The Productivityist in Nature with Mike Vardy Part 2 (of 2)
“Productivity isn’t about speeding everything up. I think that when it comes to life hacks you speed the right things up, so you can slow the right things down. And when you do that, then you can make better choices, you make way better choices.”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM mike vardy
Mike Vardy is a writer, productivity strategist, and the founder of Productivityist. He’s served as the Managing Editor at Lifehack, and written for 99u, Lifehacker, SUCCESS Magazine, and more. Mike has also spoken at all over North America at events like TEDx Victoria, South by Southwest Interactive, NAPO, and CreativeLIVE.
the nature of day & night
“Well, I think some of the biggest things for me is the nature of day and night. We don't generally take into account time, how each portion of the day treats us, and how we treat it. And I think that whether you're working inside or outside, the light and the darkness show up. I mean, that's a guarantee. It depends, obviously time of year when that happens. One of the things I embraced rather than fought was my body clock. I read everywhere that the early bird is the one you want to get up at 5am.. you gotta you got to tackle the day early. But 3:30 in the morning is not necessarily what everybody is designed to do. And so rather than fight my body clock, because there's way more important battles for me to fight, I've embraced it. So an example of this would be I use energy as a major catalyst for when I tackle certain tasks. So I will, and how I craft my time. I will do all of my heavier lifting stuff, creative work, things that are going to take a lot of thought process in the afternoon into the evening, because I'm not a morning person, not at all. So I will do the lighter lifting, easier tasks, low energy quick wins early in the day, because that's when my brain is best suited for it. Not to mention, it gives me the freedom to get outside to get some of that sunshine to get my brain going.
But it also means that I've set up my calendar in a way that no one can book time with me after a certain time of day either. And I've come to grips with and I've taught others to come to grips with the fact that you don't need to operate on a nine to five mentality, especially in the remote work era that we're facing right now. You get to decide when you have some more freedom as to when you want to accomplish certain things. If you know things need to be done for the next morning, don't do them first thing in the morning, do them later in the day, just make sure they're done. Like as a night owl, I get all my stuff done that everyone else is getting done at 3:30 in the morning. I'm getting that done in like 10 at night. So understanding your body clock and then crafting your days around it by saying hey, you know what, I don't have appointments later in the day because that's my focus work time. Or I do take meetings in the morning because I can feed off the energy of the person on the other line on the other side of the call. And that gives me fuel right. So that's one way I think that that that is really helpful to me is just understanding how energy plays a role and then making sure that I'm getting out and doing the right things in nature. “
slowing the right things down
“I bought a Freewrite, which is a little word processor. This thing, all it does is connect to Dropbox or Google Drive or Evernote. That's it. So I can, and it's got an E ink screen, and I can write on it. And that's critically important. Why is an E ink screen critically important? Because if you try to write outside on your phone, or on any kind of tablet, you're gonna get glare in the sun. Even if there's not a lot of sun, you'll get glare. I can bring this with me to the beach, I can bring this with me anywhere I want. And yes, it's a $400 device. People like, Well, why would you buy that device, if you've got an iPad already? I'm like, because this device frees me to get outside, do some reading wherever I want, whenever I want. And it also doesn't have the distractibility index to get me dis focused, when I should be focused on writing. So you once you start to understand how important the things that you really want to do, and the roles that energy play and the portability, that you want to have to be able to do certain things, you make better choices around it. But like you said, you need to slow down, you need to make deliberate choices. Productivity isn't about speeding everything up. I think that when it comes to life hacks that people talk about life hacks should be that you speed the right things up, so you can slow the right things down. And that's what you need to be able to do. And when you do that, then you can make better choices, you make way better choices.”
a perpetual state of alertness
“It put me in a perpetual state of alertness, not awareness, but alertness. And I think there's a difference. I'm a big word nerd, as you can probably tell, and there's a distinction between being alert and being aware. Alert is you want to be alert when you're walking across the street. But awareness to me is a much bigger, it's like the difference between planning and preparing planning. I want to make these plans but prepares to get very specific about this. One or two things. So you plan for something, then you prepare for it. Awareness is like I want to be aware of things. Alert means I want to be alert, but I don't want to always be on alert. It's like I don't want to always be reactive.
I was on this heightened sense of alertness. And I don't want to always be being alert all the time, it is exhausting. Being aware is clarifying. But being alert all the time is exhausting. And then you wonder why you're not getting as much done. It's the same principle as to why people are constantly checking email, they're on alert. You don't want to constantly be checking email, because email is often other people's things. And you want to make sure that your intention is to do your thing. So how do you you create some harmony there. And often it's not a one and done proposition. It's a, I need to do it this way for now. And then you revisit it later.”
awareness of the time of year
“I think the seasons really are one of the ways and having an awareness of the time of year. So this is the time of year where I want to be doing a lot of work that requires me to be inside because it rains a lot. But I want to put myself in a position so that when mid June, July, August show up, and it's nice and sunny, I want to be able to be out there and hit the ground. I want to be able to enjoy nature. So the seasons give us clues. If we tap into that a bit more we can say okay, I know that come summertime, I want to be able to do this stuff. So that means I need to do this stuff. Now if we if we pay more attention and are more aware of that to see what makes best bedfellows for this season versus another season.
I think that's one another going for those walks. I will look up in the sky and go, Why blue? What makes the sky blue? If you're out in nature, in tune with it, you feel like you're part of it, as opposed to maybe a byproduct of it or that it's it's just something that you're slightly removed from. When I get outside and I'm walking around, or if I'm going for a run or whatever things happen, ideas come to light. You notice more and noticing matters. Because if you notice something again and again and again, both externally visually seeing it, but if it shows up here multiple times, if it's not, from here into a place that you trust, like a like a paper planner or an app or something like that, then then you're missing the boat. That's why I'm a big believer in capture everything regret nothing. Once it gets in, once you've captured it, you know that you can move forward. So I think nature, what that does is is when you embrace it, and you immerse yourself in it, it really does help you figure out what your intentions are, and what you should be paying attention to.”
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