This week's video tackles a commonly overlooked productivity pitfall: the mismanagement of high-energy states.

When your energy surges, you’re more likely to do non-essential, exploratory tasks. This leaves you feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by day's end, when your energy begins to drop and your essential tasks have been mostly ignored.

You didn’t set out with that intention, so what happened?

That’s what today’s productivity micro-challenge is about. Give me 5 minutes to save you hours of wasted energy this week.

We’re often busy, but not really productive.

So how do we change that? 

What if there was a better way to supercharge your productivity? 

I’ve given this a lot of thought and applied some of these techniques to my own work. Here's what I recommend...

Upgrade your capacity for speed.

Parkinson’s law states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

Cyril Northcote Parkinson, the British historian and author who made this statement, was qualified to make the observation. He worked in the British Civil Service and saw first-hand how bureaucracy could impact productivity.

In fact, you’ll see this in action in many office environments today. There is still a notion we should be “working harder” rather than faster or smarter. Research suggests that given the standard eight-hour workday, most of us are only productive for around three hours!

So, if we’re simply making our work expand to...