Mike Vardy: Up Close & Personal With the Productivity Enthusiast From Vardy.Me

I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting Mike Vardy at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2012 in New York, where .ME was a proud Silver Sponsor. Mike is a productivityist, which is a term he coined in order to best explain his enthusiasm for productivity.

Besides being a writer, a podcaster and a speaker, Mike is also a full time dad and one of the best time managers I have come accross. Besides an undeniably successful online presence (including Editor positions at The Next Web and Lifehack), he also has an incredibly disarming personality, and is the kind of person you just want to get to know. We were lucky enough to be given a spot in his busy schedule, and talk to him about writing, personal branding and much more:

You are a writer, a podcaster and a speaker – which is quite a lot of roles to juggle; coincidentally or not, you are also a “productivityist” and frequently write about productivity. How did the transition between leading a productive life and actually writing about the topic happen?

I’d say it almost happened by accident. I have always been a writer in some form or another and was trying to balance my creative life with my day job. I had a lot of balls in the air, so I decided to look for ways to help me manage everything. That’s when I discovered sites like 43 Folders, Lifehacker, Lifehack (a site for which I am currently the Managing Editor), and the work of David Allen (among others) and started to dive in.

But what happened is that I got really good at knowing about productivity but was not all that much more productive. I fell into the trap of learning about productivity while not actually applying it all that much. Then something clicked. I decided to satirize the niche with a website that eventually (no pun intended) became Eventualism, a productivity parody site. From there I was asked to contribute to David Allen’s GTD Times website, and then got a writing gig with WorkAwesome. I soon became that site’s editor, and then I moved on to The Next Web and finally to Lifehack, where I am now. It was never my intent to become the very thing I parodied, but it happened because I was able to make productivity more accessible through the use of humour. While I’d hesitate to call myself an expert in the field, I coined the phrase “productivityist” because I am, more than anything else, a productivity enthusaist.

MikeVardy.com is your official website, while Vardy.me is your weblog and truly epitomizes the personal use of the .me domain name. Why did you decide to have both? How are they working out for you?

 I always liked the idea of having a hub for my online work — where people could go to get a sense of what I do as a whole. MikeVardy.com provides that for me. But when it came to my weblog, I wanted it not only to have a more personal feel, but I wanted it to clearly demonstrate in the name that the thoughts, ideas, and writings were solely my own. What I like about having the .me domain name is that it gives me both of those options in one fell swoop. If I decide to go a bit off message of what I’m known for on the Internet, having the blog separate from the website gives me that degree of separation as well. Using .me as the domain name for my personal weblog makes it seem that much more personal — which is exactly what I want.

 (I can also give my kids email addresses with “vardy.me” at the end of it, which is kind of cool.)

We’ve had a chance to get to know you as an editor at The Next Web, and in the same role over at Lifehack. What are some perks to being an editor compared to being a writer?

Being an editor gives me the ability to shape and frame the overall website far easier. Sure, it comes with extra responsibility to boot, but I love that aspect of it as well. Attaching myself to a website with the prestige of The Next Web or Lifehack also adds to my own credibility in a way that just contributing to the site as a writer doesn’t. But one of the things that it does take me away of more often is the actual writing — which is actually the thing I like the least about being an editor.

That said, now that I’ve been an editor I realize the value of having one for my own work. A good editor makes good writing better. And if I can do that for one of the writers on my team, than that’s a really good feeling.

Family time is extremely important to you – has being a dad helped you manage your time well, or has it been the opposite?

 Absolutely — it’s made me better with my time. I have learned to say “no” to a lot more things because they’ll take me away from time with my family. Working from home has been a huge boon for us as well. I see my kids every day and now that school has started I’ve restructured my days to ensure that my day starts after my daughter heads off to school and ends when it’s time for her to come home — even on the days where my wife is at home with the kids. Now I work Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, I don’t work Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday, and Saturday is family day. I do all of the heavy lifting on my work days so that I maximize my results, and I avoid writing during the day on my non-work days. The book has taken up a bulk of my evenings, but now that I’m wrapping it up I can expect that I’ll have even more time with my kids.

 If you have a family and you DON’T manage your time well, then things will suffer. Not just your work, but your overall life. I’ve found that by focusing on tasks rather than time, I’m able to get all the important stuff done for work so that I can spend the rest of my time on the most important thing of all — my family.

You are working on a book tentatively titled The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want…Anytime You Want. What can we expect from this new publication?

The book is slated to come out in the next couple of months, and it’s essentially a roadmap to help you start things off whenever you want and be able to see them through to completion. I think we all get too hung up on making January 1 the start of the year, and I believe that that kind of mindset can set us up for failure rather than success. The Front Nine shows how you can follow a nine week plan to getting a new habit, goal, or project off the ground with as little friction as possible — and then finish it. It will help you navigate through the various challenges (or hazards) that will come your way, help you break down things into manageable steps that allow for more tiny successes along the way, and will also show you that there’s no such thing as a headstart — it’s more about how headstrong you are to see it through to the end that matters.

 I see a lot of “starts” these days and not nearly enough “finishes”. My hope is that my book will help create a lot more finishes.

I believe we were all guilty of occasionally giving up on projects we have started, and sometimes it takes reading this kind of interview — or Mike’s blog over at Vardy.me to realize the error of our ways and get back on track.

Enjoy reading more of Mike’s stuff on the web, and in the meantime, we invite you to share YOUR tips & tricks for staying productive!