Presentations

Fake Rocks, Salami Commanders, and Just Enough to Start

Merlin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:36:47 -0400

MaxFunCon: Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work (via TSoYA)

Here’s the audio from a short talk I presented a few weeks ago at Jesse Thorn’s awesome1 MaxFunCon in Lake Arrowhead, CA. The talk is subtitled, “With All Due Respect to the Seduction Community”2, and it contains my typically NSFW use of, well, words, I guess.

It’s about how to get started—just started—with any project that really matters to you.

Listen above
- Embedded audio starts at 4:00 (where my talk begins)
Download MP3 of this episode
Subscribe to The Sound of Young America via iTunes or vanilla RSS

Foam Barriers (and Granite Fears)

It’s difficult to talk about how to get started with a project without addressing why it can feel so difficult to get started in the first place. And, as I said in the talk, I think this often comes down to perceived barriers. Barriers to even the most modest kind of starting. Barriers that seem entirely real, external, and immovable.

But, why “perceived?”

Thing is, when you really put your back into it, and push against your barriers a bit harder, they often turn out to be nothing very substantial at all. More like fake foam boulders that just look lifelike because they’re illuminated by the unreliable light of fear. See, fear’s the really hard part.

Yes, the barriers give you a theoretically dignified toupee for carpeting over your neuroses, but the underlying fears are still unspeakably real. And, you totally know it.

So, just humor me. Think about something you’ve been really excited to make or do.3 Maybe something you’ve been thinking about starting for weeks, months, or even years. Dance lessons? Short story? Web comic? MAME cabinet? Tree house? Doomsday laser? Excel spreadsheet?4 What stops you?

Remember now, we’re not talking about finishing a project or even making something that you know will be the greatest thing ever made. Just starting. What’s the barrier for you?

Well, at least in my experience, if you’re honest enough to push past those sensible, well-worn consolations of generalized procrastination and unrelenting “busy-ness,” you’ll discover how many hang-ups trace back to some dumb, shameful fear. Yeah, I know. Crazy hippie talk, right? Still.

Any of these sound familiar?

Fear of Apathy. “I can’t start this until I’m positive the work will never become dull or difficult.”5
Fear of Ambiguity. “I can’t start this until I know exactly how it will turn out (as well as the precise method by which I’ll do it).”
Fear of Disconnection. “I can’t start this until I’m totally up-to-date and current on everything.”
Fear of Imperfection. “I can’t start this until I know the end product will be flawless.”
Fear of Incompletion. “I can’t start this until I’m already done with it.”
Fear of Isolation. “I can’t start this until I know making it will never be lonely.”
Fear of Sucking. “I can’t start this until I’m already awesome at it (and know that even horrible people whom I dislike will hail me as a genius).”
Fear of Fear itself. “I can’t start this until I’m guaranteed that making it will never be scary.”

There are probably a lot more, but these represent a few of the greatest hits spinning on my own particular jukebox.6

And, sure, there’s a lot of overlap, or if you prefer, design redundancies. Because once you let one fear hang out with you, it starts bringing all its buddies along to the party. And The Fears are a tightly-knit, mean-spirited posse who egg each other on and love nothing more than trashing your house while you sob in the guest bathroom. Fears are total dicks.

Then, There’s That Talking Lizard

To make matters worse, when it comes to strictly creative endeavors like making art7, your regular, old, garden-variety fears find an enthusiastic ally in the entirely rational, if philistine, voice of your Lizard Brain.8

Listen for it, because that voice speaks so often and with such consistency and unquestioned authority that it can begin to sound like common sense—even intuition. It’s the voice that sees you thinking about making something, then calmly, firmly reminds you where you’re going wrong, wrong, wrong:

Grow up. “You already have plenty of things to do with your Real-Life Obligations without wasting time dicking around with some doofy ‘art’ project. That’s for kids and people with sandals in California.
So, stop being childish.”
Eat your vegetables. “Even if you cannot be talked out of making something, remember that those Real-Life Obligations all need to be completely taken care of before you even consider trotting off to pretend you’re David Foster Wallace.9
So, stop having fun.”
No one notices and no one cares. “Why bother? Even if you were talented and interesting (which you’re not), you know no one will notice if you never make anything at all. Because no one really cares. Including you.
So, stop trying.”
Your time’s passed, Li’l DaVinci. “Seriously, look at yourself. If you were ever going to be anything other than what you are or make anything other than what you’ve already made, you would have done it years ago. It’s too late now.
So, stop evolving.”

See? What’d I say? The lizard’s a dick, too.

But, honestly, do you ever hear yourself providing a running commentary on how much you suck? Giving yourself a spirited anti-pep talk? Sure you do. I do. Everybody does—including people who produce unbelievably, unexpectedly successful work.

It’s not that successful and productive people don’t see those same barriers or feel that same fear—it’s just that most of the good ones have figured out how to either accept the fears as a natural part of the process, or they just choose to ignore each fakey barrier the second it appears.

And, that is precisely what this starting business is all about. Putting aside every “reason,” and announcing to your Lizard Brain that it can either evolve or suck a nut.

Not that this is easy. But, you know that, right? Exactly.

The Switch Flips

Think about the times you’ve tried to get started, but things just weren’t happening for you. What wasn’t right? What were you feeling?

Could be lots of things,10 but I’ll postulate one theory on how a lot of us knowledge-worker types get derailed at the point right before we really get started. At the point when we’re most susceptible to an attractive nuisance.

So, imagine the place where you go to make whatever you make. Could be a studio, a library, an office, a cafe, living room, or what have you. You’re sitting there. And, of course, you’re not doing Real Work for your Real-Life Obligations. You’re trying to make something new and perhaps wonderfully unnecessary. “Something useless,” the Lizard Brain whispers, “That no one will care about. That you won’t finish anyway. That you’re too busy to do….”

You’re now shamefully staring at your blank page or an empty canvas or a fresh Compass install or that unpopulated Excel spreadsheet. And your poor mind is already feeling like a lost duckling. You’re desperately casting about for something to save it—if not a big idea or the muse of “inspiration,” at least something that you really know. Something that you can get the hook into. Something that’s…important.

That? That right there? That is the enemy, my friend. That fear of your own inability and of the triviality of your non-work is so toxic. Because it opens you up to insane anxieties about what’s happening outside the studio or the library or office or the cafe or the living room or the what-have-you.

It’s all those fears tearing ass like a colony of E.O. Wilson’s ants. In growing numbers, they’re on to the scent of your anxiety, so now they can build new and customized barriers in record time.

Then, in what can amount to a split second, a switch flips. The Lizard Voice has gotten too loud to be ignored. You’ve come to what you believe are your senses, and you feel compelled to escape this Elysian dream world of nonsense and feelings and unfinished thoughts and “what the hell was I thinking?” After all. You’ve got real shit to do, right?

Ah. Those three horseman of the maker’s apocalypse have come to your rescue: the unknown, the ambiguous, and the incomplete.

Better go check email. Might be something “important.”

The Opposite of That Thing

So, are you getting the perverse irony at work here?

Given that your fears know you too well, they can capitalize on any uncertainty that they know you’d find intolerable. So, even a surprisingly trivial matter—so long as that matter might represent items unknown, ambiguous, or incomplete to you—can suddenly seem extremely important and will swiftly divert your attention from the cool stuff you’d like to be doing onto….oh, whatever that other stuff might be. Better find out.

And, yes, I’m waving at you here, email inbox.11 J’accuse, you horrible little troll.

But, you’re getting it, right? How the Lizard Brain lies and you believe it because it’s easy to believe?

When your resolve melts—when that switch flips and you’re pulled away from a generative kind of anxiety to be thrust into the more caustic and strangely addictive anxities of “real life”—you’re giving up a precious part of your real “real life” in exchange for security of the familiar. Problems you understand. Anxieties you’re comfortable being anxious about. Busy, busy, busy.

Problem is, all of this becomes like chugging saltwater.

Drinking saltwater is a terrible idea. Because it makes you thirstier than you were before you started drinking it. So, you have to drink more saltwater. Then, that makes you thirstier still, so you end up drinking more saltwater. Which makes you also drink more saltwater. And so on. Until you die. Still thirsty.

Ditto empty email checking. Ditto anxiety about anxieties. Ditto every other Lizard Brain impulse to solve a perceived problem by amplifying the thing that’s actually causing the problem.

Tolerance: Bulwark Against Fakey Barriers

If making anything substantial really matters to you, you’re going to need to take the cure. And, the antidote is nasty, difficult, and tastes way worse than saltwater. The answer? You do the hard thing. No matter what it takes. You stick with it at the time you’re most tempted to run away.

Like I said in the talk, developing those invaluable tolerances (the tolerance for ambiguity and the tolerance for sucking) requires the exercise of some very small muscles. The muscles are super-hard to locate, and once you do find them, they hurt like a bitch to exercise. But, doing that exercise repeatedly will pay you back ten-fold.

Because that next time you’re in the studio or the library or office or the cafe or the living room or the what-have-you, and you start to feel the fears building barriers, you’ll know what to do. And you’ll know how to do it. Because you’ve done it before.

There’s no trick here, guys. No system. No diagram. No hack. No tips, no webinars, and no Digg-able bulleted lists. It’s simply work.

You sit, you work, you tolerate. Then you do it again.

Enough. Just for Now.

I’m not sure whether this is precisely relevant, but as I’ve been working on the “Large Writing Project” I’d mentioned in the talk (more on that soon), a particular phrase keeps going through my head:

How do I know what I need to know…for now?

Not, “I can’t start this until I know everything about everything,” or “I can’t start this until I’m 100% up-to-date on every aspect of my life” or “I can’t start this until my skills, tools, expertise, and experience are flawless.”

Just really asking yourself how you know whether you have enough of anything—be it information, tools, skills, or coffee—just to literally start. Just start. Not forever. Just for now. Start.

So, how about instead of waiting for the perfect conditions, maybe try thinking about this stuff in a kooky, opposite way:

Assume there will will always be tools that are better than the ones you have now.
Assume that events in the world will continue to happen or not happen regardless of whether you learn about them immediately.
Assume that you understand and control an embarrassingly minute percentage of the universe.
Assume that none of this matters if you’re determined to make something you care about today.

You already have everything you need. It’s all there. And it doesn’t take sandals, or perfect pitch, or iPhone 4.0, or full-screen mode, or a ★★★★-star reputation on the seduction community forum to get started. Or re-started. Or re-re-re-re-started.

Seconds Away

Your Lizard Brain is absolutely right when it tells you that most people won’t notice if you don’t make something, and that a lot of people won’t particularly care if you do. But, how you choose to respond to that existential kōan will say a lot about your potential as both an artist and as an engaged human.

Because, if you’re relieved that universal apathy provides legitimate cover for eight blissful hours of “managing email,” then you’re in luck. Every day for the rest of your life. Punch out.

But, if you’re like me, you may find you’re invigorated—even challenged—by all that bigger ambiguity. By knowing that, at any time, you might be seconds away from starting something amazing that seemed impossible a minute ago. Even oddly prepared to drop the lizard crap whenever the need arises.

Weird to think how insanely different your day could be today. Purely depending on what you do in the next 10 or 15 seconds. If that switch gets flipped in the right direction, then stays there.

What can you tolerate? What will you start? Now.

See? You’ve got enough of everything you need. You’ve already started. Now just keep going.

MaxFunCon. Seriously. This was the best conference I’ve ever attended. Don’t have the space here to say everything I’d like to say, so I’ll just say I agree with Adam, Matt, and some other enthusiastic folks. ↩
The Seduction Community. How to trick ladies into having intercourse with you. ↩
Make or do. On that index card with the “notes” for my talk on it, you’ll see the spanish word, “Hacer,” which can mean either “to make” or “to do.” I’ve always liked the idea that making and doing are very closely linked, especially for creative types. Plus, I enjoy an irregular verb with a silent “h.” ↩
Excel spreadsheet. I have no idea why poor Excel is my default array item whenever I have to mention something that’s not a fruity art project. What I really mean is “something practical that’s not all arty.” I actually like Excel a lot. Well. I like Numbers a lot anyway. Starting is interest-agnostic. ↩
Fear of Apathy. This is one of the central, giant themes in Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow theory—that we do our best work (or, as he puts it, “live optimally”) when we are highly challenged by work in which we’re highly skilled. Apathy, on the other hand, is what we get from the dreadful combination of low skills and low challenge. Check out this cool diagram. ↩
Jukebox. In (7, Bird by Bird), the wonderful Anne Lamott talks about having a jukebox in her head that plays all the greatest hits of her past failures. As it happens, I have the same model. ↩
Making art. Yeah, I know. We’re not supposed to talk about making art. It upsets people because it sounds all fancy. Screw that. I think one definition could describe art is anything you make and care about that nobody but you really needs. Which necessarily makes it important. ↩
Lizard brain. Nah, I don’t precisely mean the amygdala, and I’m not (neurologically) talking about the actual reptile brain. But, I do suspect that a lot of dumb self-talk has roots in whatever parts of your mind are diligently trying to protect you from bear attacks. ↩
Footnote note. You know who loved him a footnote? Yep. David Foster Wallace. ↩
Lots of reasons. Lordy, there are so many reasons you might have trouble here. Including wrong timing, wrong modality, wrong mood, wrong setting, wrong “focal length”, wrong expectations, wrong preparation. But, be careful that you not use that as a checklist for not getting started. ↩
What’s an Inbox, anyway? Y’know, increasingly, I believe those three adjectives (unknown, ambiguous, and incomplete) tell us much of what we need to know about understanding why inboxes can be so difficult to keep away from. Much [*cough*] more on this coming soon. Ellipsis. ↩

Video: Merlin's Talk, "Toward Patterns for Creativity"

Merlin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:27:38 -0500

Merlin Mann - “Toward Patterns for Creativity” - Macworld PULSE

Here’s a video of my presentation, “Toward Patterns for Creativity,” from earlier this month at Macworld, here in SF.

My slides were kind of a mess thanks to a bonehead technical problem on my part, but you can follow along ﬁne below.

As I said, I’m very interested in seeing where a topic like this could go. Because I truly believe it’s an idea that could help push a lot of people to the next level.

Related: if you’re interested in where my head was as I prepped for this, be sure and catch the previous post, The Problem with “Feeling Creative”.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, do yourself a favor, and pick up the book I highlight in this talk: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe.

Addendum: 2009-01-28 06:42:03

It should not go without mentioning ﬁve (5) John Gruber-related things:

Seriously. I really did like John’s talk, and I think he’s totally onto something with the Auteur thing. (cf.)
John very kindly let me borrow his laptop after my learning that my own was un-dongle-able.
The slide problem stemmed from my preparing the presentation on a newer version of Keynote than John had installed.
I’m pretty sure John did have Helvetica Neue installed. Because he’s a giant type nerd.
John invented Markdown. In which I write everything. Including this.

Which is just to say that John is a friend as well as my favorite person in the Apple universe. So, upon watching this a second time, I realize I’d hate to leave you with the impression that I feel anything other than embarrassingly abundant aloha for him.

Thanks, John.

[video via: Macworld Pulse: Merlin Mann | Macworld]

Like the Talk?

A big part of what I do these days is delivering talks like this and others all around the US and beyond. If you’d enjoy having me visit with you to present at your company, event, or conference, drop a line and my ninja assistant, Erica, will be happy to take your details and check for availability.

”Video: Merlin's Talk, "Toward Patterns for Creativity"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 27, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?"

Merlin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:52:05 -0400

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time & Attention (slideshare.net)

Thanks to my pals, Dara and Shawn, I’ve been preparing for a return visit with the folks at GoDaddy to deliver a couple talks on Inbox Zero and Time and Attention.

As I’ve been going over my slides for the Time & Attention talk, I realized I hadn’t shared how the material has evolved since it premiered at Macworld in January. Which is to say, “Kind of a lot.” So, I’ve posted the updated deck.

Of course, the irony of making cool, unbulleted slides is that the decks you create won’t make a lick of sense without the accompanying audio and – you know – human presence. So, I’ve made a special version of this for you to view online, adding slide notes at the bottom that can help give you the ﬂavor for what’s happening as I wave my hands around on-stage like a huge dork.

I’m proud of this work, and I really hope you ﬁnd it useful. The 5th to the last slide makes me teary. Partly because I really do believe this stuff is important. It’s about more than email and “productivity.” It comes down to how you decide to spend your life and, on some level, what kind of human being you want to be.

Many thanks to Mike Monteiro, Joel on Software, iStockPhoto, and Futura (the unofﬁcial type family of Mssrs. Anderson and Kubrick.)

And, yes, here’s the minor pimp (I mean, it is what I do for a living). You can hire me to deliver this talk to the time- and attention-addled people you work with. Drop a note if you have an upcoming event where you think this might be a good ﬁt. And, yeah, unless I know you really well or your company is giant, awesome, and MUNI-accessible: it costs money. Yep. So. You know. Serious inquiries only, and what have you.

See you soon, GoDaddy! I crave your hell-like climate right now.

”Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 14, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Video: Merlin's Time & Attention Talk

Merlin — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:39:27 -0500

Macworld ‘08: Merlin Mann / “Living with Data”

Like the talk? Hire Merlin

Sure, you can hire Merlin to speak to your group. Here’s how.

This was the ﬁrst edition of a talk that’s already starting to evolve rather quickly. The slides are available at Slideshare, and you can yoink yourself an embeddable version right here:

Notes:

Last month, I premiered a new presentation at Macworld San Francisco 2008 called “Living with Data” (previously). Since this talk was part of the “Vision” track, I used the opportunity to start gathering some threads around the idea of time and attention that had been ﬂoating around my head for a while (I think you can see the genesis of some of this stuff in my IDEO visit).

The IDG folks were kind enough to post a movie of my slides + the audio. Unfortunately a lot of folks were having trouble getting to the page (it doesn’t appear to have a permalink), so here’s a Flash version you can watch from right here.

Thanks to Paul Kent and Kathy Moran at IDG for being such wonderful hosts. And very special thanks to Mike Monteiro (and his now-famous meeting tokens) for inspiring the talk in the ﬁrst place.

”Video: Merlin's Time & Attention Talk” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 14, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

InformationWeek story on Merlin's Macworld '08 presentation

Merlin — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:27:31 -0500

How To Take Back Your Time And Attention – Merlin Mann – InformationWeek

Wow. Mitch Wagner did an ass-kickingly thorough job of summarizing my talk at Macworld about wrangling your time and attention. Really nice work, Mitch – thanks, man.

“When the value of your times is set too low, or not at all, it leads to waste and abuse,” Mann said.

This is a particular problem for knowledge workers. (How do you identify knowledge workers? “Look for someone with girlie smooth hands who can go to lunch whenever they want,” Mann explained.) Knowledge workers have huge amounts of freedom in how they work, they aren’t micromanaged, they just have goals to achieve. That freedom is dangerous. “You can ﬁnd yourself at two in the morning staring at Wikipedia covered in pizza crusts,” Mann said.

Up top is a snap of the slides from my talk, which I’ll try to get up on Slideshare when I get a chance to tidy them up.

[Pimp: here’s information on my speaking gigs and how to bring me in to speak with your organization]

update 2008-01-21 12:39:42: Okay, she’s up. As ever, I’m not sure these’ll make much sense without me standing there, yammering, but here’s a clickable version of my slides:

| & Time Burglars' on SlideShare">View

”InformationWeek story on Merlin's Macworld '08 presentation” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 18, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Grids, The Rule of Thirds, and Rethinking Slide Presentations

Merlin — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:58:58 -0500

Presentation Zen
by Garr Reynolds

I received my contributor copy of Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen book last week and proceeded to devour it over the weekend. A fuller review is coming to this space soon, because this is the book about presentations that’s needed to be written for years, and it’s just fantastic. Best of all it’s not another recipe book about “how to make slides” – this is about re-imagining how your entire presentation will work together as a persuasive and integrated show, from conception through delivery. Awesome.

Anyhow, with my inaugural Macworld talk looming on the horizon (T-minus 16 days, thanks), I’ve been inspired by Garr’s book (and the top-notch site on which it’s based) to, among other things, try revamping the approach to how slides ﬁt in to my overall show. As I said on the Twitter, that starts with shit-canning the PowerPoint-y Keynote templates I’ve previously torn up and pasted together for stuff like Inbox Zero (here’s the slides for that one, which Garr was kind enough to feature in his book).

But, now, rather than strictly trying to reinvent the wheel, I have a quest. A quest for a crazy-simple, design-centric Keynote template that’s more about composition than gradients and 3-D bullet points. Ever heard of The Rule of Thirds?

Yeah, you probably have. Like the wikipedia article says:

The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in photography and other visual arts such as painting. The rule states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph.

Here’s a good example off that wikip page. (image by Moondigger [CC-By-SA-2.5])

And the one-third grid works. So much so that in apps like iPhoto ‘08, the Crop tool automagically adds a Rule of Thirds overlay grid to help you improve the composition of your cropped image. Go ahead, try it.

The Rule of Thirds (and the related Golden Ratio) have come up on Garr’s site before, and on page 151 of his book, he talks about how a grid like this can provide a level of light constraint that makes your layout easier and more harmonious:

Using grids to divide your slide “canvas” into thirds, for example, is an easier way to approach golden-mean proportions, and you can use the grids to align the elements that give the overall design balance, a clear ﬂow and point of focus, and a natural overall cohesiveness and aesthetic quality that is not accidental but is by design.

And, how. So, I want this for Keynote.

I’ve begun lightly noodling with a new set of Masters that’s built around a Rule of Thirds grid (trashing the whole Center MacCentercenter approach), but before I get ahead of myself, I ﬁgure why not cast my line towards the more gifted waters of the LazyWeb ﬁrst…

The Question to You

Have you tried using grids like the Rule of Thirds in your own slide decks? Got a favorite layout or inspiring grid structure that works well for a slide’s aspect ratio? Got great advice on getting out of the stock slide template look? Links to graphical examples welcomed. Winning high-ﬁve goes to folks who are willing to share the actual Keynote template they’ve used.

”Grids, The Rule of Thirds, and Rethinking Slide Presentations” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 31, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

How I Made My Presentations a Little Better

Merlin — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:51:49 -0400

Since my Google Tech Talk (previously) caught ﬁre last month (it’s gotten over 100,000 views so far), I’ve been receiving a lot of really nice email, comments, and questions about how I put my presentations together. I’m happy to oblige.

First, of course, please understand that I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert about this stuff – I’m barely even a student. I’ve cobbled together whatever I have right now based mostly on the work of much smarter and more talented people, so I’m not claiming to have invented any of this stuff. I’ve been fortunate to ﬁnally start ﬁguring out the right mix of visuals and presentation style that (I hope) works for my personality and what I have to say.

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve been learning so far, starting with the giants on whose shoulders I’d love to stand.

Presentation Zen

I’ll confess that I giggled like a schoolgirl when Garr Reynolds said he was featuring my Google Talk on his site today. Especially since I’ve studied his own slides, posts, and links for months now, and have stolen liberally from what I learned there. Thanks, Garr. I’m totally honored.

I love that Garr gets how the slides in your presentation are about visual story-telling that complements your presence and speaking. They are not a script to be acted-out, or a book to be printed and read aloud, word for word.

Some of my favorite links on his site led me to learning more about Guy Kawasaki’s approach and to seeing the power in the simplicity of “the Takahashi Method”.

Again: all inspiring stuff, even if you don’t precisely emulate or follow every tip on the site.

Beyond Bullet Points

I learned about this book from Matt Haughey, and I agree with Matt that the premise of the book is just invaluable.

While you will get most of the (often-re-re-repeated) gist quickly, the message of Cliff Atkinson’s book is worth tattooing on your forehead: “Tell a story that makes the audience into the protagonist, then demonstrate how your approach to solving their problem will help them win in the end.” (Paraphrasing, but I think that’s pretty close)

Also, suck up your pride, and make yourself ﬁll out Cliff’s Word template (available here) for telling your story. Even if you don’t use it as the basis for your ﬁnal presentation, you might ﬁnd the experience more useful than any other single thing you do to improve your show. Helped mine a lot.

Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule

Although I don’t always follow Guy’s rule, it’s always in the back of my mind. So much so, that, in my opinion, if you’re really struggling with your visuals, it’s worth making “10-20-30” a rule that you break only with mindful and deliberate care. At least until you’re more comfortable with what you want to say, and how you want to say it, hew to Guy’s party line:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

Get in, get out, and don’t make people squint. Awesome.

iStockPhoto

I love the look of a very simple graphic alongside a very few words. It’s something Steve Jobs does really well, and it’s a look I wanted to steal.

iStockPhoto is my favorite resource for ﬁnding inexpensive images to license for presentations. Their search engine is swell, and their lightboxes make it easy to snag interesting images and save them for potential use in the future (which I recommend you do as you browse on each visit – regardless of the speciﬁc preso you’re there to shop for).

43F: Your best tip on doing presentations

The response from readers on this thread was amazing, and it taught me a dozen great techniques and tricks that I’m trying to put into use every time I prepare to speak now.

What I’ve (ﬁnally) learned about presenting

I’m still pretty C+ at this stuff, myself, and free advice is worth what you paid for it, but here’s my favorite things I’ve learned about actually getting up there, in front of a crowd of warm bodies.

Do a cold open

Metaphorically: clear your throat as little as possible when you start. Try to open with something in the real world – an anecdote, a memory, an image, something that grounds your talk in the “right now” and that skips the whole “Here are the nine things you will learn today…” jibber jabber. You can always do an introduction second, once you’ve set the tone and gotten people’s interest.

Work the notes ﬁeld

I capture the 2-4 mini-points I want to hit in each slide’s Notes ﬁeld (Can I just mention? I love Keynote!). I make the type ginormous and start each line with 1-2 ALLCAPS words that are a glance-able cue for the point to make. I can riff and boogie all I want, then know where I need to land to keep things moving in the way I want.

Think: “Stephen Colbert”

You know how Stephen Colbert does “The Wørd?” He directly addresses the audience while “slides” appear next to his head acting as a kind of Greek chorus. He not only doesn’t acknowledge the slides – they often contradict exactly what he is saying. (This is what makes this – as we say in the business – “funny”)

I’m not suggesting your slides should undermine you, but consider sometimes showing images and text that make an orthogonal point to what you’re saying aloud to the audience at that moment. Let them discover the point (or the joke) without you leaning on it.

Let the slide serve your message, rather than letting you (and your personality and timing) be governed by the slide. That’s ‘death,’ and that’s “The Wørd.”

Finish early

Man, I’ve always been terrible at this, and it turns out it’s about the rudest thing you can do.

Running long not only says you weren’t properly prepared for the time you were allotted, it leaves no time for the best part of every presentation for me: the Q&A. I love interacting with the audience and getting a chance to apply all that hand-waving to real-world questions.

There’s tons more for me to learn, but it’s already been a lot of fun to take this information and test it on the road.

It’s an exhilarating experience to get to talk to people about something that genuinely excites you. I believe that ﬁnding a way to get them excited, too, is essentially what this stuff is all about.

”How I Made My Presentations a Little Better” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 23, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"