day. And the writer was like always staring out the window. And after about a week of her just coming home and seeing this, she said, Hey, when are you actually going to do some writing? And he goes, I am. And it's hard to describe that. But what's to your point, what's worse, in some instances, being in the kryptonite, is sometimes your writing when you don't want to be writing. You don't necessarily want to be like, and that's why again, I love the notebook factor of capturing because I'll just write down like I will write down in here the action like I call it my analyst, right? So a for action. Always start with a verb, give your brain a break, for crying out loud. You don't want to be looking at something that says milk and like, am I supposed to buy milk milk cow, what am I supposed to do? It's a bad example. But you know what I mean?

Zack Arnold

No it's the perfect example. I love it. And I'm feeling it.

Mike Vardy

Bill, Bill is better actually say like, Bill, it's like, am I supposed to pay a bill call bill? Like, what am I supposed to do? I'm verbs, they just act like so they activate it. And then I have another column. That's the M column, which is mode, like what mode do I need to be in? So for example, energy, I use energy a lot, I think, I think, and I would love to chat a bit about what I actually think about time management and a little bit, but energy is something that you can we don't leverage enough. We don't go oh, well, I'm tired. So I guess I'm just not going to do anything. It's better to say I'm tired. What can I do when I'm tired? Right? Or I'm like, I'm a night owl. I'm really really wired right now. What can I do when I'm in able to do a lot of stuff? So I will literally write in that column like either an energy level that I need to be worth the time like, is this a five minute task or is this like a 25 minute task or this is a writing task so I'll put like the mode and have like an end handcrafting there's like categories and all that stuff, which people can get that when we wrap up, I'll give them a like a link to get the starter kit for free. But that way, when I look at this, I can go, oh, okay, so these are all the things I captured. And then I can, you know, work my way through them, however I see fit, either do them or move them into the master planner, or whatever. But if I'm at the park with my kids, or at the beach with my kids, and that comes to mind, I can literally just write it down, not pull my phone out, and then get back to what we were doing back to the task at hand. But the only way I can do that is through that pause is through that brief moment of like, okay, you know what, this is not the time for this, let me get it out, so that I can see it when it is the time for this. And we don't live in a world that provides breaks, the world is moving at such a breakneck pace that it breaks next. Like that's literally how I feel about it

Zack Arnold

It's funny that you talk about this idea of taking the walk, because for years, I was up against a ton of resistance. And I don't work so much in the Hollywood studio system anymore, because like you I'm largely independent to now an entrepreneur full time and doing the podcast and the coaching and the courses. But for a long time, I worked in the Hollywood studio system, and people would come into my office and I wasn't there. And they're like, you're being paid to be at your desk and do the work. I'm like, Well, I was taking a walk. Well, what you don't we only have a certain amount of time for breaks. And like I wasn't taking a break. I was working through a really difficult problem, right? And I get all of my best ideas and solve all my problems when my body is in motion, which is this thing called Science. There's actually proof that this works. Yep. So I remember once I had a really difficult creative challenge with this really complex scene was when I was working on the TV show Empire at the time, which at the time was the number one show in the United States, all kinds of pressure, crazy deadlines, and I just had the sequence I couldn't work through. So I walked out of my office and I ran the steps in the building three times until I was completely and totally out of breath. Which you know, when your work clothes, not the best idea because I was you know, kind of sweaty and a little stinky. But as soon as I was done, I'm like, I got it. There we go. Right walked into my office and in five minutes. Done problem fixed. If I had stared at my computer for the same 30 minutes, I would have come up with nothing. That to me, is a productivity tool or productivity system. Nobody thinks about that.

Mike Vardy

No, no. Because it's it's, it's, it's too good to be true. Right? It's the same thing. When I say to people, like, times the theming your days, like I see my day. So today, today is actually a day I don't seem so it's Friday, Friday is what I call my cheat day. So I don't have a theme, which gives me some flexibility. Again, we talked about that to do a bunch of other things. So but it creates again, it's interesting, because it's a cheat day. I also know that it's the day where I'll have calls with friends. And if I have to have an appointment, or I want to have a conversation, I can do it on that day. Because it's so I there is oddly enough cheat day is defined in some ways as a theme day. So, for example, tomorrow is my family day. Saturday is family day. Now. Again, this is why it's too good to be true. I will have people say to me, Well, isn't every day a family day for you? Like? Yes, I guess but I want the overarching focus to be my family on that day. And that's what theming is. And people when when I mentioned it to them, they'll say things like, oh, there's no way I could see my day. Like there's no way. And that's where story helps. And I know that you know a lot about story and story is like if you can, I remember watching the movie comedian with Jerry Seinfeld. And one of the things he said as as defining comedy was stand up in comedy in general is making the ordinary extraordinary or the extraordinary ordinary. And I thought about this in terms of and I gave you a bit of an example with the to do list situation. Like I try to bring real world practical things that people can relate to to help them understand that this could work. So for example, when someone says there's no way I could see my dad go hey, do you watch college football? Oh, I love it. Love it. You watch like the whole slave game since then. Yeah, like I mean, I follow Alabama, but I'll watch like all the games and like okay, do you like the NFL too? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love NFL. Okay, so that's, that's Sunday. Right? But college is Saturday, right? Yeah. So like all the college games are generally on Saturday. Yeah, that's when I give my Yeah. And then they'll listen, they have this light bulb on like, so Saturday is college football day. That's a theme. So all I'm doing is you already do it. Just name it, define it. Give it clear when because, again, clarity. I think Thomas Merton said this clarity affords focus, right? So because Saturday is my family day. I know And conversely, my family knows that. Hey, Dad, you want to go see black Adam on Saturday? So it's there's a preconceived kind of thought process, too. I know Dad wants to see black Adam. I want to see it. I want the answer to be yes. So I know if I say can we go see it Saturday dad's brain goes will Saturday's Family Day? Of course. Yes. It's Saturday, we should totally do that. That's and I think every day of the week, except for Friday, which no one should start doing by the way he that's the other thing is another problem with productivity is when they take on a new system, they go, Okay, I'm gonna do all these things and do all this and do all that. And then one thing breaks and everything falls apart. Right? Yeah, it just doesn't work for me the system doesn't work. Exactly. And so so I will do things like, and again, when I talk about modes, I actually, you know, right. The only other thing I have scheduled to do today is that is to watch the World Series name one, like I'm gonna watch the Houston Astros, who are the villains, but I'm a pro wrestling fan. So I kind of like the heels everyone's against the Phillies. But I use that as an example. When I talk about modes, like, think about baseball pitchers, you've got like five, five starters. And they can give you a if they're designed to give you at least six innings of work. That's what they should do. So I have what I call starter modes. So for example, a theme would be a starter mode, like what's today's theme? Today's theme is training. Okay, what are all the training tasks I can do? Or it's it's maintenance, okay, what are all the mean? So I should be able to get through the bulk of my day, whether it's work or life all the day, working through that thing. That would be a starter, and there's a couple others you could use as well. But then there's the relievers that the bullpen right, and each bullpen pitcher is designed to some are long relievers. Some are short relievers, the closers, the one that should be only have to really pitch one inning, and I call them so there's reliever modes. And those are the ones that I usually reserved for like time and energy. So if you're in a crunch, and you're stuck, well, natural questions that you would ask yourself are one of two things. How much time do I have? And how do I feel? So if you say, how much time do I have? Well, I only have 30 minutes. Okay, how many five minute tasks? Can I bang out? Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, you get six, there's math there. And then if it's energy, if you're like, I'm kind of tired. Okay, well, what can I do when I'm tired? Oh, here are all the tasks that I've identified as tasks I can do when I'm tired. And that gets you out of the gym, it gets things going. And when I can relate that to people, most people will actually interestingly use time and energy because it's the most human, they can relate to it. And I think that if we can start relaying the most human experiences, the things that make us the most human and not so automated, that's where people will feel truly productive. Because they're going to do the right things at the right time based on factors that they didn't even realize that they had the agency to choose around, right? And going for a walk is a classic example that and so when I tell people, hey, just look at your list and whatever, you know, you want to answer the question, what do I do when I'm sick today, I can't come into work, okay, we'll just do your low energy tasks, instead of not doing anything because you don't have seems too good to be true. We'll try it. It's It's, uh, don't try it all at once. Because like you said, it won't work. But theme one day, choose, you know, categorize your tasks by one type of mode and see where it takes you. And I guarantee you, it will take you further than than you're getting right now. When that when the chips are down, when things are tough when you need to go for that walk.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, there's two things in here that I want to dig, dig into even deeper, because I love these ideas so much. And I'm doing I've been doing theming for years without knowing it actually had a name. So I'm glad that there's now a label that's approved by a productivity expert. But that's one of the things that I found that was so valuable and useful, frankly, just for reducing conflict in my marriage. Because as a creative if I'm in the middle of something, and I worked from home and have for years, hey, can you do this thing real quick. And I'm like, I'm just not in the mindset. And it continually frustrated me. So I finally had the conversation with my wife, I said, Listen, it's not that I don't want to do things for you. It's at the timing of you bringing it to me when I'm in the middle of work is bad. So just ask yourself the question, is this something that needs to be done immediately? If it is, I will do it. If it's not, and know that whatever is on your list, I'm going to do it on Saturday morning, Saturday mornings, where the light bulbs get fixed, and the garbage cans are taken care of and this and that. So she now knows that what she wants done is a priority. We've just found a way to theme it in such a way that unless it's like, hey, people are coming over in two hours and this needs to be fixed. Well, I gotta drop my shit, and I gotta make it happen. Yeah,

Mike Vardy

but it's always you'll do that sometimes. Because you're in a tough spot. Like if you're working through a tough problem. It's way easier. Like if this light bulb above me burns out right now. It's way easier for me to change that light bulb than to go write something for my book, right? It's way easier. It's where's that old adage? How do you get a Right or to clean his desk, give them a book deadline, right? Like, you know, or get them to write a book or whatever it is. I mean, and that's the thing. So it works both ways. Like not only are you helping your your wife out your partner, whatever you're you're, you're creating this, this mutual understanding of what this looks like. But also, you're helping yourself out because your brain knows it's not this isn't the day I changed the light bulbs, this isn't the day I do this. And that's that battle between the part of your brain that goes, Hey, man, I just want to get by, like, can't we just do what we need to do to survive, and the part that wants to thrive, which is like no, this the part that wants the purposeful work the purposeful, or meaningful relationships, because frankly, the the amygdala, the you know, the older part of your brain just wants to, you know, it's all about like procreating, and, and surviving. And it doesn't care. Like, you know, it doesn't care that you've got this magnum opus that you're working on, or that you want to please your partner or whatever, it just goes, I just want to survive. And, you know, this thing scares me. So go do this instead, right? And I think I think you're right, when it comes to theming, most people are already doing it. Like, that's the thing is, when you mention it, it's like, oh, and so there's a permission, there's a validation and a permission there, that, that makes you you know, I mean, again, I the church is another example I use with people all the time, when do you go to like, like theming days has been around forever. Like, there's this book called The Seven Day circle, which is about the history of the week. And the author talks about how the weak is the only man made structure of time. So the only one, every other one is nature, seasons, months, years, man made it. And it's been, it's been modified. So many times over the years, weeks used to be 28 weeks, 2028 days long, 10 days long, like all over the place. And a lot of it was revolved around again, religion, but frankly, the naming has always taken place. I mean, how the name, the names of the days are themed, you know, Sunday is technically the first day of the week, son, the sun comes up, like that's what it. So once you get your head wrapped around and break through some of the biases, because I think that's the biggest problem, then all of a sudden, you're able to go okay, and if you do with one thing, it makes it a lot easier to get that snowball rolling, so and the other all the other dominoes start to fall to man, I'm mixing metaphors like crazy here.

Zack Arnold

Once again, staring into the depths of my soul. Sometimes I'll walk away from a single coaching call with like seven different metaphors and analogies. And people are like, I'm lost in all of your analogies, like, Oh, you're right there, there's five too many. Let me boil it down for you. So I totally get it. And I think that the the important thing to kind of bring a lot of this conversation together, what I've learned over the years, is that when it comes to this idea of being, quote, unquote, productive, everybody starts with time management must manage my time, then you realize fairly quickly, time management is really a lot more about energy management than it is about time, which is what these modes are that you're talking about. So for example, when I theme, my days, Sunday is my biggest day of the week, as far as American Ninja Warrior Training, I do like a four or five hour session, pulling and pushing and max effort, like can barely move my arms and my upper body by 2pm, which tells me my energy level is going to be lower for high energy creative tasks on Monday. So Monday is my strategy day, the only two things I'll do on Monday are either meetings with my team to talk strategy, or I basically stare at the wall and stare at my maps and think big picture, where do I want to go? Because when you're more tired, you actually have more access to your default network and random ideas because I just the thought of having to write 10 words on a Monday, impossible. I can stare at a blank wall or stare at the sky and be like, Oh, I should do this or do this or do that. So it's about the theming combined with the energy management. But there's another level that I want to talk about sure that I've discovered recently. And maybe this is something you discovered years ago, but given the we're on the exact same plane of existence, and we just didn't know the other one existed until now. There's a third level that I have called emotional management. So let me walk you through what this means. So you would mention this idea of energy management where if I know that I have 30 minutes between meetings, for example, and I do the math, if I have five minute tasks tagged in Trello or Asana or notion or my bloody post it notes, whatever it is, that I know I can get six tasks done in those 30 minutes. It's just math. Yeah. But then there's the flip side of that to me, which is, what if I don't want to do anything and I want to be okay with it and not feel ashamed that I wasn't the most efficient. I could be with that. 30 minutes and getting those six five minute tasks done. So recent thing that I've been experimenting with actually has to do with the member of my crew back here. Yep. Which is my puppy. So I found that when I'm done with either A Zoom meeting a team meeting a client call or even a podcast, I am just amped up. Like I put all of my energy into these conversations. So I spent 15 minutes of the 30 lying on my couch with my puppy on top of me. And I just sit there because I'm managing the level of anxiety and energy and bringing it back down so I can more sustainably work my way through the day. And I feel like we all start with a time it's all about the minutes all about the math. Oh, it's about ultradian rhythms. And it's about how do I, you know, manage the low energy versus the high energy. But now I'm kind of getting into that Inception realm of productivity, like, there's a whole nother level of like emotional and stress management and anxiety management that has really been interesting in increasing my output.

Mike Vardy

Well, what's also interesting is that if you have those things tagged, if you if you have a way to direct your attention to your intentions, and you trust it, then you can get away with doing that a lot more often. Because the anxiety of like, well now what do I do? It's like, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, what day is it? Oh, it's Monday. Monday is my strategy day. Okay, so I'm only like, so you're giving yourself these, these waypoints? And the questions are far easier to answer. That's why, again, like, and I have horizontal theming as well, which is like time of day. And so I know based on being a night owl, that I'm going to be way better later in the day doing creative work than earlier in the day. But I know early in the day, that stuff still going on in my head, like you mentioned, right? So I will do all my coaching calls podcast interviews earlier in the day, because I can feed off the energy of others. It's like being a vampire of sorts, I guess. Right? And I have a background in performing comedy, improv all that stuff. So I know that the I get something from being in front of an audience, right? And after that, once I give, I need to take that break, and I can, because the part of my brain that goes no, no, you gotta keep going. It's like, well, no, I don't because when I'm done this, I'll, I'll just make a decision where to go next, based on the parameters I already have in place, which again, are very sustainable there. When someone first remember Joey could phone from the barren fig gum company and on the Eureka podcast, he interviewed me he goes, sounds like a very rigid system. Like it sounds really rigid. Like, well, it's rigid. I think it sounds rigid, because you're not in it. Like when you're in it, it's it doesn't feel rigid. And also the way like, I would never expect somebody to do you know, all seven days of the week being themed and horizontal themes across the board. Like, there are limits and also evolves over time, too. Right. You know, I mean, you were talking about Monday being the day where you're worn out because of Sunday, all the training you do reason Friday is cheat days, because by the end of the week, I'm zonked. Friday used to be my deep work day. And I was journaling and going like, I'd go, how did I live up to my theme day to day and like nine times out of 10? I'm like, no. Why? Why? Why? So I keep asking. I'm like, oh, it's because it's on a crappy day. Like, I need to move deep work off of Friday, because Friday. And the reason it wasn't there is because when I was watching my son, when my son wasn't in school, we basically had, he was in daycare, but Wednesday's was the day that he I had to myself, so or sir Wednesday was my day off or something like that. And it was the schedule had evolved to the point where I needed to move it, because the way it worked before wasn't going to work now. And that's why I call this thing time crafting. It's like, I'm not a fan of the term time management. To be honest, I don't think, again, one of those rules I wrote down was the most important relationships you need to foster are the one with yourself and the one with time. Because time, I don't think we should be managing time because time won't be managed. It won't be it has it moves on whether we want it to or not. We don't have control over it. So how can you manage something that you can't control? You can you can craft it, you can but like, and again, artists know this, you're never done crafting until you're done. Like you're, you're gone like you're finished, you've taken your last breath. Right? So to me, I think, really what we should be focusing on is developing a better relationship with time. And then those things that live inside it, energy processes that we build attention, because attention is all these things live in time cadence, how we pace ourselves, expectations. That's a huge one. Like when you said that, you know, you took the walk and they walk in the office and you're like, where are you like they had an expectation that you would always be in the office and you never agreed to that that wasn't part of the deal. So those are all things that live within time like we do and Oliver Berkman wrote you've read. Have you read Oliver Birkins book?

Zack Arnold

Yes. I actually was emailing him this week about getting him on the podcast

Mike Vardy

all the way like it's the book. You know, when you read a book, you're like, Man, I wish I wrote this before. Like there's a lot of stuff in it. But there's one thing that he's said, because in the book that that got me really thinking about this. And again, I was on a walk, I was listening to the audiobook. And he said, What if instead of time happening to us, we are happening to time. And he's not wrong, because time was here before us and time will be here after us. So what we should be doing, and you mentioned your spouse, like you wouldn't manage your spouse, like you would that would not work well,

Zack Arnold

can you imagine selling a course on spouse management, how well that would go.

Mike Vardy

Right. So the idea is time you think of it that way, I think if you think of time as you'd want to develop a really good relationship with time, then you're going to do the things that we've been talking, you're going to take the rest that you need, you're going to pause, you're going to pay attention, because that's what time wants from you. And that and ultimately, you want that from time. So instead of trying to manage something that can't be managed, or won't be managed, try to have a better relationship with it. You have kids, same thing, like you can teach your kids stuff, but eventually they're going to be their own like their, you can't control them. You can leave them, you can shape them as much as possible. But they're still going to they're their own. They're their own thing. And so it's time.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I'm pretty confident time is doing a very good job of managing us. And not the other way around.

Mike Vardy

Exactly. And you know, what's really, really interesting, I was reading a book called The Art of the idea. And Mother Nature came up in it. And then Father Time showed up ever so briefly, we don't talk about Father Time, as much as we talk about Mother Nature. We don't we talk about like, Mother Nature will have its way like we can't control nature, Mother Nature, but we don't talk about Father Time in the same way. We don't say like, you know, we sometimes we say like we're pushing back against the Sands of Time and all that stuff. Um, it's, it's interesting, because I think we should be talking about Father Time. As much as Mother Nature. I know, we can see nature. And we can feel it, we can touch it, where we can't do that with time, theoretically, but I mean, those moments like I mean, as we get older, and we know there's time dilation, there's science around all this. But I can tell you, and I'm sure you feel the same way, to some degree is the way I look at time and has changed so radically, not just because I studied, you know, this, this field, but my daughter is 17. And she's having a Halloween party tonight, you know, and when I look at her, I gauge my own time based on how old she is now, as opposed to how old I am. Because I do not feel 48 years old. I don't think I look 48 years old, either. But the point is, is that I judge, like, wow, it's been 17 years. That's crazy to me. Where did all the time go? And that's another phrase we use, like where'd all the time go? It's just fascinating to me that we we spend time measuring things like productivity quantitatively, and time quantitatively How much time do I have what, but those moments where we we take a moment, not a minute, but a moment, because a moment could be any length. And we we look at our kids, or we look at the way a city has changed or whatever, you know, I went to Hoover Dam a few years ago. And I saw like the erosion levels, and I'm like, if you just take a moment and think about that stuff. There's a qualitative element that goes that we don't pay enough attention to we forsake quality for quantity, which I talked about initially. And I think that those moments you have with your puppy, and the moment, the moments you had running up and down the stairs and the moments that I'm going to have later tonight in the study while I'm music's blasting and, and my daughter who gave notes to all of her all of the neighbors saying, hey, you know, I'm having a party like those things. We don't, we don't think about as much and we if we spent more time with that stuff. And maybe that's why I love journaling so much. Um, I think that we would have a healthier relationship with time, and we would be more productive. And definitely, we would feel more productive too, or they ended feeling matters. You talked about emotion, feelings really matter. Were the only ones that can feel like we can feel stuff. We should we should try to do that more instead of trying to deal with with it. Try to feel it a bit more.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I've been having this conversation with a client of mine recently, because he's in the process of wanting to put together a documentary about dogs and how dogs. They're not playing fetch thinking, Should I be playing fetch more often? Should I be playing less often? Maybe I need to get a bigger stick next time. Right? They're just they're in there in the moment. Right? And when it comes to this idea of like children and looking at them as a barometer of time, you want to know how fast time goes have a kid? Yeah, because you're right. It's like everything changes and you feel yourself getting older and getting older and you have this sense of, Well, I was at the beginning of my career and I'm progressing, then you have a kid, everything about you stops. And then all of a sudden, your barometer for how quickly things are disappearing is their age. You're like, you're born like a week ago. And now you're in middle school, you're in high school, right? And we say, Where does the time go? But the time didn't go anywhere. But I think we're too afraid to ask the question, what have I been doing? And how have I been consuming my time since this last moment that I remembered? Because that scares the shit out of us? Of course, dad, you know, and that one of the things about time that I've really been looking into more to better understand it is how we define it, what our relationship is to it. And what I have found that I've spent my entire career doing as a storyteller working in Hollywood, is that yeah, we tell stories, and we create experiences. But ultimately, my job is to create individual moments, that moment where this thing happens in a story where you feel something. And I thought to myself, What if the way that we have money or dollars as a currency? What if we have moments as a currency, and if my goal for the rest of my life is to accrue as many meaningful moments as possible, that changes the way that I value my time. So I know that something you've expressed in some of your podcasts before, is that it's one thing to have a goal, I'm working towards building this business, I have this amount of revenue, right. And I'm going to have to make sacrifices for my family in the process. But you only get one chance for your kid to be seven years old and want to sit and read that book or four years old and put the Lego set together. I can always build another business, I can always read another book, I can always achieve another goal and reach another, you know, revenue benchmark. But that moment is only going to exist at that time. And I can't miss it. Like for the last two weeks, I've been telling my team and anybody on social media, my complete calendar, everything about my life is totally blown up. It's a giant dumpster fire productivity, so to speak. Because my son who's now 12 years old, he decided he was going to turn our carport into a haunted house. And in the process of doing so he's like me, he went all out. And we have the LA Daily News doing an interview about it. And then we were on KTLA five, which is the biggest news station that everybody watches in LA, it's now my entire life, my entire Friday afternoon, like your cheat day, I'm spending the whole afternoon writing on these big pieces of poster board, free Halloween house this way big arrow and putting it on street signs. That was not a time block on my calendar regarding my objectives, right, but all of the objectives can be done next week or next month. My 12 year old son is never going to have a Halloween experience like this again, he might have a when he's 13 he might have when he's 14, he's never gonna have it again when he's 12. Right? So I feel like a big part of productivity, like we talked about prioritization, and I want to accrue meaningful moments. And it's frustrating as hell when I had other things I wanted to do. But there's no question in my mind, this is just what I have to do.

Mike Vardy

You journal right? Do you journal? Do you keep a journal,

Zack Arnold

I don't journal as much as I would like to what I'm one of those people. And maybe this is something you can help me with. We're going to turn this into free coaching for a session. I am one of those people that has a stack of 12 really nice high quality moleskin journals that have 10 pages filled out that I never finished and I just started journaling, again. But I can't seem to stick to it now because I don't think it's valuable or I don't get use out of it. I just can't stick to it. But I know how valuable of a practice it is.

Mike Vardy

So I have a similar thing my wife has banned me from buying any more journals or pens or anything like that. Garin fig, I think she actually made sure that Joey doesn't allow me to order anything from here, again. But I don't write my journals in a notebook as much I have occasionally. But like I wrote in this little mini notebook I was telling you about while I was sitting at the pub, because I'm like, I'm waiting here, I'm going to do this. Because I'm having thoughts that are coming to mind. I actually dictate my journal entries in an app. So actually use an app for this. Because I feel that that this is where tools can remove friction, right? So I don't think I would not be journaling. If I was writing it out. I would not be journaling probably if I was typing them out. Because by the end of the day, my brain is going, you're too tired. You wrote all day, you've done all this stuff, what's the point? So I dictate my journal entries into drafts. And then I copy and paste them into the journaling app that I use, which is called reflection, which is available for both Android and Mac I tried to find out oh, and is web based and all that stuff. And that's how I do it. And because I dictate it it takes me like three minutes. And I don't have people say well, how do you journal What do you do? Like what's your frame? I'm like, I don't have one. I just like I just because I'm not saying prompts aren't helpful. I think they can nb. But the thing is, is I don't want that to be the barrier, right? Like I'm trying to go from friction to flow as quickly as possible. And anytime I find friction, it, I try to figure out where that is. That's probably the most analytical I get about. And it's a process, right? So that falls into things that live within time, like I can manage that process. So, or process depending on who I'm talking to. But But I think that if you were to remove the friction of, and there's other friction with notebooks, too, like, oh, my god is this. My notebooks are so precious Is this worth putting in here, I don't want to wreck it. You know, like that kind of stuff. I think that if you were to, to, you know, give yourself the ability to do it the way in similar to the way I do it. I mean, after all, you said, we're like living on the same plane. So you might as well just keep going. It'll help because that's how I've been able to do and what's great is, you don't realize the benefits of journaling until you look back until you go back. And I actually have a task every quarter to go back and read the previous quarter. And then on New Year's Day, because I don't celebrate New Year's Day on New Year's Day, like I start my year in September to kind of mirror the year for the school kids. Martin Short does that there's a few others that have Gretchen Rubin, like they kind of like they they've always kind of guided their year by schooling. And I go back on New Year's Day, so January 1, and I will read all of my entries, like that's the book I read that day. And it is fascinating, because you see patterns, like I should have written today. Why didn't I write today, like showing up like 38 times you're like, alright, so clearly, this is something I have to work on, or you beat yourself up, because you don't spend enough time with your kids, you think you're not spending enough time. That's the thing, right? I'm not spending enough time. But those moments that you're talking about, you see them they're like, so my son and I went to Disneyland this past summer, we went, the whole family went down to Anaheim, and my son saved up all his money to build a lightsaber. And I wanted to build one too, because I'm a geek, but we just couldn't justify the expense. But I got to go in with them. Because if they're under 14, I think you get to go on with them or something like so I went in, and I'm thinking I'm gonna get to watch this whole thing. And he's picked out his things. And it's so fantastic. And I have a photo of it. That's the other thing I do is I'll take a photo. And that's what I use as a prompt if I'm stuck, right? Because your phone has the ability to do that. And I'm in this the lightsaber building area, and the show is about to start. And he goes, Dad, I need you to turn around, right? Because I need you to turn around because I don't want you to know what color I picked for the kyber crystal, which is like the thing that blade with the blade will look like. And I'm like, in my head. I'm like, okay, and I turn around, and the wall is maybe like a six inches from my like I'm at the room is so packed that it's like maybe six to eight inches away. So I'm facing this wall while everyone's building their lightsaber, and I'm not allowed to turn around. And I wanted he wanted me in there for the experience. But for literally two thirds, if not three quarters of the experience. It's me and no one knows why I'm facing the wall. Yeah, all these people are like, why is this guy facing the wall? Like, shouldn't you be watching this. And so I face the wall for almost all of it until he reveals that he chose purple. Like they unveil it and all that stuff. And in my journal that night, I didn't write I wrote like lightsaber situation, and there's a photo of it. But I'm like, the most memorable part of that was him, making me turn around to not watch it. And I did it because that's what mattered most to him. It mattered that I was there. But it also mattered that he wanted to surprise me with Blink because there's I mean, there's one of three opt for options. And that was the best part of the whole experience. And I wouldn't remember. I mean, I remember it because it's pretty vivid still. But journaling about it means like when I'm at, I can go back and go I remember that, like there's Jessamine West, says this says journalists get to live life twice. And I think that there's something there. Because a moment is a place in time. But it doesn't have a quantitative element to it with a journal, you can at least put some attention to it like this happened on August 28. Like today, you're going to have that whole that mean that's gonna be something you'll always remember. But the raw feeling in that moment gets captured in the journal like, you know, this is yeah, it was frustrating that my whole week blew up but man smile my kid's face was worth it or whatever it is. Journaling is the most undervalued and underused, productivity slash time management tool that you can have because if the calendar offers like kind of the details of your days or sorry, the directory of your days rather like where you need to be and what and the to do list is the details right? It's like Here's what's happening in this, the journalist the story, the journal is the story of of your life like it is. And that's why you've got like, Alan Richmond stock book that sold like crazy. You've got Marcus Aurelius is meditations, which Ryan Holiday talks about all the time. And he is the first to say like this was not meant to be, it's not like Marcus Aurelius had a publishing deal. And said, I want you to publish my journals. And this book, this Assassin's Chromebook cloak book that I'm reading, it's like, all these journal entries are, there's just something raw about them. And if you and the patterns that you can see, and you can figure out behaviors, and you know, sometimes you'll find the moments that you thought were mundane, end up being some of the most magical ones you have.

Zack Arnold

It's funny, you bring up this idea of journaling and patterns, because we have this thing in my coaching community that we call the woowoo. Factor. I'm not a big fan of all the woowoo in the universe stuff and just manifest it in the law of attraction. And it'll happen, I think that we need to have intention and effort and action to go in all of it. First, you can't discount this thing called the woowoo factor. So the experience I just literally had two days ago, has everything to do with what you just said, and which I've been going through going back to where he said about this idea of you want a writer to clean his desk, you know, get him to write a book, clean my desk for the first time in three months, right before this podcast conversation because I had to prep for it. And like, Well, I'm really feeling feel like prepping for the podcast, no offense to you whatsoever. But you know, just wasn't feeling it. It's a Friday and like, I'm just gonna listen to one of his podcasts and I want to move around, you know what, maybe it's time to clean off the desk. So for the first time, in two months, I have a clean desk. But the addendum to that is that I also have been cleaning on reorganizing my exercise room, because I had a whole giant stack of books and I needed to get them on the bookshelf. And they didn't have space on the bookshelf. And it was an entire day's project, just put the books on the bookshelf is welcome to a day in my life. The point being I found the whole random stack of journals that I never fill out. And I found that I had purchased the Five Minute Journal Yeah, like, you know, is a very popular one. And like the the mid teens, right? So I bought into 2016 or 2017 used about 30 pages of it like I do for all journals. And the last entry was in 2017, almost to the day five years ago. But then I looked at one of the affirmations. And it's the exact same goal that I had for this year. I'm like, son of a bitch. I mean, like, well, I won't say what the exact thing is quantifiable down to an actual number because it's a business goal. The exact same goal that I wrote five years ago is the goal that I have now, which to me was a pattern of I'm clearly not putting enough action towards this had I been journaling for the last five years, probably would have had a little bit more attention towards that maybe would have made the shift sooner. I would it was a really eye opening moment for me.

Mike Vardy

And I don't do a weekly review either. I don't do weekly read because I journal every day. So I just go back and read the data

Zack Arnold

That's productivity heresy. You are a failed productivity expert. If you are not doing your weekly review consistently.

Mike Vardy

Nope, doesn't journaling, it allows me to course correct that much faster. Like by seeing it. And going back. That's the most review I do is read the journal entries from the pre from the week gone by that's it.

And it's because I know it's really hard to go through all that stuff. And again, by Friday, I'm wiped Sunday is my planning day. I want to plan forward. And so by me looking at those things from the previous week, I've already kind of got them in my head as to what and I've already kind of started to lay the groundwork out so no, I don't. And I know a lot of people that are productivity folks are like well wait, well how do you know how do you don't like the journal is the journal the journal? Because and I don't and I'm not a huge fan like I love what what the folks that cuz they also have the productivity planner, the same people that did the five minute journal. I love that it's gotten people to journal because it only takes five minutes. What I'm not a fan of is necessarily is the prompts because when you have prompts it can they can be both a blessing and a curse. Right? Like if you don't have anything that will fill that prompt your brain goes see this is useless. Like I'm not going to use the whole book like what's the point right it's the same thing with a dated planner is that if they miss a couple of days it's like oh great what a waste I shouldn't even bother plant like that's what you end up going up against. So I think that that Yeah, I mean the three ingredients and this was another rule that I wrote down for like my six standards was keep a calendar to do list and journal and be a steward for all three because they all matter and I can't tell anyone how to necessarily use a calendar to the to their absolute liking. Can't do the same thing for to do list or a journal. Just frankly, it I don't want to be an absolutist don't want to be somebody who's like, I mean, the middle is not sexy, but the center always holds and it's funny. As a Star Wars geek, I remember I keep thinking that the the quote that Obi Wan Kenobi says to Anakin Skywalker, when Anakin turns and he says if Anakin says like, if you're not my friend and you're my enemy and and Obi Wan was only a Sith deals in absolutes, I'm like, nope, not true Jedi due to Jedi, like it's only like somebody who's somewhere in the middle, like like, or that follows the quote, the will of the force like Qui Gon Jinn does, as opposed to like, what the Jedi Council was doing. And Star Wars geeks know what I'm talking about. But the point is, is that I think absolutely, when you when you have absolutism, then there's no chance for sustainability. Because any kind of thing that breaks it or even puts a little like flaw in your in your theory, immediately. It just started the whole house of cards starts to tumble, which means you can't it's not sustainable. So journaling, to me needs to be something that is it's the most personal aspect. It's the one that if you need a prompt, you've got them available, but you don't need it. If you are stuck, hey, there's an app on your phone that'll help you or, you know, there's you could use Evernote, I don't want to use a new tool. Well, great use Evernote, like make a notebook do that, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's not again, it's not easy, but it there's a lot of simplicity involved in this stuff. When you when you really take a moment to think about it. And

Zack Arnold

I'm glad you bring up the idea about prompts. Because when I'm on your podcast, one of the accolades or bullet points when you do the intro is that I am the founder, CEO and President of over thinkers anonymous. And anybody that gives me prompts I immediately think to myself and as somebody who's talked to Gretchen Rubin, and as I have I'm sure you're familiar with the four tendencies. Yep, question are on steroids. Oh, no. Is this is this the like, The Five Minute Journal can take me 60 minutes? Because I'm like, I don't know, are these the three best things I should be grateful for today? And I don't know. Are there alternate affirmations? And are these the best things that I did with my day? So in for me, if I were to get a day planner, it's like, well, three days that I didn't fill it out. This goes in the garbage because it's not perfect, right? years ago with exercise, got the p90x program, get 789 days and you miss one day? Well, I failed. I didn't do p90x. So I have to start over, which is absurd. But that's my default wiring is that it must all be perfect. So that's why I think for so many of the journals, even the empty ones, it's like you said, Well, I've got this nice moleskin. And it's this beautiful paper and it's got the little ribbon. I don't want to waste this. So I need to be writing meaningful and useful things in my journal. It can't just be garbage. But yeah, if I've got an app in digital space, and I just want to talk to myself, like a homeless person while I'm in my backyard, go for it. So that can be a good way to do it.

Mike Vardy

What's interesting is you just said something that I think is absolutely the thing that we do. And it's so bass ackwards is, I want to write something meaningful or purposeful in this journal, not just garbage, but there's no way for you to know what is garbage and what like you can't disseminate that. It's like it's the idea of like, the first the first shitty draft, right? Like that first draft, that's not good. And then you look at it again, with a fresh set of eyes. And you're like, Oh, this is not as good as I thought, or Oh, wow, this is like, I've come across blog posts that I've written. I was looking at some night owl stuff, because I want I'm digging more into that because no one really talks about it. People are like, you know, being early riser and night owls are like what we eat, but we do it too. And so I'm like, I need to do more research on this. And I started doing some online research because Googling around who else has written about night owl stuff. And somebody on a WordPress site wrote about night owl like, Oh, this is a pretty comprehensive article. And like, here's how you can survive being a night owl. And I get about three paragraphs in and then all of a sudden, they say, Mike Vardy that and it's like, Oh, crap, they're talking about the things that I like, they learn from me. And I'm like, That's hilarious. Going back again, to the everything new, you have to make something new all the time. But, you know, it's funny. You brought up Gretchen Rubin, who's been I've chatted with Gretchen on a number of occasions. Um, she has the four tendencies course, which I think I'm a case study for. So you're a questioner. But are you a questioner that also tries to put upholder stuff in place because you mean the idea of I'm I'm I'm, I'm an obliger. Who uses tactics to make myself an upholder? So, for example, that's why theming works as well, because otherwise I will just do what someone else wants, like I will do what whereas it sounds like Are you a pure questioner? Are you a questioner? That is

Zack Arnold

I am the I'm the most volatile combination of all all I am equal parts questioner and rebel. Hmm. So I can question something to the nth degree and have it all laid out perfectly in my calendar and then the result Walters, you're not going to tell me what to do Screw this. I'm going to do nothing this week. So welcome to the inside of my head.

Mike Vardy

Journaling will help.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, so I'm sensing a theme from today's conversation. It's,

Mike Vardy

it's so, again, I think we get so caught up in the tools because the tools are so again like money like, like nature, you can see it, you can touch it. And there's an achievement that happens when you learn something right. Like I mastered this like notion is a great example of that. I mean, I know a bit about notion, but I don't know a lot about it. And the old Mike would have dove in like, full on, right. I mean, I know Asana Yeah, I would have gone. And then but here's the problem with it is that it could be anything. It's like Evernote was when like Evernote could be anything like people are using Evernote for productivity, like a to do list and project management, which I think is a terrible idea to this day, but they were using it for that notion can be almost anything. And there is a limit to I think there's a law of diminishing returns, when you're focused on the tool, as opposed to, you know, the fundamentals like the pillars, it'd be the equivalent of me going to golf with my brother, who is a really great golfer, and he has crappy clubs, and I buy the best clubs I money could buy. First off, I hate golf. So that's already a strike against me. And then secondly, I don't know how to golf very well. So he would kick my ass with the cheapest clubs, because he he knows how to do it, he gets them. So no matter what course he plays, on what clubs he uses, he knows what to do. I would not and I think people often want that, while the tool will help me the tool will do it. And the two won't garbage in garbage out. I mean, that's that's the way it goes. So if you if you can find a way to you know, like the fundamentals, capture everything, you know, have a process that easily transfers from one tool to another journaling to figure out like to keep that evolution going in the right direction that you want it to. Those are really the things that you can start with. And then And then we talked about optimizing, then optimize, right? It's almost like they it's almost like people try to optimize before they have things to fully like the four things are working properly. Right. You can't optimize things without having the fundamentals in place first. And I think that's where it's it's yeah, it's not sexy. It's not not necessarily the fun work. But it's the it's the essential work. It's the work that needs to be done so that you can ultimately, you know, hit those levels that you want to hit.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, exactly. And I think focusing so much on the tools. And the process, again, is such a hindrance to focusing more on the results. So for me, if somebody's like, well, I use this calendar program, and I do this to do lists. I'm like, I don't care at the end of the week. Do you feel fulfilled by how you use your time? Can you sleep well at night, knowing that you put your time, your energy and your attention in the right places? If so, I don't give a crap, what tools you use or even what your system is. But if you're not fulfilled at that time, that's where I think you and I are able to help people fill those holes. But I over and over and all the courses that I teach, whether it's about Trello, or Evernote or all the apps like I like to get into the weeds with this stuff, because it's fun. Sure, but I say it every single lesson ad nauseam. If this doesn't work for you don't do it. This is my way. This is not the way or the right way. This is just what works for me. Take what you need. Don't use what doesn't work for you, as long as you go to sleep at night feeling good about how you use your time. I mean, what more can you ask from being a human being?

Mike Vardy

And I think that the people that that's the that's the thing people need the most help with. That's the word so solving the right problem as opposed to solving a problem that really is getting too much fuel. And it's not really a problem. The only reason it's becoming a problem is it's getting the fuel it's getting.

Talk about I talk about my wife watches a lot of the fire firefighting shows. I think she watches any show that has like a first responder in it.

Zack Arnold

Which she must love the Chicago Fire Chicago mad series.

Mike Vardy

She's watching what's the one that station 19 The Grey's Anatomy, spin off or whatever. And whenever I talk to somebody about and again, real world storytelling kind of examples as people are like, they'll say things like I'm putting out fires all day long. And I hate that phrase so much because I think it's disrespectful to anybody who actually fights fires for a living. Because what they're, what they're describing is that it's like a scattershot. It's almost like plugging a hole in a dam right? They say fighting I'd rather ever say I'm trying to plug all these holes in the dam that makes more sense. But firefighters legitimately let certain things burn. So that they can do certain things. So they will let a fire go and certain direct like they'll they'll redirect whether it's a forest fire or building fire or whatever, there's a strategy behind fighting fires. And when they say I fight fires all day long and like that, just the the tone, they use just the phrase implies no strategy whatsoever. It's just like, I'm just gonna, you know, it just drives me nuts. And I think that if more people again is it just boils down to having that better relationship with time, which really boils down to the pause, taking a beat. I can't tell you how many times Zack, when I do, I do have a talk where I basically take 60 seconds and say, let's not do anything for 60 seconds, close your laptop, close this like and just don't close your eyes. Close your eyes, keep your eyes open. We're not going to do anything for 60 seconds. And I'm on stage and it works really great live because there's an uncomfortableness, right, like there's this. And I will do things like sit down. Like all all, I'll do some act out.

And at the end of it, I'll say okay, time's up. And then I'll say, how did that feel? And the audience will say some people say felt crazy. Oh, my God, it felt like I was wasting so much time. Like it felt I felt anxious. I felt this. And I said, Who? Who felt like the time went by really quickly. They were a bunch of people raise their hands. So not as many as people said, like, who felt that went like, took forever? And a lot of people raise their hands. I'm like, can people who can you raise your hands people who thought it went quickly? I'm like, do you meditate? And almost all of them kept their hands up. And I said, good. I go, I figured that. And those that felt it went by, you know, really, really slowly do you meditate, and most of them don't. And I say, well, first off, I got a confession to make. That wasn't a full minute, it was 48 seconds. Like I actually never give a full minute.

And I say it felt really long. If you just took a minute. And actually like pause to think I'm not saying not do anything do actually like just take a beat. Imagine how much better you'd be in decision making focus all that stuff, just to take a minute. And by the way, you didn't take a full minute, you can take 30 seconds if you want, like I don't care, but it's the power of that pause is so important. And I don't know why we don't feel like we can't do it. External demands all that stuff. That's probably why. But it's important you have to do it, it's the only I think it's the the key to having that better relationship is to is to notice is to pay attention is the pause is to slow down. I don't like the term slow productivity either that's making its way around either, because I think that's going to be corrupted. And it's going to make it sound that you might as well call it lazy productivity for people that are that are so obsessed with being productive. If anything, it should be deliberate, like and again, slow productivity. Those two words are a paradox for a lot of people. But slowing down and we're pausing is probably a better way to put it. That's and those those those pauses happen. And so that's where you can figure out what to fix, what doesn't need to be fixed, what to chronicle what not to, like all those things happen in those little moments.

Those those moments that we fail, we fail to take more often than not.

Zack Arnold

couldn't agree more. On that note, I could probably go on for at least another I don't know, three, four hours because I feel like we've barely scratched the surface. As usually happens with my best guests and best conversations, I've had about 8% of my prep sheet. But this has been just immensely valuable. Just to me, personally, I'm sure to my guests as well. I'm very much looking forward to the conversation where you get to be in charge, and I get to be the guest. And something tells me that this might end up being a multi part series because I think you and I have a lot in common and I only wish that we had crossed paths much much sooner, but I have a feeling that we can rectify that. But given everything that we've talked about, I know that for a fact the one area where you can very easily and effectively help people is with this idea of time crafting. So we've talked about a lot of the components of it but for anybody listening that actually wants the nuts and bolts, they want to break it down they want to read about it. I've gone through your time crafting guide or kit you can mention the name of it, but I went through it and like you're reading Oliver Berkman it was me reading it like dammit, why didn't I write this? So it's and that's a big endorsement for me because I really, really believe as we've talked about that productivity is a much bigger thing than just you know the time blocking and the Pomodoro and the to do list and I feel like this time crafting, so Artur kit that you have is really a much better way to look at time more sustainably.

Mike Vardy

Yeah. So if people want to get it, it's easy productivity s.com/kit Yeah, you have to give me your email. But that's just like, I'm a business person as well. But you get it's a 26 page PDF. And it was just one of those things where I, you know, you get to a point where it's like, I want to make sure that people get this, and I want to put it in a fact of form factor that, you know, I want more people to do it. And I'm like, you know, yeah, I've got books that I'm working on, and so on, and so forth. But this is the way I think, just get right to it. And it's a starter kit. So I mean, it gets you started. And then there's lots of other ways to kind of, you can just follow me on Twitter, too. I mean, once you get it, and you go, Mike, I have questions, because I'm pretty active on Twitter at Mike Vardy on Twitter.

Zack Arnold

Those were Twitter's gonna be by the time anybody actually listens to this.

Mike Vardy

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn too. So don't forget that. It's probably I, to be honest, I shouldn't be spending more time on LinkedIn, because of all the LinkedIn learning classes I have there. But

Zack Arnold

Isn't it funny, I say the same thing. I'm never on LinkedIn. And I have like five classes on it. I'm never there.

Mike Vardy

It's like, you know what it's like LinkedIn, to me is almost like, it's like, you know, the movie office Christmas party, where like, the Christmas party is happening in the actual office building. That, to me is what LinkedIn is like, it's like, I feel weird. In this office building. Like having a party like word Twitter didn't feel that way. Facebook, certainly. Well, whatever. I mean, none of these platforms I think are. Well, especially now Twitter is going to be interesting. Like, I don't know what it looks like, I don't know how it's gonna hold. What what Elon is going to do with it? Who knows? I mean, I know that as of this recording, the four executives got like, cool. Immediately. So there's, there's changes afoot. But yeah, I mean, the biggest thing that like, I will be spending more time probably doing some YouTube stuff some video. Because that people want to see me more. And then of course, the podcast, a productive conversation, which I can't wait to have that conversation cuz it's gonna be a mighty productive one, I think.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. Well, the way that I can describe LinkedIn in the simplest possible terms, I feel like I'm too underdressed to be posting on LinkedIn. It's a weirdest feeling. I don't know how to describe it. But I go there. I'm underdressed. I don't I shouldn't be posting here.

Mike Vardy

Yeah. Or it's like, just post what you post on Facebook on LinkedIn. I'm like, I don't know. If I should be talking. It's absolutely, yeah, I totally get that. And the thing is, LinkedIn doesn't want you to be that way. They won't be like, Hey, be be like, Man, not here. I'll go do that over here on Facebook or on Instagram. That's where That's where that stuff happens. But no, thanks. But no thanks, boss.

Zack Arnold

share that link for everybody. One more time,

Mike Vardy

productivityist.com/kit.

Zack Arnold

Productivityist.com/kit. And we haven't even gotten to my first question of today's interview, which is describing the term productivityist, which we'll have to get into in another show, because we had a much more invigorating conversation than anything I had planned, which is why I don't plan anything.

Mike Vardy

So yeah, it's hard to say hard to spell. And we are. You're here, you'll hear a lot more from Mike Vardy, the productivityist at some point in time, but right now, it's still productivityist.com

Zack Arnold

Well, the simplest version is we're gonna send people to the show notes anyway. And all the information is going to be right there at the very top. So all good. Mike, this has been an absolute pleasure. I know this is going to be fun. I didn't know it was going to be this fun. So I'm very sincere in saying that I would like to continue this conversation and get to know each other better for sure. But absolutely, yeah, very much appreciate your Yeah, very much appreciate your taking your very valuable time even though you're not managing it and it's managing you and managing me and managing everybody else. But I appreciate you taking your time to help out me and my audience today. So thank you so much.

Mike Vardy

Thanks, Zack. It was an absolute pleasure and I had a blast. I can't wait to do it again.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai