How Not to Give a Boring Presentation

 How Not to Give a Boring Presentation

ProductivityHow Not to Give a Boring Presentation Share: Productivity How Not to Give a Boring Presentation Brian Lee Brian Lee is Chief of Product Management at Lifehack. Full Bio The usual approach when preparing a presentation is putting the points into slides. But the best presentations do not seek to merely inform. They make a lasting mark. Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech inspired a nation to reconsider their assumptions around race and social justice. Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin, delivered in 1987, wasn’t an objective remark on historical events. It was a passionate plea, an attempt to hasten the

tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Neither will be remembered for their PowerPoint presentations, but for their heartfelt messages. Treat a presentation like a drama show The best presentations are not collections of facts or statistics. They are stories, put together and performed with dramatic flair. The first question you need to ask yourself is this – “What is the point of this presentation?” Don’t start your preparations until you can provide a confident answer. What emotions are you looking to trigger in your audience? How exactly

 do you want to influence them, and what actions do you want them to take as a result of your presentation? There is much more to a speech than writing the words and moving through a set of key points written on a card or set of slides. How will you move around and vary your voice in such a way that emphasizes your message? Think about the gestures you can use, the facial expressions you will use, and how you will move around the stage. A great speaker is the main actor/actress, not the backdrop Most presentations are purely informative. The audience are directed to focus on the presentation slides rather than the person speaking. While if you want to leave an impression, you need to make yourself the focus. Presentation slides are just supplementary. Never, ever let them steal the limelight.

See how Scott Dinsmore did that. How to make your audience listen to you attentively To be the limelight on stage, you can’t just directly put all what you want to say on the slides. You need to carefully plan and edit every part. Only talk about one key point at a time. Don’t be greedy When you provide little on the slide like only one word in the middle, people will look to you for elaboration. When you put multiple points into a single slide, the audience will be so hard working digesting all the information on the slide. This doesn’t help them

understand better as human’s brains aren’t designed for multi-tasking. The more points you want them to get, the less they can understand. Make sure people can get the gist within 3 seconds More than that it means the message isn’t conveyed clearly enough and people will zone out. They’ll completely ignore what you’re going to say even if your ideas are truly brilliant. Always be economical. Cut everything that doesn’t serve a purpose Although it’s tempting to include all the interesting things you know/you found when doing research, these would only make your key message weaker if they aren’t highly relevant. Be bold to

cut them whenever they don’t add value for the key message. It’s often not what’s added that matters, but what’s cut that matters. Illustrate your points with images This sounds contradictory but it’s not. When the image can catch audience’s attention and wake them up, you’re actually telling them to look at you again, that you’re going to raise a great point next. What’s more, people retain 10% of what they hear three days following a presentation, but if the information is accompanied by a picture, this figure jumps to 65%.1 Always be specific Cliches are hardly memorable. Always add in additional details and fascinating

statistics where possible to add character and interest. Like you could simply tell your audience that buying a car is an important decision, but a better approach is to reframe it in terms of numbers and emotions: “To buy a car it entails choosing a vehicle that helps you make memories, that will keep your life running smoothly, and transports you and your loved ones over 13,000 miles each year.”2 Specific facts and emotive stories will give you a

 direct line to your audience’s hearts, and you are sure to leave a great impression. References [1] Inc.com: Google’s CEO Doesn’t Use Bullet Points and Neither Should You [2] Carinsurance.com: Average miles driven per year by state About Lifehack Lifehack is about helping you improve your life through efficient and comprehensive learning. By leveraging the vast amount of knowledge available to us, we explore and present a wide variety of

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Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Jenny Marchal Jenny Marchal is a freelance writer. Full Bio Sitting down and setting your life goals can be exciting and motivating. It gives us purpose, sets clear intention, makes us feel productive and creates the feeling of moving forward. But have you ever started out making a mental or physical list of your goals only to end up with quite a few? Then when you start acting on them, they either end up

cast aside or only half achieved? Having goals has been drummed into us from an early age but are having all these goals actually hindering us? Warren Buffett, one of the most successful businessmen in the world today, questions the need for having so many goals. Instead he puts his success down to eliminating, sometimes important goals, in order to focus on the few that will bring the success we desire. Warren Buffett asked his pilot to list

25 priorities in his life To illustrate Buffett’s idea, there’s a great story involving his personal airplane pilot of 10 years, Mike Flint, and how Buffett helped him to focus and prioritize his goals using a 2-list strategy. Buffett asked Flint to carefully think about, and write down his 25 top career goals. Once Flint spent time doing this he came back and presented them to

Buffett. He then asked Flint to pick out the top 5 most important goals. So at this point Flint now had two separate lists – the list of 5 goals and the list of 20 remaining goals. Like many of us, Flint concluded that he would focus primarily on his top 5 and work towards the other 20 as and when he could find the time. However, Buffett stopped him and said that this is actually the path of becoming unsuccessful because really he should now throw away his list of 20 altogether – no matter how important many of them may be – and focus solely on the top 5. Why? Because that list of 20 is essentially a distraction. Average people don’t know they should AVOID seemingly important things in their lives The reason we often never

succeed with our goals is because we don’t prioritize, focus and therefore, complete, the important few. It’s human to get demotivated and distracted – two feelings that can be the death of our goals. The bigger the list of goals we have, the more chance there is to give up and move on to the next one in the hope that this one will succeed. If what Malcolm Gladwell claims is true, to become an expert in any field we must spend 10,000 hours of deliberate practice towards gaining knowledge in that area. That equates to 20 hours each week for almost a year, for a total of 10 years. So imagine Flints original list of 25 goals –

that would mean it would take him 250 years to fully master his complete list. You can see how having too many goals can lead you down the path to a less successful and fulfilling life. Make sure you keep the “Avoid-at-all-cost list” Minimizing has become a hot topic when it comes to living the best life we can and this also applies to our life goals. Like our physical

 stuff, it can be hard to make a decision to throw certain goals out of the window when they feel important to us. But the process itself allows us to work out our priorities and what’s truly important. Try writing out 25 goals – whether it’s long term goals or even short term weekly or monthly goals – and start the process of prioritising in order to discover your top 5. Now, instead of literally throwing the list of 20 away completely, label this your avoid-at-all-costs list to serve as a reminder of what not to focus on. This is the list that will decrease your time and focus and ultimately your success. In other words, if you start

working on this list you are in danger of having 20 half-finished goals instead of 5 completed ones. Whatever your top 5 goals are, whether you want to learn a new language or skill, or work towards a particular career goal, make a conscious effort to stick to these. Keep motivated to achieve these goals and don’t wander onto your second list. Remember, your time investment is key to success and this time will be compromised the more goals you take on. Get the success you want: prioritize efficiently, focus intently and stick to it. References Featured photo credit: Fortune Live Media via flickr.com About Lifehack Lifehack is about helping you improve your life through efficient and comprehensive learning. By leveraging the vast amount of knowledge available to us, we explore and present a wide

variety of content catered to encouraging individual growth and solving problems. Learn more about our mission Advertising Advertising What’s Popular now? Poor Sleep Quality Comes from All the Things You Do Since Morning Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Keep A "Friend Bank" So You Can Maintain The Right Kind Of Friendship! How I Become Creative by Spending 10 Minutes a Day to Exercise My Brain Muscle See How You Don't Have To Start Your Weight Loss Journey

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