Stop Walking Backwards

I was recently talking with a client and she told me how she approached presentations before we worked together.

It went something like this:

  1. Sit down at the computer

  2. Open PowerPoint (Google Slides, Keynote, choose your own adventure)

  3. Spend a bunch of time looking for images, fiddling with typefaces, trying out images and colors

  4. Get frustrated with the jumble of words and imagery on the page but so little progress after hours have gone by

  5. Call it quits

  6. Repeat next day

This is the way so many people approach presentations.

The reason it’s killing so much time and energy is you’re going about it backwards.

The quickest way to engage your audience is to first get clear on what you want to accomplish.

You need to be clear before you can make it clear to your audience.

It’s like doing a puzzle.

The quickest way to bring the picture into place is to start with the border.

Once you have the foundation, then and only then, start sorting the pieces inside.

Otherwise, you waste time on the details (like sorting through 1000 tiny pieces) and lose sight of the goal.

Want more help with presentations?

Learn 4 lessons I learned doing jigsaw puzzles.

Discover the most common presentation mistakes and what do about them here.

Public Speaking TipsHaley Pickrellpresentations