Many people write off online gaming as just a silly hobby or a way to pass time. Some parents even go as far as banning their children from playing. However, important skills can be learned while playing online games can ultimately benefit your personal life, your career and even your relationships. From fostering teamwork in a multi-player game to sharpening strategic thinking skills – there’s an endless array of games to choose from. Here’s a few ways to maximize online gaming skills in real life:

Improve Productivity

Gaming allows you to take a break and shift your focus which can actually help your productivity at work– as long as it’s done in small doses. Taking breaks throughout the day to play an online strategy game or a puzzle can help you clear your mind and then allow you to return to the task at hand refreshed and ready to work. This recent survey about the lives of gamers shows that the study participants believe gaming fosters productivity, with 54 percent of respondents playing online games at work.

Increase Your Concentration and Focus

Neuroscience News shares, “Researchers have demonstrated that just one hour spent playing video games has an effect on the brain. The research team found changes in brain activity and increased performance on tests of visual selective activity in subjects who had spent one hour playing the League of Legends video game.”

Playing online games requires you to focus on the task at hand and eliminate – or work through – distractions. This can be a valuable skill to have in other areas of your life, especially in the noisy world that we live in. If you’ve learned to put your energy and attention into a game, while there are people around you, you can likely learn to study in a coffee shop for a big exam or concentrate on answering emails. Or maybe you love to read and have struggled with distractions while you read. Enhancing this skill could enable you to read while standing in line or waiting in a waiting room, regardless of the noise around you.

Boost Your Social Life

While many envision online games as solitary efforts, the reality is that most online games now have a heavy social component. Whether you’re playing an action game or a sports-based game, you’ll interact with other players from around the world while you move forward in game play. If you’re a Pokémon GO player, you’ve already experienced the social effects when you show up to Pokémon battle or at a Pokémon gym with sometimes hundreds of other fellow Pokémon players.

Ability to Analyze

The ability to analyze is just one of the cognitive benefits to online game playing. Not only do you sharpen your ability to read a situation, but you also learn to think ahead about what could happen if you take a particular action. The ability to really hone in on your choices, determine which would work for you and why, and have an idea of what a possible outcome could be—can ultimately carry over into every area of your life. These are skills that benefit you in the workplace as well as in your personal life.

These are just a few ways to maximize the skills online gaming teaches you. If you’re not a gamer currently, consider joining this new movement. You can play many games on your phone, making them easy and convenient and some games you can play in short breaks, allowing you to reap the benefits without much commitment on your part.