不只是工作：8招讓你的辦公室生活更美好

From simple actions to more challenging existential matters, we've highlighted some of the most common ways to make your day-to-day worklife a little easier to deal with.

Boredom is the second most commonly hidden emotion in the office (anger being the first). So says Sandi Mann a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire in England. Mann, who clearly isn't bored by her work, suggests that boredom could be the new stress, and it can easily lead to even less desirable emotions like resentment and hostility. The solution is simple to Mark de Rond, who spent six weeks studying surgeons at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. They experienced intense, high pressure situations followed by long periods with nothing to do or anywhere to go. "Give people something to care about more than themselves," says de Rond. Easier said than done.

Don't work like a dog, bring one into the office. Companies that have office dogs have claimed that their hairy, wet-nosed presence can reduce stressful moments and encourage collaboration (between employees not between employees and the dog). Vivian Chan of architecture firm Studio Verve in London says that the presence of Tiger, a long-haired Jack Russell, in the office is very therapeutic. "After we have a phone call with a difficult contractor, for instance, sometimes we just talk to Tiger about it," she says. "You can't really be all that serious when Tiger is jumping between chairs."

Her findings were confirmed by a study by the Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business that found dog-free offices more stressed than those with a pooch sniffing workers pockets for biscuits of lying upside down in doorways.

Mobile devices mean that it is easy for work to follow you home and for work-related emails to be the last thing you read at night and the first thing you check in the morning. Perhaps as much a general life improvement as an office life improvement, "turn off" tricks hailed by career development authors have a holistic value. Breaks from relentless work, especially short bursts of exercise coupled with "zoning out" make actual work more productive.

A tricky one this, but whatever being happy means to you, it will undoubtedly help you in your professional life as well as personal endeavors. Some might see it as a transient emotion rather than a fixed state of being, but for all, it is attainable. Shawn Anchor spent 12 years researching happiness at Harvard and concluded that happiness is "a choice". He states that a decade of study shows that "happiness raises nearly every business and education outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31% and accuracy on tasks by 19%."