I have a hunch that some of the ideas in the first lesson may have already alerted you to the fact that becoming an expert presenter takes more than a PowerPoint slide deck. In this lesson, we're going to discuss how to plan your presentation by a show of hands how many of you just open up PowerPoint and begin preparing your slide deck? Hmm, more than a few of you, I suspect. Sometimes the structure of presentation is obvious or follows a predetermined format. Other times it's more freeform. For really big topics that have a lot of information to convey, I will sometimes use a mind map.

For example, this course on presentation skills is a huge topic. And on the screen before you can see the mind map I created all the different topics that I want to include in this course. This Mind Map got distilled down to an outline and this outline got converted into a script of speaking points. And then finally, I develop PowerPoint presentation to support the message. Developing powerful presentations takes conscious planning. avoid the temptation to start sticking a bunch of words or graphs on a bunch of slides.

I'm sure many of you have heard of or seen or possibly even attended a TED talk conference, Ted Talk conferences are all about spreading worthwhile ideas. And this is achieved by having thought leaders speak on their ideas for no more than 18 minutes. It turns out that 18 minutes is not some random time limit imposed on the speakers to keep the agenda moving. No 18 minutes is the amount of time that researchers have found to be the ideal length. It's long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people's attention in a less politically correct way. Winston Churchill conveyed the same idea all those years ago.

The scientific explanation relates to something called cognitive backlog. When too much information is conveyed, the transmission of ideas gets jumbled and the brain starts shutting down. Realize that the act of listening is draining, often more so than physical labor. The brain is actually an energy hog burning twice as much glucose is other cells in your body. After five minutes of listening to a speaker cognitive backlog begins to set in at 18 minutes, it's obviously more but it's not yet overwhelming the brain. However, it's 60 minutes.

There's so much backlog that there is a good chance your audience is getting upset and anxious. Think about a student's behavior as a class nears its finish. They fidget. They shuffle papers, they start packing up their things before the speakers finish speaking. By that point, their brains have shut off completely. 18 minutes has been proven to enable a thought provoking presentation.

With enough glucose in the brain still left to think about the idea after it's Done, or to share the idea with others or to act on the idea presented. Think about cognitive backlog as you attend or present your next accounting standards update. Now back to the business world few of us are asked to present for 18 minutes, often an hour or two gets blocked off in our calendars 2% on various matters, a couple of points. First, if you're presenting for longer than 18 minutes, you need to build in some soft breaks every 20 minutes or so. A soft break might be a personal story or an activity for the audience something to break the monotony of your presenting voice. Perhaps you allow for a short q&a on your first idea.

Secondly, consider whether you need to present for the whole hour, you may present for 20 minutes, and then allow 40 minutes for an audience directed q&a session. How audience centric is that idea? Third, if you're doing a training session with your employees, I think three hour session is not going to be nearly as effective as three one hour sessions or 630 minute sessions. So ask yourself whether your presentation lends itself to separate modules. Our next big idea is to keep in mind the rule of threes. Have you ever noticed in life how things naturally occur in patterns of three?

Consider ABCs, the three R's, the three pigs, the three mice, the Three Bears, the three wisemen, the three pillars, you get the idea. There's actually a scientific reason for this as well. It turns out, the brain is conditioned to remember just three things or chunks in short term working memory, after which retention falls off considerably. So how do we incorporate this into our presentation plan? Well, first of all, you should be thinking about three key messages for your presentation. If you have more than three messages, you'll need to incorporate rest periods.

So for example, In this course you get three ideas in each lesson. And by breaking the course into lessons, there's a natural break between the lessons. So if you think of presenting your financial statements to the Board of Directors, instead of giving them a dozen things to think about, in your opening remarks, narrow the list of three items, three themes, three stories, you get the idea. Carmine Gallo is someone who has studied all the thousands of hours of TED Talks, looking for the answer to our question, what makes for an effective presentation, all of the best speakers use the rule of threes. To make their presentation more memorable. Gallo created what he calls a message map.

As an overall outline for the presentation. three key messages are all connected with what he calls the Twitter headline, which is a single overarching takeaway message for the audience, all in 140 characters or less. Each of the three messages are reinforced with three supporting statements that might be stories. Statistics are examples. On the screen in front of you is the message map for this lesson. What you're quickly going to find when you're forced to boil down your message to 18 minutes composed of three key messages with an introduction and an ending that we'll discuss in later lessons is that this is kind of hard to do.

But don't forget the presentation is not about you. It's about your audience, and they will appreciate the simple considerations. Ask yourself if you'd like your audience to recall three things from your presentation, or none at all. In this lesson, we covered three really important points. Before you build your next PowerPoint slides. Plan your presentation using mind maps message maps, and outlines.

Watch for cognitive backlog which arises anytime presentations go longer than 18 minutes. When presenting for longer than this. You must consider inserting soft breaks for your audience less you risk having your message fall on deaf ears. If you need further Evidence Think back to the last three hour class you took at one time during University. After a three hour lecture Did you walk away from the class feeling rejuvenated? dying to discuss what was learned with your fellow students, or reflect on the ideas shared?

Or did you instead go to the campus pub TV lounge or go to bed? Speaking of things that come in threes, we talked about the importance of the rule of threes, whenever possible chunk information into three points, much like summaries at the end of each lesson in this course, entirely by design. Before you prepare your next presentation, opening PowerPoint to begin, take a few minutes to plan your approach. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about delivering a killer opening. Until next time, I'm Blair cook