Category: 1-Minute Strategy

Determine which restaurant, manicurist or dry cleaner in any city is worth a visit with Yelp.com. It’s the leading destination for local reviews.

Learn which calls are important enough to put through to your boss, and take messages for the rest. Schedule a time each day for your boss to return missed calls.

Boost productivity by “plotting” the items on your to-do list. Before starting a task, spend the first five minutes creating a  road map. Assign times for each piece of your strategy. Watch the clock while you are working to gauge whether you are staying within your assigned time range.

Cell phone batteries last a little longer if they’re kept cool, so if you keep your phone in a coat pocket near your body, the batteries may run down faster. Try carrying it in your purse or on your belt. Away from home without a charger? Store your phone in the hotel room’s fridge. — […]

Manage conflict within a team with this tactic from Harvard Management Update: When tempers flare, arrange team members in a semicircle around a white board. Put ideas on the board, and then ask team members to ally against the conflict, not each other.

Take responsibility for your own professional development, says Steven DeMaio on HarvardBusiness.org, with this strategy: Set a goal of having one major learning experience each quarter. If work isn’t challenging you enough, seek out a volunteer opportunity or enroll in a class.

Looking to beat procrastination? Try the Swiss cheese technique. Punch holes in a task like it’s a block of cheese. Do a five-minute portion of an important task. Then another five. Anything can be broken down into small doable chunks.

Organize your boss’s desk so he can more easily organize himself. One admin suggests buying baskets or trays that the boss can use for project-specific papers. When the project is over, the tray is available for the next project.

Reduce the odds that a conversation will bog down when people take things too personally by avoiding statements that begin with “you.” Example: Instead of saying, “You’re wrong,” say, “I disagree” or “Here’s my position on that.”

Every hour, stop what you’re doing, look at your to-do list and reflect on your past hour. Was it productive? What can you do to make the next hour productive?