Play it by ear

Right now, I think the most important part of a presentation is practice, and I believe the most of people know “practice makes perfect”. However, if you practice in a wrong way, it will hurt your results.

In a post I just found, the author wrote about how his presentation goes wrong after he spent a whole night to practice.

He wrote detailed scripts and practiced it over and over again. It was working really well if there was no unexpected situation. When something happened, like his PowerPoints went wrong, he was stuck.

Then he figured out the solution: “So I went back to the strategy that worked at the aquarium, with the dead herons and unpredictable sea life: build a structure, not a script. Leave room to improvise, and to respond to the unexpected.” (Thorp,2015).

Anything can go wrong in your presentation. You can’t have the fluke mind of hoping the presentation will go without accidents. Also, if you present by memorizing every word, the deliveries of your presentation will sound rote and robotic. Another point that I think may be useful for us is “Don’t Follow a Straight Line” (Thorp,2015).

It means do not present in a fixed structure, like the beginning, the middle and the end. The audience may get bored if a speaker uses that structure. The author like tell some small stories, and then make a point as a whole at the end. This is a great strategy. We need to make our presentation more interesting to attract audience’s attention.

So don’t try to memorize every word that you wrote for your presentation. Just keep the most important idea in your mind, and play it by ear. Also, you should try to find an attractive structure to catch audience’s attention.

References:

Thorp, J. (2015, October 23). The Three Things I’ve Learned From Eighteen Years of Public Speaking. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@blprnt/the-three-things-i-learned-from-eighteen-years-of-public-speaking-875f01178902