I used to work with a guy who sang loudly to himself at his desk, which was in the same office as mine. Friendly guy, always cheerful (hence the singing), but he drove me mad with frustration. I found it really hard to concentrate on my work. When I tried to discuss it, he couldn’t see it from my perspective, and thought I should just cheer up and enjoy it.

Now, this wasn’t the most empathetic response he could have made, but he did sort of have a point. Because I’ve found over the years that the biggest problem with irritating people is me. It’s my response. When someone sings at their desk, or is always bragging, or makes snide comments, or talks endlessly, or never says no to their kids, I feel irritated and frustrated. At this point I have two options, and I always used to pick the wrong one (I’m getting better these days).

The first – and wrong – option is to fight it. To keep wishing they’d stop, to get wound up, to moan about them. When you do that, you’re always on edge, waiting for them to do the annoying thing again. You’re forever on the look-out so you can say ‘See? I told you it was infuriating … ’ to yourself, inside your head. Which is pointless. The effect is to damage relations between the two of you, because you can’t help but show your dislike of their behaviour on some level, whether overtly or not.

So what’s the alternative? Quite simply, you have to accept that this person has an irritating habit, and you can’t change it. The only thing you can change is yourself. So stop fighting it. Now you can actually start to deal with your reaction to it. For one thing, you can think about why they do it, and try to empathise. Or just see the positives. My singing colleague was ever cheerful – in a maddening way, but actually it probably beats sharing an office with a misery guts.

Now you’ve stopped fighting, you can think about whether some of this is actually your stuff. Does everyone else find them as irritating as you? If not, perhaps they push your buttons for a particular reason. I struggle, for example, with people who do things slowly, because I’m very impatient. That’s my stuff more than theirs, really.

Here’s another thing you can do once you accept the irritation: minimise the frustration. I should have worn earplugs, or listened to music, or planned my most focused work for when my colleague was out of the office.

My wife and I have a couple of friends who we compare notes about after we see them, to see who has spotted the best example of their irritating habit (appeasing their kids, or putting their partner down in public, for example). Not only do we find it makes their frustrating habit entertaining rather than irritating, but also we are almost willing them to do it (I don’t recommend doing this bitchily with a wide group of people – keep it private with just your partner or a very close friend).

All these methods of ameliorating the problem won’t exist until you accept it and move on. Along with the best option of all – hard to master but well worth a try: just ignore it. (I mean really ignore it, not just self-righteously try to catch yourself ignoring it. We’ve all done that.)