Try the 10/5 rule that the Ritz-Carlton trains its staff to follow: when employees walk within ten feet of someone, they make eye contact and smile. If they walk within five feet, they say hello. This simple policy, which has also been implemented at hospitals, makes customers and employees happier. (As one hotel encourages its employees, “A smile

“That social network, that each of you have each other’s back, that they’re there for you and you’re there for them . . . That’s a precious, precious resource,”

Managers, how you talk about vacation matters. A lot. The majority of employees say their managers communicate nothing, negative messages, or mixed messages about taking vacation; with a little more encouragement, almost everyone would use more vacation time.

The frenemy is both our friend and our benchmark within the organization. Don’t feel guilty about experiencing the occasional twinge of envy! Frenemies account for almost half of the important members of our networks.

Figure out your decision-making tendency. Which of the following better describes you?

When you’re faced with a novel decision, anxiety or indecision might just be your brain’s way of slowing you down so it has enough time to more accurately weigh the evidence for or against each option.

Swap skills. Schedule time with a coworker or friend to teach each other something new.

you dream about said inconvenience

You can also try a technique called reappraisal. The physical experience of stress or anxiety—a faster heartbeat and higher levels of stress hormones—is almost identical to our body’s response to excitement. Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks found that people who take advantage of this similarity by reframing their stress as