Productiveness — a new book by Mike Vardy
You can do everything right and still feel behind.
That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a word problem — and we left the better word behind in 1727.
“A refreshing take on work and productivity…”
Kirkus Reviews
“Productiveness is an uplifting self-help treatise that suggests a reconsideration of one’s priorities and a return to thoughtful, holistic living.”
Foreword Clarion Reviews
The Book
Productiveness
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The Idea
Productivity is a machine word
It arrived with the factories. It measures output — how much, how fast, how many — and it carries a blind spot it can never fix: it will not ask whether the thing you’re producing is worth producing at all.
Which is how you can clear the list, answer everything, end the day empty, and still feel like you missed the one thing that mattered.
There’s an older word. Productiveness was here before productivity took the job, and it asks something different — not what you produced, but who you were in the producing of it.
This book is an argument for taking that word back. And nine principles for living inside it.
Be — before you do.
The Film
The argument, in full
The Nine
The principles of productiveness
The book moves like an album: nine principles in a deliberate order. The sequence is part of the argument.
- 1 Humanness Productiveness begins with being, not doing.
- 2 Grace Not the calm — how you carry the churn.
- 3 Prudence Three realms, one compass. You return to reason; you don’t move in.
- 4 Nuance The middle is vast. Refuse the premise of the no-win binary.
- 5 Tolerance How far off you can be and still call it a success.
- 6 Efficacy Change the conditions, not just the behaviour.
- 7 Cadence Consistency shows up. Cadence knows how to resolve.
- 8 Trust The space to return — to your systems, and to yourself.
- 9 Will You arrive at will. Willing, not forcing.
The Reception
Praise for Productiveness
The Margins
One principle a week
Every Monday, one principle from the book in a five-minute essay. If you’ve already read Productiveness, think of these as the margin notes. If you haven’t, they’re a good place to start.
★★★★★
“Words matter, and I never realized before how the words I was using to describe my work were setting me up to fail.”
John MeeseAmazon review
“Thought provoking. Vardy helps move us from productivity to productiveness through thinking why [we] are doing rather than what!”
Joyce K.Goodreads review
Reviews are how a book finds its next reader. If you’re up for writing one, Amazon is where it counts most, and Goodreads works too — no matter where you bought your copy.
Beyond the Book
Already read it?
There’s a page for that — the Productiveness ROI walkthrough, a recommended read, and what’s still being added. One page, nothing else to buy.