The ‘New Productivity’: Getting Things Done When We’re All Bloody Knackered

3 valuable mindset shifts to aid productivity in the age of exhaustion

Rebecca Pendleton
5 min readFeb 25, 2022
Image from Storytale.io

Last year, I was a productivity queen. I wrote an article based on Hal Elrod’s concept of the ‘Miracle Morning’, where I adapted the acronym to make it more fun – ending up with ‘MARVELLOUS Morning’.

M for Meditation. A for Acknowledge (how I feel, who I love). R for Reading, or Reflection. It goes on.

Do the thing, tick the box, feel good. Simple, right?

Well, yes – and no.

In the yes column: there are many benefits to this approach (I still back myself for creating it). I like having a target. I like making it fun. I still like a to do list (in principle). It’s good to have a framework for feeling good.

But – two things happened at the end of 2021 that made me reconsider how I think about my Marvellous Morning routine and the concept of ‘routines’ altogether:

  • Thing #1: I realised that I really, really suck at sticking to routines and decided I’m sick of beating myself up about that fact. It’s exhausting.
  • Thing #2: I caught Covid, which turned into Long Covid, and my energy levels & health are now a) really poor and b)…

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Rebecca Pendleton

Product Manager & Aspiring Writer / Coach. I love self-development, service design & stationery. Sober but not preachy.