Most offices frown on personal phone calls, but maybe they shouldn’t. A recent Fast Company article examines research that says that talking to a loved one could provide a bigger boost than drinking caffeine.
(Photo Credit: Evil Erin)
Janet Nikolovski and Jack Groppel, of Wellness & Prevention, Inc. recently released a white paper on “microbursts” — small activities that have big payoffs. In their research, Nikolovski and Groppel found that integrating small bits of activity into the workday had a positive effect on workers’ energy levels.
More significantly for those of us who are tired of hearing about how taking the stairs can improve our health, the researchers found that talking to a loved one also provided an energy boost.
From Fast Company:
Interacting with people is also energizing, though it has to be the right people.
“Talking to a coworker wasn’t nearly as energizing as talking to a loved one,” Nikolovski says. They plotted various energy boosters on a 1-10 point scale and compared these to the default energy booster: coffee. “When you go to reach for energy, you reach for caffeine,” Nikolovski says. People who’d had a coffee in the 30 minutes before reporting their energy levels scored a 6.8. People who’d talked to a loved one? They scored around 7 on the 1-10 point scale.
So the next time you’re trying to plow through a bunch of work at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and you feel like you’re going to crash, skip the energy drink, and give your mom a call.
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