Do you have coworkers that ask you the same questions, over and over again? Maybe your manager’s giving you a hard time? People at work making you angry in general?

In this post, I’ll show you the best way to deal with being angry at work so you can retain your mental health while maximizing your income.

Disengage And Be Stoic

The first thing you need to do is to protect your mental health. To do this, all you need to do is stop caring about the drama at work. I outline in this article why it’s important that you don’t get caught up in work drama or politics.

Being neutral and stoic at work makes it so that your emotions aren’t tied to your 9-5 job at all. Now, this is easier said than done because it’s pretty often people do things at work that make me angry. Like, every 10 minutes.

How I counteract this impulse is I’d just breathe in and out (5 seconds inhale, 5 seconds exhale) a few times to disengage mentally. While I’m breathing in and out, I also remind myself that nobody at work matters. Nothing my coworkers or manager do has any real bearing in how I live my life and how I attack my financial goals daily. Thus, devoting any emotional energy to my 9-5 job is a waste of time.

Second, being mentally checked out at work makes it a lot easier not to lash out at teammates or your manager. Even if something’s egregiously wrong at work, when you simply don’t care, you won’t expend the effort trying to be right.

Good. Save all that effort for something productive.

Why You Shouldn’t Be Angry At Work

Not lashing out at your dumb manager or coworkers is a good idea.

They’re worthless, but they’re useful to you. You just don’t know it yet.

Even if you hate someone at work, you don’t have to let them know. They might steal your work and take credit for it. Just suck it up. It’s not like you’d get a promotion or a raise even if you got credit. The single best way to get a real raise or promotion is to switch jobs. And this is where your coworkers come in.

You see, most people change jobs every few years. According to balancecareers.com, the average tenure of a job is 3.2 years for workers that are 25-34 years old.

For example, my coworkers hate working on our current project. As a result, a lot of them quit within 1-3 years of working here. Because this is a fairly big corporation we work at, most of them leave the company to work at FAANG or some hip startup.

Do I like all of them? No.

But are all of them more useful to me now that they don’t actually work at the same company as me? Hell yes!

Here’s the thing: none of your coworkers can do anything to really influence whether your 9-5 income. They can give you a recommendation and it might only go up a tiny bit. They can tell your manager you suck, and you still won’t be fired. Other words: your coworkers have no bearing on your income as long as you’re in the same company.

But as soon as they leave, your ex-coworker can help increase your income by referring you and helping you change your job. In fact, they’re incentivized to refer you because it’s likely that:

1. They want to steal your work some more and take credit for stuff that you do (even though that won’t increase their income nor would it decrease yours).
2. They’ll get a referral bonus if you end up working at that company.

As we’ve said, changing your job is the best way to increase your pay. And referrals are one of the best ways to changing your job. You could get a job applying on LinkedIn or Monster, but you’re much more likely to get an interview and land the job with someone referring you.

You love your coworker? Great. You hate them? Also great! Your feelings won’t change how much money you get paid. Your income at your job will be somewhat constant. It’s when your coworkers quit that they’re actually useful to you. So don’t ruin your high chance of getting a referral (and significantly increasing your income) by lashing out or being a dick to your worthless coworkers.

Some quick math: if people are leaving on average every 4 years, and you have 8 teammates, you get an average of 2 “useful” ex-coworkers each year to refer you. Thus, it’s not a super rare event to have ex-coworkers refer you so that you can make more money at a new job. It’s actually quite common, and you should change your job roughly every 2 years to maximize your income.

Only Results Matter

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you win a work argument.

It doesn’t matter if you lose one.

It doesn’t matter if you’re angry at work or the easiest person to get along with.

None of this changes the result that matters the most in a 9-5: how much money your paycheck is.

And while I know it’s hard to “suck it up” when your coworkers deserve to be run over by a bus, realize that only how much you get paid matters.

After all, if your coworkers were super nice and your manager said “I’ll pay you $0 per paycheck now” – would you stay at your job? Conversely, if your coworkers sucked but you get paid $1 million/yr doing 10 hours of work a week, would you stay at your job?

You’ll learn to ignore the noise.

So to recap, if you can:

1. Remain emotionally disengaged and refrain from getting angry at work, and
2. View your coworkers as just a future referral tool

You’ll be able to maximize your 9-5 earnings without the unnecessary stress and high blood pressure.