Once you've decided exactly what the topic is and what your goal is, for this presentation, I need you to really focus on what do you think is going to motivate your audience, to follow up on the goals to do what you want them to do so you accomplish your goal. Now, if it's in the classroom, you may simply want the other students in your room and the teacher to know that you know all the basic fundamental important things about this person's life and to put a spotlight on a handful of important moments. If you are asking your parents to go on a particular type of vacation, say to Disneyland, then you've got to ask yourself, what are the specific reasons that are most likely to motivate your parents to take you to Disneyland? So you've got to focus you can't just put forth every single fact.

Every single data, you can't say well, disneyland is open from Am to 10pm 1300 and 60. That's a fact about Disneyland. It's unlikely to motivate your parents to do what you want. So you can't look at all the facts of a person's life if you're giving a book report on their life, because if it's just the person was born on this day in this month in this year in 1872, who cares? Why should anyone really care about that unless you explain it in proper context. So the biggest problem for most people speaking whether they're students, whether they're adults, whether they're teachers, is they just throw out so much stuff.

That, frankly, isn't interesting. It's boring. It's just way too much stuff. So part of what you need to learn how to do right now is before you say something, talk a book report a presentation A request to your family. Ask yourself, is what I'm saying, truly going to be interesting? To the people in the room I'm speaking to?

Is it really going to be interesting and important to them? Or is it just going to seem really boring? And they're gonna think, oh, let me just ignore what this kid is saying. Let me check my email. So that's my big challenge to you. Always think about what's truly important.

If you're giving a five minute book report in class, you can't go through every single fact about someone's life. You may have to read an entire book, maybe three books on the person's life. If you were to say everything in those books, you'd have to stand up and talk for 20 hours. You're not going to give a 20 hour speech in class and nobody wants to listen to that. So you've really got to ask yourself, what is truly most important So much of being a good public speaker doesn't have anything to do without toll you or whether your voice becomes deep, complete nonsense. So much of being a good public speaker is about simply using judgment of what's interesting, and what isn't.

You already have judgment, you've been deciding your whole life. What TV shows are interesting, what's boring, what video games are interesting, what's boring. But teachers are interesting, what's boring. So you already know what's boring and what's not. So you need to apply that same rule. Two, the stuff you're talking about, focus on what's interesting.

So I need you to come up with a handful of messages that are going to make the case. Again, it doesn't matter if you're making a presentation to your parents and where to go for vacation. If you're giving a book report, a biography on someone, focus on what's right Really most important, the top five ideas. Now if you're giving a 20 minute presentation on an entire term paper that you've worked on for months, I understand you'll have to go beyond five points. But for starters, let's really make sure we know what's most important. We can always add more.

So that's your homework Now, come up with a list of the five most important points you're trying to convey in this presentation to your classmates, friends, family or teachers.