Mike Vardy

Why I Ditched My Standing Desk

I’m sitting a lot more these days.1 I did run with an Ikea Jerker desk as a standing desk for a long time — pretty much until the end of last year. But ever since my wife picked me up a Levenger lap desk for Christmas (thanks also to Patrick Rhone for the nudge), I’ve […]

Another Packed Mac

Today the latest episode of the Mikes on Mics podcast was unleashed to the world, featuring the contents of Michael Schechter’s Applications folder this time around.

The Productivity Shift

Yesterday I spoke at IdeaWave 2012, with an abridged version of a talk I’ve been working on. The talk — for the purposes of yesterday’s event — was known simply as Mindfulness 2.0, but it was only part of a broader concept that I refer to as The Productivity Shift. It runs along similar lines

The Definition of Fitting

A friend of mine, Jodie Gastel, sent me some information on Facebook that made me both chuckle and think at the same time.

The Problem with Personal Planning

I’m all for planning. I’m really big on the whole “fail to plan, plan to fail” business. But there is one area of your life that people seem to plan that should be left as well enough alone as possible — or perhaps even eliminated: The Personal Category. Now I’m not suggesting that you don’t

IdeaWave Revisited: The Power of Paper

With Victoria’s IdeaWave conference set to hit the Ambrosia Conference & Event Centre this weekend (my talk is slated for Sunday afternoon), I thought it’d be a swell idea to revist my talk from last year called The Power of Paper. Below you’ll find my speaking notes from the talk, but before I get to

Stop Shipping Quantity…Start Crafting Quality

There’s such a thing as too much…of everything. Too much noise. Too much food. Too much thinking. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Except when we put it out there for everyone to see. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (and even the new kid on the block, Pinterest) thrive on the activity

The Adaptability of Asana vs. OmniFocus

In my short time with Asana, I’ve already found a few things that it handles better than OmniFocus – and I’m talking beyond the whole team collaboration thing here. It all has to do with adaptability.

Parallel / Series

People seem to avoid productivity systems because they don’t like systems. Because systems generally only work when you make sure that every part of it works. So if you’re “doing GTD”, then you need to do every part of it in order for it to be effective. And for GTD to be truly GTD, that