Doing your job to the best of your ability is a worthy trait. But if you aim to always be perfect, it can be exhausting—for those around you as well as yourself. It's a challenging way to live. You may want to try being a little more relaxed about how you view yourself and others. You could learn from some mistakes.

Getting promoted is great, but when it means you'll have to manage your former coworkers, it can get awkward. It would be ideal if you could maintain the friendly, gossipy, tell-all relationship you’ve had with your ex-peers, but as a practical matter, you can’t. Here's how to handle the transition best for everyone.

It's interesting how people speak at different rates, and there are lots of reasons for that, such as culture, upbringing, preference, and just the way we're wired. At work, what's important is that if you speak too fast or too slow relative to what's normal in your environment, you may unknowingly be annoying people.