In recognition of Social Media Day, being organised by Mashable, here is a great and simple video outlining the principles of social media: Social Media In Plain English.
There’s also a great event taking place tonight at 7pm in Manchester with a good mixture of speakers thanks to Nigel Collier and his team at Studio Skylab. We’re pleased to be able to help out ChiChi from Realfresh TV with an ‘armchair chat’ discussing Panda Licorice’s use of social media- check it out here.
Last week seemed set to be an average week, with the added adventure of a trip to Auntie….the BBC. Now don’t go thinking this was some sort of PR special treat – anyone can go, as long as you book in advance. I hadn’t given much thought to what the inside of BBC Manchester would look like, however I’m certain it was nothing like my preconceptions (I’ll be honest I may have watched too many episodes of 30 Rock), though that’s hardly surprising considering they are winding down the Oxford Road site ready for their move to Media City.
BBC Oxford Road
So the tour started and we saw the radio play stage; which takes the whole open plan living thing to a new level – the stage is divided up with different floor coverings and various home furnishings (all used to create on the spot sound effects). After this was the home of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, which was a pretty impressive stage where even a non-classical music type like myself gets drawn into imagining the complete orchestra in full flow.
There was then a short walk to the BBC Radio Manchester studios- which have a blue light in the corner which is only lit when certain members of the royal family have died. Then came the piece de resistance, the home of Gordon Burns, Ranveer Singh and Diane Oxberry – the North West Tonight studio, which is much smaller than you expect and also not as glossy – the joys of not using high def cameras for local news; yet anyway.
Ultimately the best part of the tour was the interactive part, wherein I discovered I had a hidden talent in the form of being good at presenting the weather. Ultimately the tour ended with a look to the future of BBC North, and Media City, including the moving of BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Future Technology (the people who created i-Player) out of London; as well as the creation of Europe’s Biggest Studios – adding to the wealth of facilities that are already available in the North.
Lasting approximately 2 hours and with friendly, passionate and knowledgeable guides, it’s an interesting and enjoyable experience and has added further fuel to my excitement regarding the completion of Media City and the subsequent move of the BBC to the area.
How day dreaming can boost your creativity at work
Why are we so down on daydreaming? Is it because it represents slacking off and laziness in a society that’s always pushing us to achieve, produce and succeed? Probably. Daydreaming is usually seen as non-productive in a society that increasingly values productivity. It’s seen as frivolous and a distraction from getting on with your life (starting at school when teachers think you aren’t paying attention).
In reality it’s something everyone does spontaneously and although estimates vary about how often we do it, from 10-50% of our waking hours, it’s agreed that daydreams typically last for only a few minutes each.
How can daydreaming be beneficial to you? For instance can it help you to rehearse the changes you want to make in your life? Be a good stress reliever, simply give you a break? All of those things. Specifically day-dreaming helps you, personally or vicariously, to imagine future events or recall past ones.
Daydreaming helps you learn from successes and failures and hence with planning strategies. It can also help you to re-interpret the past in the light of newer experiences. As someone said; “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood”.
Forward planning? Anticipating future events allows you to consider possible outcomes and assess the consequences of alternatives. So it improves decision-making and can also provide a rehearsal of what you plan to do.
Daydreaming relaxes constraints on planning so you can imagine being famous or having super-powers or doing something you wouldn’t normally do because of social constraints on behaviour.
It also supports creativity. Daydreaming allows you to explore amazing possibilities which you wouldn’t consider in the cold light of day and which may lead to new solutions, to that Eureka moment!
Every time you re-examine a problem your mind is able to take on board new information as it becomes available and thus come up with a different solution. Further daydreaming about success or praise for that idea can also increase your motivation to do it.
Daydreaming also helps you regulate your emotions and help you feel better or worse about something depending on the outcome. So daydreaming about the successful outcome of something you previously failed at can reduce the fear of failure. (Of course if you daydream about failure or obsess about the past; that can make it worse).
Daydreaming allows you to alter reality so you can reduce anger or other negative emotions eg revenge or embarrassment, and help you prepare new learning strategies through mental rehearsal. Fear of flying and other common phobias can be overcome using mental rehearsal combined with relaxation techniques.
And having a day-dream is like having a mini-break in which you can release tension, anxiety and stress, and return more refreshed.
Can it help you to achieve goals and boost productivity? Daydreaming doesn’t have any boundaries so anything is possible. What many companies call visioning or future-pacing is little more than organised day-dreaming. Thinking positively about future outcomes and goals is more likely to make them happen.
That’s why goal setting is so important – something to move towards. People who are “away from” in their goals ie they know what they don’t want rather than what they do, are less successful. It seems the human brain prefers positive goal setting. Nowadays athletes regularly use visualisation techniques to help them achieve peak performance.
You can also use organised daydreaming to help manage conflict. You can revisit that argument and visualise how it might have turned out differently and how you might try something different in the future. Focus on positive rather than negative aspects of your relationships. Even the client from hell has some redeeming features.
More mundanely day-dreaming can help relieve the monotony of boring jobs, take your mind off the job temporarily and help keep you stimulated – not
necessarily a good thing if you are an air traffic controller of course but not such a problem with routine, risk free jobs, and that includes the ironing.
Michael Guttridge is a Business, Coaching & Chartered Psychologist and Managing Consultant at Smith Guttridge & Associates
Visit his websites and blogs:
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