The Internet is full of praises of how all the most successful people in the world are waking up at insane hours to start their day early. However, it may not be a universal key to productivity, as not everyone is a morning person. The body needs rest, and sleep deprivation will harm it.

Playing with your health is not a shortcut to the rich mines of productivity. Today we’ll tackle five out of the box tips to wire yourself to the productivity machine.

1. Write down your purpose daily

Yes, you can buy lots of stuff at the end of the month that makes you happy. However, how long does the effect of happiness last? The answer is usually a surprisingly short period of time. So, money will not help you connect with your productive side.

Without a personal goal in your life, all the productivity hacks we all know like eat the frog first, break the projects into small tasks, etc. are not going to work. You need to find your inner energy source to fuel all the to-do lists you have in a day.

It all comes down to what it is that keeps you going. Why did you choose this career path? Even though the answer is that you had no other choice, that’s still not true. You made a choice between your present job and no job at all. Find the inspiration that kept you going to the interview meeting, amplify it, and use it to charge your daily determination.

An uncommon hack would be to write on a scrap of paper why you chose this vocation. Do it every time you have a spare moment and do it even though you love your job. Sometimes, we can get a little too carried away and forget our purpose. Throw the daily notes away to make room for the next ones.

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins

2. Do squats in the bathroom

Seriously, forcing your body to stagnation will block your focus. Because one doesn’t go without the other; your body and mind are strongly connected to each other. There’s no wonder that almost any successful guy out there is in good shape. But, this guy wakes up at 4 a.m. to hit the gym, so what are the rest of us going to do? That’s simple; work your mind and body together during office hours.

So, if your workplace policy doesn’t permit an employee to stop from his tasks every 30 minutes and start running around the office, use the privacy of the bathroom. Once there, practice high-intensity physical exercises, like jumping jacks, squat jumps, static lunges, or anything else that will make your blood flow more quickly. If the training is hard enough, you will activate your whole body in about 2 minutes, and your lunch break won’t be too affected by them.

You might be red and sweaty once you get out of the bathroom, but the results will not delay to show up. Your little grey cells will be supercharged with energy, and the much-wanted productivity will soon kick in. This will also prepare you to take your free time by storm with lots of exciting activities.

3. Power naps

It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to listen to our body. When hunger takes effect, feed yourself (but with reasonable amounts of food), and when your body is tired then it is a good enough sign that it needs rest. Sleep deprivation leads to serious side effects, such as weight gain, weakened immune system (which welcomes the flu and cold), depression, even memory problems and lower brain activity.

That being said, you are more than entitled to keep the afternoon sleepy feeling at bay. However, if the body shouldn’t receive big amounts of food at the time, but just enough to get the hunger away, your body doesn’t need too much sleep for a refresh. A 10-minute nap is long enough to make you benefit from a good sleep and short enough to avoid falling into deep sleep.

You will wake up fresher than before, without the drowsy mood we start our mornings with. The power nap is a quality boost for learning and good performance, which are the exact ingredients for productivity.

4. Encourage questions but not interruptions

The interruptions are the most dreaded enemy of productivity. When someone asks you a question, you need to order your brain to disengage from its present occupation, and study a new set of equations, situations or alternatives of the new problem. When everything is fixed, returning to the previous task might seem uncomfortable and even stressful.

To solve the interruptions once and for all, create a system for your employees. They don’t know when you are busy or when it is a good time to talk to you, and forbidding these interruptions will rather bring your business to an end than solve a problem.

The quickest fix is leaving a list at your office door. Everyone that has a topic to discuss with you writes it down on the list with the level of urgency. Make sure you take care of all the issues on the same day either by taking care of the problem yourself or by delegating them to the employees that can manage the situation. However, don’t solve the list while you are in the middle of another task. As we all know it too well, multitasking is a false productivity hack.

“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” –Og Mandino

5. Organize your desk

No matter how much we tell ourselves that havoc inspires new ideas, a messy desk actually works against you. Maybe you need all the things that clutter your desk in one day, but you don’t need them at the same time. Organize your desk in order of your to-do list of the day. Your desk will become a white sheet to work your tasks on, and the organized pile of documents in order of their importance will work as a great productivity injection.

These are many productivity hacks out there, but before putting them into practice, you should listen to yourself. There is no universal recipe for success that fits everyone because we have our own unique needs and peaks of productivity. So, get to know yourself better and under what circumstances your productivity surges, and turn them into habits.

What ways do you fuel your productivity? Please leave your comments below!