Does your boss get on your case over long telephone calls or lingering conversations at the water cooler? If you work in an office – or worse yet, a cubicle – you need some time to stretch your legs and, as it turns out, your brain. A new study completed by Oscar Ybarra of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research shows that socializing can actually make you smarter. Now you can call those conversations work-related – no matter what the subject. Who knew career development could be so simple and enjoyable?

According to the study, social interaction heightens our ability to focus and retain information – both important attributes in any profession. In Ybarra’s study, 76 subjects were asked to spend 10 minutes in one of three activities. Some watched television, some debated topics in pairs and some solved puzzles together. At the end of the 10-minute time period, all 76 subjects were given several tests to determine their processing speed and working memory. The puzzle solvers and debaters both outperformed the television watchers across the board. And both the puzzle solvers and the debaters were tied in their performance.

So what does this mean for you? It means that you need to socialize to be at your peak efficiency in any profession. To some degree we have known that it’s not healthy to simply stare at a computer monitor all day and never interact with anyone, but this is the first causal evidence to show a direct correlation between social interaction and cognitive ability.

But the study didn’t stop there. In addition, they surveyed 3610 people ranging in age from 24 to 96 asking specific questions about their social interaction including how often they talked on the phone with friends, relatives, etc. and how often they actually got together with these same parties. All subjects then underwent cognitive testing, with the results showing that those with greater daily social interaction scored higher in areas of memory and current events.

Talking to others about anything engages our brains in different ways than working at a computer. Socializing involves exchanging ideas – a give and take of information and opinions. It makes sense that exercising our brains in this way could help us in the more mundane aspects of a job such as memory and cognitive processing time. The most intriguing part of the study is that the social interaction was only 10 minutes in length and the results were immediately visible.

So the next time you’re up against a deadline or just can’t see your way through a tough problem, the answer might be to take a break and find someone to talk to – about anything. Get a cup of coffee or a drink of water while you’re away from your work. And if your boss gives you a hard time, tell her it’s definitely work-related.

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