Here’s your mission this monday: Leave early for work so you have plenty of time to get there. Then smile at everyone along the way.

If you’re in a car be extra courteous to everyone around you – give some other driver a great morning.

If you commute by bike, bus or train smile at people around you and go out of your way to be helpful whenever you can.

If you’re reading this at work, it’s actually too late to do it today – you can do it tomorrow instead.

Thank you to my wonderful girlfriend for suggesting this one.

I’ve long thought that a leading cause of unhappiness at work is a stressful morning commute. You get up in the morning and almost the first thing you do is fight your way through traffic along with other grumpy, barely awake commuters equally bent on getting there five minutes faster.

If you relax and smile and focus on being helpful to others along the way the commute may take a little longer, but it will be a lot more pleasant and you may arrive at work in a much better mood.

The Chief Happiness Officer’s monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.

Previous monday tips. Do you have a suggestion for a monday tip? Write a comment!