Give time themes, with Mike Vardy

which he will tell us about all about sustainable practices. So, Mike, welcome to the shower.

I have skill share classes. So I've been out there for a while just teaching people how to stop doing productive and start being productive. And unlike you, well two things. Unlike number one, I'm Canadian. Number one. Number one, well, I guess three because I'm a guy. Number two. Yes, there's number two. I'm Canadian. Also, that's number three. I am not a morning person.

what it boils down to is crafting your time. You know, we will never stop crafting our time until we no longer have a relationship with it, which means we are no longer with time. Right. And it came to me through the title time crafting. The name of the practice came to me through a conversation I had with my son a number of years ago. We were walking to

his elementary school. He's now in high school. And you know, one of the things you're taught as a parent is don't ask your kids like how school going or what are you doing today? Because they're like fine, like they shut down. They don't really talk a lot about it. But he had been playing Minecraft and I didn't know a lot about Minecraft, so I said, well, can you

explain Minecraft to me? And he goes, well, Dad, you take these basic elements, you know, you know, earth stone, all these basic elements, and then you put them together and you craft something at a crafting table and you get something useful out of it. You can make a weapon,

you can make a house. And of course, as somebody who has spent a lot of time writing creating over the years, I do have a background in comedy, so I always look through things and try to find the funny and everything that's kind of transferred to my life that I live now. And I mean, I'm not going to say that as he was telling me about it.

You know when you watch a movie and the person's vocals kind of drifted to the distance and you're in your own head at that point, you know, and they kind of like this mother, and you're like, what's going on in my head? That's kind of what happened where I'm like, oh my gosh, that's what I've because that's what I'm teaching. I'm teaching people how to take things like their calendar and their to do list and these different things and put them together to craft their time.

And really what time rafting is made up of is three core elements, and they all involve the three kind of basic areas that I think help us craft our time, which are time theming, which is directly related to the calendar, theming your days, your weeks, your months, even your year or seasons. Then there is attention paths, which are kind of there, I would say, an evolution of getting things done's contexts, right, There's a bit more categories to them.

There's types of attention pass and so for the people who are driven by their to do list, that's kind of the place that I start with them when I'm coaching them or working with them. And then the third element is a reflective practice, so journaling, which is something that we tend to bypass a lot when we're making our way through time, and realistically it's probably one of the most undervalued and underappreciated elements because it allows us.

I mean, you've talked about this, tracking your time is a form of reflective practice, right, like that kind of thing. But again, nuance has to be applied to all of this. So when I talk about time theming, it's not quite the s same as time blocking. Right, there's a bit more flexibility built in. When I talk about attention paths, it's not quite the same as contexts because there are some elements to it, like energy plays a role in it. And then reflective practice doesn't have to be you know,

tracking your time. It could be you know, chronological journaling through a daily log. It could be you know, just basic interstitial journaling. It could be the one line a day journal that James Clear does. So those three elements essentially, if you do any or all of those with great regularity in a consistent and sustainable way, then you are time crafting. And that's what I teach and and I go into it in the second part of the book, right, I want I want to get people's mindsets in order

before we go down this path. Because when I say time management is a fallacy and a myth, it immediately people, what are you talking about? We've managing time for years, have we though?

like those kind of things. And so what time crafting does is it kind of allows you to use time and your relationship with time kind of as a framing device, right, and space as well to make your way through your days, your weeks or months, your years, and ultimately your life.

It's it's not being productive, right, So to me, I think that what I try to do in a productivity diet is and I've been trying to do this over the years that I since I left life hack, because life hacks really have been both a blessing and a curse. Right.

The idea of hey, we can shortcut some of this stuff, but then we end up life hacking and life hacking and life hacking, and all of a sudden, we've hacked our life to death with no hacking essentially is derived from a Latin term which I'm not going to necessarily be able to translate right now, but the idea of hacking is to cut without care, right, So this is more of a deliberate, intentional kind of pruning and curating. And so to me, productivity isn't about being efficient and

effective like I said, those are byproducts. Productivity is about the active link between your intentions big or small, and your attention and that partnership. So those two like if you can think about productivity and in a different way. And that's why the productivity diet I'm not talking about a diet is in like a crash diet like quick,

it's a lifestyle. And that's what this book kind of purports to help you with is to craft a lifestyle that allows you to craft your time in a way that allows you to live a fulfilling life where you know, you keep in mind things like cadence, rhythm. You mentioned

listening to yourself listening, you know, living with nuance. I talk about in the book the idea of absolutes, and I mean, for somebody who's a night owl, we can't help, but here all the time, Oh you got to get up early, you got to do this, you got to do that. So many health issues with people who you know, stay up late, but we don't look at the underlying or the underpinning elements of that. There's nuance to all

of this stuff. And that's what I try to get into in the book is the idea of like, let's keep nuance in mind as we make our way through time.

So when I'm working with clients or I discuss this with people who have kids, I'm like, well, do your kids go to school on Saturday or Sunday? No? No, okay, So therefore you you know that your kids don't go to school on those days. So you may not want to be doing things like, I don't know, recording podcasts on Saturdays or Sundays. If you're running your own business or things that require you to tell your kids to keep down, keep it down, so on and so forth,

you can orchestrate your time around that. And that's really what we're talking about here. So yes, there's daily themes. There's also what I call horizontal themes, which are increments of time throughout the day. So as a night owl, I do all of my writing tasks in the afternoon, So I have a writing theme that goes from two to four pm Monday through Friday. So at two o'clock, no matter what my day is looking like, it's like, all right, two o'clock, it's time for me to work

on my writing. Means nobody can schedule meetings during that time all of that stuff. The distinction between time theming and say time blocking, especially in those smaller increments, is that it is a consistent time it is. It's not like you're patchworking it, which can happen with time blocking plus time theming, because it's an overarching focus you're looking for, kind of like the just right, You're not trying to

be too narrow with your focus. So if I was to say my two to four time is to focus on book writing, but I'm not writing a book, then it's useless, right, Or yeah.

as we're recording, it's my connection day. So this is the day where I will do outreach. It's where I will actually send a bunch of these books out in the mail to people to say, hey, here, check out this book. It's where I will do that sort of thing, both personally and professionally, because it's covering my entire day. You and I are having this conversation right now, This would be an abstraction, So I stop focusing on that.

And once we're done having our conversation, my brain doesn't go, well now what My brain goes, Okay, hold on what day is it? Oh, it's Tuesday? Okay, which is Tuesday? Meaning oh, Tuesday's connection? What are my connection tasks? And then I can go from there. So, yeah, it is. It is essentially giving you an overarching focus. You don't them all seven days of the week, not especially not

out of the gate. Start with the one that you know that you can have the most success with, and then if you want to add more, you know you're gonna have two daily themes, maybe a horizontal theme that's kind of what time theming is. And again there's monthly themes and so on and so forth.

what if you had a horizontal theme. Well, first off, we work backwards from their certainty. So I said, when do people stop bugging you? Like? That was the first which no one had as asked her. She's like, oh, well, you know the afternoons people are kind of in there. I'm like, okay, I go, so people that means they're primarily bugging you before lunch, right, yeah? Yeah? Like well what if your what if your morning time from let's say eight to noon is serving, that's your your theme.

So it means anything you're doing is serving others, whether it's the CEO, whether it's that's what you're focusing on. And then lunch access kind of like that boundary. And then after lunch, your overarching focus is the self serving stuff. And I go, by the way, if you're doing the self serving stuff, right, you're serving others anyway, especially in your role. And what she had to do then was look at her to do list and just put s next to the tasks that we're serving others, and then

SS next to the tasks that were serving herself. And then all she would do is look at our list and instead of looking at the details of the to do list, which is where we can get caught up. She was looking in that last at the end of the task, saying, oh, these are all my ass tasks. Let me batch those. Okay, that's what I'm gonna do in the morning. So that's that's a very nuanced approach

for an individual. But I have a day called the household day, you know, and that means that that's when I do household tasks, which we all do anyway, Like, you know, I think I read a meme recently that was the week The weekend is either a day where we do all the things we love to do or

all the thing errand's we have to run. And we hate both options, like we want both options, right, But but i've you know, if you are somebody like let's say a light bulb burnt out in my study here, I could stop and do that, but it's not affecting the light in my house. So if I wanted to, I could just write it down on my list the day I would probably the default day would be Saturday, let's say, and.

Brogan has used in the past. And what the annual acxiom does is I'm the only thing I'm resolute about is following my annual axiom. So if I want to I'm turning fifty one this year, I can't eat what I used to be able to eat very very you know, I have to start to take care of myself. So I'm going to. Okay, redesign, Rebuild, Reclaim does getting myself in shape and building a habit around exercise makes sense? Absolutely? Okay?

So what does that look like. I've been in this business now for fifteen years, and sometimes there's some reinvention that goes on sometimes. You know, when you've been writing a book and you've kind of been well, you know this, you've written books, and you kind of go away for a little while, and then you come back out. You know, I've got this book, right, You're kind of peppering things out there, but you're you're in the weeds with the book. All right, Well, what things can I do that are

project related that will live up to redesigning? You know, maybe where I'm at rebuilding, you know, maybe I've been gone for a while. I want to build my reputation back up, or my presence back up, let's say, and then reclaim you know, hey, you know being on this show, like you're saying, Mike, would you like to be on this podcast? Number one? You know, you and I have known each other for a long time, and I've got a book to market, so there's no question it makes sense.

But also it does serve that axiom, right, it does. So what I often recommend if people are tired of New Year's resolutions, and I'm also a big believer and not, you don't have to start the year on January first, either start my ear typically in September because my kids start school in September. But do like Slogan's work mantras like anything like that, and it really is helpful. You

can pair this up with reflective practice too. I don't get this into the into this in the book, but if you like meditation and you've got a mantra and your annual action can be that mantra that you chan't when you're doing like TM or something like that, it can actually allow you to kind of choose the kind of work that you want to do, the projects you want to take on, the initiatives that you want to

bring to life. The annual action can kind of steer you in the right direction as opposed to you just going okay, well what do I do? How do I? I mean, that's because our brains will do we as we make our way through time. We can either do the primitive stuff, you know, like just survive or we can thrive. Right, So by giving our the newer part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, some kind of help along the way, a bit of a compass, and that's

what you know, timecrafting can do. And it also can short circuit any argument that the older part of your brain the ivingo that can kind of go, hey, well I don't really feel like doing this. Yeah, but you know what, it's Tuesday. Tuesday's your connection day, all right, fine? Or I'm tired. What can I do when I'm tired? Oh I can do all these things? Yeah, but you know it's the afternoon and or sorry, it's the evening and work's done. Okay, Well, let's look at our personal

projects that are low energy and do those. All right, fine, I'll come back later to scrap with you again. So I could figure out, like that's the war that's constantly going on in our head, and having an annual action in any of these themes kind of give us a place to go absolutely. All right.

talking a lot about different time theming. I wanted to switch gears a little bit here and talk about your night owl status because you know, this is a podcast called Before Breakfast and a lot of Elk have found that, you know, using their mornings is a key part of getting the things done that that they would have trouble finding time in the rest of the life to do, and when somebody is a night owl, you obviously have

to work things a little bit differently. A lot of the world is set up for people who are more likely to get up earlier in the morning, So I'm curious how that affects your schedule and a advice you'd have for other night owls.

little bit. But everyone's like three am, five am, all that stuff.

So I have to set myself up the night before. So the way I kind of flip my time around as a night owl is I kind of look at the afternoon as really the beginning of my day, and then I go to sleep, and you know, if I'm taking like seven hours sleep, it's almost like I take a really long nap, and then when I get up the next morning, it's like the second half of my day.

Have you ever seen have you seen that video that that's kind of gone viral on TikTok with Ed Milett going, I take my day and it's twenty four hours, but I did divide my day into four, and so now I have four days instead of one because it's six hours. But I'm like, okay, you're really just I mean, I get it. Time is subjective, but we try to make it objective, mainly for things we're doing right now. So

we can agree to meet. But for me, I have to do things like journal the journal the night before so that when I wake up in the morning, my brain goes, well what do I do? And I've left kind of a letter to myself to go, this is what you should do. I know you're going to be susceptible to shiny. No, this is what and I will start off my day with low energy tasks. If you're an early riser, you'll start off with high energy tasks.

So for me, that's why attention pass have been so helpful, especially the energy based ones, because I can look at my list and go, oh, it's Tuesday, It's connection day. That's great, but kind of tired. Okay, well, do I have any low energy connection tasks? And I can start with and that's where I go. So I'm able to make progress while honoring my body clock at the same time. And that's kind of how I've always navigated it. Now, to be fair, I'm also not staying up as late

as I used to. I'm getting older, you don't, I mean, that's what happens. But after talking with folks like doctor Michael Bruce and others that are you know, well, steeped in circadian rhythms, and the science around it is that night owls will never not true like in his case wolves. All that happens is your bedtime shifts earlier, but you still can't get up and go. You're not wired that way. So even if I'm going to bed at say midnight instead of two or whatever, it doesn't mean that at

seven am like, oh right, it's time to go. No, my brain is still foggy. So you have to listen to your energy levels when you are a night owl, probably more than anything else. And also, I think anybody, whether you're an early riser or a night owl, having the evening routine is incredibly helpful because number one, for a night owl, it sets you up so that you can start the day with a bit of focus, a bit more clarity. But for early risers it allows you to hit the ground running. Yeah.

that's the name of the book. But I thought, well, if I go for a walk in the morning, just a twenty five minute walk, a Pomodoro like, I'll use all of the tricks that we've learned over the years to kind of go okay, Well, if I take a twenty five minute walk, especially now that we're in as we're recording this in the summer months in Victoria, the rain is kind of slipped away, it really does affect the shape of the day. And so what I think that,

And again, we have the technology. It's not like we're sitting here going, oh, well, I can't you know, I can't do anything. I bring my phone with me and I will dictate things into my phone and look like a crazy person probably while doing it. But again, the one the beauty about getting older is that you don't care as much make you look crazy if you're wandering around doing any of that stuff, and it actually gets so my ideas start flowing. I'm like, Okay, well when

you get back, I have to do this. So honestly, that morning walk has taken Any day I don't do it, Let's put this way. Any day I don't do it, it takes me that much longer to get the day to where I want it to be. Whereas that morning walk, which you know, cup of coffee. I'll even walk around in my pajama pants. I don't even care in my neighborhood. As long as I'm out there doing it, it does turn that just transform that day for sure.

The Lantern, and it's just some insights. I mean again, like I said, over the years, I've gone from being this enthusiast all the way to being a bit more philosophical about things and still offering practical, practical guides and takeaways. So that's where you can find me.

at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.