

A Productive Conversation
Mike Vardy
Hosted by productivity strategist Mike Vardy, A Productive Conversation offers insightful discussions on how to craft a life that aligns with your intentions. Each episode dives into the art of time devotion, productiveness, and refining your approach to daily living. Mike invites guests who are thinkers, doers, and creators to share their strategies for working smarter and living more intentionally. From practical tips to deep dives on mindset shifts, this podcast will help you reframe your relationship with time and find balance in a busy world.
Subscribe and join the conversation—because a productive life is more than just getting things done.
Subscribe and join the conversation—because a productive life is more than just getting things done.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 29, 2015 • 33min
Project Management for You with Cesar Abeid
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.This week’s episode features a discussion with fellow Canadian and project management professional Cesar Abeid. Cesar is the author of the new book Project Management and You, and we talk about why he wrote the book, the struggles he discovered that people have with project management during his research for the book, and how to apply project management beyond the workplace and into your home life.
Relevant Links
Project Management for You Amazon Launch Promotion | Cesar Abeid
Is a Projects List Necessary? | David Allen
Cesar Abeid on what projects really are, and how to manage them | Beyond the To Do List
Project Management for the Masses
My Jets Game Is Your Netflix | Gary Vaynerchuk
Cesar Abeid (@cesarabeid) | Twitter
Cesar Abeid, PMP (@PM4TM) | Twitter
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Oct 22, 2015 • 38min
15 Time Secrets with Kevin Kruse
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.Joining me this week on the podcast is the author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management. We talk about why Kevin wrote this book, how to wrap up your work day responsibly, the idea of awareness and how it relates to productivity, the importance of routines, and more.
Relevant Links
Get Kevin's "15 Time Secrets" book for FREE (only pay for shipping)
Peter Tunney | Artist, Philanthropist, Entrepreneur
High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove | Amazon
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan | Amazon
The Website of Kevin Kruse
The Awareness Building Class by Mike Vardy & Shawn Blanc
Thanks for listening...and your support!
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Oct 15, 2015 • 56min
The Power of Focus with Shawn Blanc
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.This week on the show I welcome my friend Shawn Blanc, creator of The Focus Course. We have a deep discussion about intentionality, being attentive, the creative process, productivity, and – fittingly – focus.
Relevant Links
The Awareness Building Class
The Focus Course
Tools and Toys
Delight is in the Details
2 Experts Share Exactly How to Use a Productivity Journal (& Increase Productivity by 23%) | The Fizzle Show 99
Shawn Blanc (@shawnblanc) | Twitter
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Oct 8, 2015 • 36min
Less Doing with Ari Meisel
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.This week on the show I'm joined by Ari Meisel of Leverage. We talk about what task management app Ari uses (the answer will surprise you), the art of optimization, automation, and outsourcing, and more tips and tricks you can use to help you make more great things happen by doing less.
Relevant Links
Leverage | Ari Meisel
Evernote
FollowUp.cc
Slack
IFTTT
Zapier
Blue Blocking Sunglasses | Amazon
A Complimentary Less Doing Coaching Call
Cylon Compendium
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Oct 1, 2015 • 36min
The Habits of a Happy Brain with Loretta Breuning
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.In this episode of The Productivityist Podcast, I speak with Dr. Loretta Breuning from the Inner Mammal Institute. We talk about how you can retrain your brain, including some tactics and tips so that you can start building a happier and healthier brain.
We dive into how to build new neural circuits, discuss the four chemicals that affect our behaviour, and how to tap into the animal inside of you so that you can embrace your “inner mammal” and craft more positive experiences.
Relevant Links:
Blinkist
Habits Of A Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, & Endorphin Levels by Loretta Graziano Breuning PhD | Amazon
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor | Amazon
The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin | Amazon
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg | Amazon
David Attenborough | Wikipedia
Inner Mammal Institute: making peace with the animal inside
Inner Mammal Inst (@innermammal) | Twitter
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Sep 24, 2015 • 33min
Building Better Teams with Jared Brown
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.This episode features a discussion with Jared Brown of Hubstaff. Jared and I talk about what you need to do in order to make bringing people on to work with you a more beneficial experience for everyone involved. As someone who is growing a team (slowly, but surely) I wanted to get some solid advice from an expert, and Jared certainly fits the bill.
Besides offering his own insights, he also discusses some ideas that come from other sources that you can use to build a better team.
Relevant Links
The Productivityist Podcast 53 | Making Teamwork Work with Sebastian Klein of Blinkist
Jing by TechSmith
Asian Efficiency
Zoom.us
ChrisDucker.com
Best Advice I Ever Got: Run Like It’s a Sprint But Pace Yourself for a Marathon | Inc.com
The Right Way to Fire Someone | Entrepreneur
Eventual Millionaire | Jaime Masters
The Hubstaff Blog
Remote.co
Journey to $500k a Month | Groove Blog
How to organize the daily chaos of running a startup | Baremetrics
Due | iOS
Hubstaff
Jared Brown (@jaredbrown) | Twitter
Note: This episode was published out of order, so some references mentioned during the podcast aren’t as recent as I’d usually want. I apologize for any confusion this may cause.
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Sep 17, 2015 • 47min
Crafting Coaches with Tony Stubblebine
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.On this episode of the podcast, I talk with Tony Stubblebine of Coach.me. We talk about the power of coaching, what it takes to be a coach, and several areas that people could really use coaching in so that they can take their work (and their lives) to the next level.
Relevant Links
Coach.me | Instant Coaching for Any Goal
Workflowing #129: Get A Lift with Tony Stubblebine
Balance Schmalance | Productivityist
The Priority |Productivityist
Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High | Amazon
Coach.me for Business
Tony Stubblebine (@tonystubblebine) | Twitter
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Sep 10, 2015 • 25min
Getting Into Smartsheet with Brent Frei
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.Smartsheet has been a player in the task management and project management space for a long time, and on this episode of the podcast Mike speaks with Brent Frei, the founder and VP of Marketing at Smartsheet. They talk about the present (and future) state of productivity, the subject of email, and why a smarter spreadsheet may very well be the best tool you can use to help you get things done.
Related Links
Brent Frei | Smartsheet
Corwin Hiebert | Managing Creative People + Creative Projects
Smartsheet Wins First Place for “Best Microsoft Office 365 App”
Smartsheet.com
Brent Frei (@B_Frei) | Twitter
Brent Frei | LinkedIn
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Sep 3, 2015 • 40min
The Productive Woman with Laura McClellan
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.This episode features a lengthy discussion with the host of The Productive Woman – and a productive woman in her own right – Laura McClellan. We chat about the possible differences that women and men approach productivity as well, productivity tactics to explore, and how she manages to deal with everything in her life. (And there's a lot for her to manage!)
Related Links
The Productive Woman | A Podcast About Productivity for Busy Women
Laura Vanderkam (@lvanderkam) | Twitter
Gina Trapani | The Official Web Site
Business & Babies: A Chat with Izabela Russell | TPW051 - The Productive Woman
Choices for Productive Women, with Allison Sheridan | TPW029 - The Productive Woman
Nozbe
How To Use Multiple Task Managers | Productivityist
Book Review: Essentialism | Productivityist
I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short | Amazon
Making Space to Think | TPW055 - The Productive Woman
My Custom Home Office Tour and Setup | Pat Flynn on SPI TV Ep. 2
2 Experts Share Exactly How to Use a Productivity Journal (& Increase Productivity by 23%) | Fizzle Show 099
Laura McClellan (@LauraMcMom) | Twitter
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.

Aug 27, 2015 • 28min
Voice Lessons with Todd Henry
This episode is sponsored by Bento Focus — the ADHD-friendly focus timer that helps you do less, better. Limit your day to three meaningful tasks, build calm routines, and stay focused with beautiful Japanese-inspired themes. Try it today at dub.sh/mike-bento-podcast.In this week's episode of the podcast, I chat with Todd Henry, author of the new book Louder Than Words: Harness The Power of Your Authentic Voice. We discuss the importance of delivering your work and how your voice plays a huge role in that and also talk about our favourite football team, the Cincinnati Bengals.
Links Discussed
Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice by Todd Henry | Amazon
Inside The Jungle Podcast | Patreon
Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day by Todd Henry | Amazon
Workflowing #86: Will You Die Empty with Todd Henry
The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice by Todd Henry | Amazon
DJ ZTrip's Twitter Exchange About Die Empty
Study Hacks - Decoding Patterns of Success | Cal Newport
How to Deliver a "Do Over" with Jon Acuff | The Productivityist Podcast
In 1967, Jimi Hendrix Opened for The Monkees | Mental Floss
Todd Henry.com
Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. Also don't forget to check out all of our podcast sponsors found on our podcast sponsors page.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and/or review wherever you listened to the episode. And if you want to have easy access to the archives of the show and ensure you don't miss the new episodes to come then subscribe to the podcast in the app you're using.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Build a sustainable system for attention, rhythm, and trust with TimeCrafting & ADHD — a new course inside TimeCrafting Trust Premium. Start today for as little as $14 USD/month: timecraftingtrust.circle.so/timecrafting-adhd.


