Here’s how you can be happier at work

Washington: Experts have given a few guidelines about how to choose happiness while at work, as they believe it makes life better in a million ways.

It starts with putting something on your desk that makes you smile – switch them up every few months, and think outside the photo album, CBS News reported. Schedule something to savour during every workday – maybe lunch at a new place, 15 minutes reading a good book on your break, or a phone call to an old colleague to catch up. Choose your projects carefully – when you’re excited about a project, you’re naturally more focused and cheery. Aim to be in that state most of the time. Seek these projects out and do what it takes to land them. Challenge yourself – we’re happiest when working right at the limits of our abilities, attempting things that are difficult but doable. Get a grip on your time – time wasters like random web surfing and instantly responding to email are fun in the moment, but weigh you down like eating too much fast food. Fill your work hours with important things, and you’ll naturally devote less time to things that don’t matter. Make friends – try to grab coffee with someone new each week. Social ties are a strong component of happiness, and knowing people personally makes work less chilly. Take the long view - you can perceive ambiguous comments as slights, and ruminate on them all day or you can remind yourself that you will have absolutely no memory of this incident two years from now. One mindset will definitely make you happier than the other. Lastly, choose the bigger life – we often like to keep things simple and avoid rocking the boat but while trying to improve a popular product, or reform a storied culture is a huge risk, in the end, we only live once so spend out and you may just buy happiness. ANI