Who are you, what do you do, etc.?
I'm Mike Vardy and I am a writer, speaker, podcaster, and productivityist. I'm also a stay-at-home father with two awesome kids and I am married to a woman who is amazing on so many levels — not the least of which is because she puts up with me and my online pursuits.
My primary work machine is an 11" MacBook Air. It's a little over a year old, and it's been able to handle anything I've thrown at it since I picked it up. I use an original Drobo as my Time Machine backup drive loaded with four 1 TB drives — although it is getting a little long in the tooth. I've also got a RocStor 1 TB drive that holds a lot of the media that I simply can't store on the Air. I also own an original iPad (32 GB version) and an iPhone 4S (also the 32 GB version).
As for OS X software, I use OmniFocus as my primary task manager, with Asana and Flow filling out my team-based task management (depending on the client I'm working with). I'm using Evernote more than ever before, mainly for research and sharing notes with my family. I also use Evernote so that Michael Schechter and I can keep our Mikes on Mics notes synced up between the two of us. For writing, I use Byword for blog posts and Scrivener for books. Postbox is my email client of choice, Fantastical is my portal to my calendar, and Cobook is my contact management software solution. Other OS X apps that get a great deal of usage are Alfred, Acorn, Dropbox, Hazel, TextExpander, Skype, and Day One.
On iOS, there's a lot of crossover. I use OmniFocus, Evernote, Cobook, and Fantastical to primarily deal with workflow, with apps like My Minutes (iPhone) and Drafts also getting heavy use. Other apps I use extensively on my iOS devices include Tweetbot, Netbot, AwayFind, Launch Center Pro, and the Neat mobile app.
I decided to change the name of the site to something that I felt would offer a better opportunity to reach more readers and yet still retain a great deal of Vardy.me’s personality. Considering that the focus of the weblog had been largely around productivity — in all of its various forms — I decided to shift the name of the site to fit that focus a bit more. It's worked out really well, and has allowed me to clearly define what I do a lot more and (hopefully) help more people out along the way with my work.
I also know you speak publicly from time to time. What do you usually talk about, and how is it talking about these sort of geeky things to larger crowds?
My talks usually focus on task management, and all of the facets that can impact that management in a positive or negative manner (like email, calendar use, and so on). The goal of my speaking efforts is similar to my site: to illustrate ways that will help people stop "doing" productive and start "being" productive.
Most people are quite receptive to what I have to say because I try to relate it to something that people can identify with — and even care deeply about. Because I have a background in performance (I have over 10 years of experience in improv and founded a successful sketch comedy troupe that performed at many comedy festivals), I'm very at ease with speaking in front of an audience and can "go with the flow" when I do. I think that puts my audience at ease as well. The biggest challenge for me has been to focus on less talks and get better at them rather than spread my repertoire out too far and sacrifice quality in the process. I've gotten better at that over the past few years, but it's still something I'm working on.
Okay, now a bit about working from home. How do you balance your work and home life? And how do you not go mad being cooped up in your house all day long? How do you motivate yourself to get out of the house and go do something? I'd love to work from home one day myself, but I always fear I'd go insane.
It's an ongoing battle, but it's one that I am winning now more often than not. I've implemented a strategy that employes both expectations for myself and boundaries for others, but not in a way that limits flexibility. I have what I call "heavy lifting days" and "light lifting days" and I have my tasks and projects aligned with them in a way that allows me to be both productive and balanced.
Days where I'm home with my two-year old son are considered "light lifting days" so I don't work on any major tasks or projects during that time — basically things that can be done where I can afford disruption. On the days where my wife is home with him or he is at daycare, I do the heavy lifting. That's when a great deal of my writing gets done, interviews are scheduled and conducted, and I work on tasks and projects that are best served by little to no disruption.
I also use contexts (and/or tags) that allow me to clearly separate my home office from the home itself. I don't use "Home" as a context because, well...I'm at home a lot. Instead, I'll use app-specific contexts to help me carve out those boundaries. For example, Evernote is used for my beer cellar tracking and for book research, so Evernote is a context. But when I look at that context I think about what I should be doing within that app rather than all I should be doing within it. I won't do beer cellar work on a heavy lifting day because it's not a "work" thing, it's a "play" thing.
I try to bring as much thought into the process as possible so that I'm better connected with my tasks and projects. One of the biggest allies you can have when you're trying to be more productive is awareness. Awareness can only be achieved if you are thinking about that stuff. I'm all about awareness when it comes to productivity, and also when it comes to balancing your "home life" and your "home work" — it's essential.
You recently published your book "The Front Nine". Can you speak a little bit about the book?*
The Front Nine is a book that you can use to help you start the year you want anytime you want. I'm not a fan of New Year's Resolutions, and I also think that starting your year on January 1st because you've got a brand-spanking-new calendar isn't smart. I mean, you've just come off several weeks of holiday craziness and then you're supposed to muster up the energy to take on some new challenge with very little left in the tank. It's not something I think is feasible. I tend to start my year in February (Groundhog Day, to be exact), and I leave January to be a month of renewal and reflection.
That said, your year may start at a different time (students may start in September, for example). But The Front Nine isn't just a guide for how to start the year you want whenever you want. You can apply the principles inside the book to an idea, project, or even a task if you want. The book is divided into three sections that focus on the beginning, the middle, and the end (and it uses golf as a metaphor through much of it). It's not a "pure" how-to book in the sense that the ideas are there for you to apply as they fit within your life. But you're bound to find some good stuff in there that you can use no matter what kind of life you lead — or want to lead.
How did you land that publishing deal and how has the experience been so far? Have you been happy with how things have gone? Would you consider self-publishing in the future?
I kind of fell into the deal. I had the idea to self-publish and my agent emailed me and said that he thought he could get a publisher to go for it. In fact, he had the ideal one in mind. That's when Diversion Books came in, and I've been very happy with how things have gone. They've even started to run it as a print-on-demand book, which wasn't part of the original plan.
I've self-published some of my work already (the book that highlights some popular writings from the blog — PRE-PRODUCTIVITYIST — would be an example), so I'm not averse to the idea. But since Diversion has had a team working on promoting the book — something that I could do but don't have much time to do — I'm also a fan of what book publishers can do for authors. I'm the writer, and I do that well. I like the idea of giving tasks to people who can do them better than I can, and a book publisher can cover a lot of that stuff for a writer.
Any plans for the future that you can divulge here?
I'm going to be making some changes over at my site over the next couple of months, and there are a few other irons in the fire. Nothing I can really get into yet, but stuff I'm really excited about because it's finally coming off of the back-burner and becoming a reality.
If you could only install one third party app on your iPhone, what would it be? Mac?*
That's a tough one. Just looking at my home page I see a slew of third party apps. The obvious one would be OmniFocus, but since I can send tasks to OmniFocus via Mail Drop now I can remove that from the equation. I'm going to have to say Evernote because of its versatility. I can use it for simple note-taking, capturing ideas (whether in audio, visual, or written form), and a lot more. If there's one third party app that makes it on to my iPhone, Evernote wins out.
As for the Mac, I'm going to have to say OmniFocus. It's my "life hub" and there are other apps out there (Evernote included) that allow web access. Not so much with OmniFocus… and I'm fine with that. I've tried more than my fair share of task management apps and I keep coming back to it, so it would be the one that has to be on my Mac no matter what.
