It's strange how things seem to bunch together into trends, the last week or so it's all been about keeping things short. It seemed to start just after I put up that last post, weird that. So I've been thinking about ways to cut down your talk, maybe just because it's too long, or maybe because you're facing the serious challenge of saying a lot of stuff in five minutes or even less. One way you could try is to first write down everything you want to say (you don't need to write every single word, just enough so that you can remember what the full sentences would be). Aim for approximately the right length of time but it doesn't matter if you're a fair bit over. Then talk your way through all your material and just see how long it takes. Now you know how big the problem is. Maybe there are some things that you can take away already, and having experienced how much excess material you have, the resulting adrenaline level may help you here. Chop as much as you can. Now talk through it all again. Still panicking? Take off some more. When you're getting closer to the right length of time then you can start taking away smaller pieces. Details, complicated ways of saying things, lists with more than three items,etc. Can you think of any similes are metaphors that will save even more time? Do you have any pictures you could use?
So now you're hopefully fairly close but either way, here's something to think about if you want to both shorten your talk and get across your message. For each sentence or statement pick out the really important keywords. There are not usually so many. Use a highlighter pen to mark them.When you speak, these are the words that you need to put the emphasis on and if you put plenty of emphasis on these then you can also take it away from some of the small words between them. Try to figure out the absolute minimum number of words that you need people to hear in order for the message to get across. This serves two purposes, making sure the key message sticks as well as saving precious seconds on the things that you don't actually need to say, people will understand anyway. Of course this also makes your voice easier to listen to when you vary the emphasis on different words. You can see this as the same process as reducing text on a slide down to 3 bullet points with maybe only two or three words for each. There are really an awful lot of things that you don't need to either write or say in order to get the message across, and doing an exercise like this you may be surprised at how few words actually carry the core of your message.
Of course this is just one way to work and one way to look at the principal of keeping a talk really short. You can never ignore the absolutely key activity of first considering who the audience are and what your main message is (see an earlier post). Does anyone have any other tips about keeping it short?
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