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B is for Black

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How and why to black out your screen during a PowerPoint presentation.

  • 00:04 You just heard me in the previous lecture sound,
  • 00:08 let's face itm kind of negative on special effects and
  • 00:12 the technology of PowerPoint even though I'm a big fan of PowerPoint.
  • 00:17 But there are some technological tricks that I think will help you give
  • 00:22 your PowerPoint presentation more effectively.
  • 00:27 For starters, if you want people to actually listen to you
  • 00:31 when you're talking, you shouldn't distract them with anything on the screen.
  • 00:35 And I mean with anything,
  • 00:36 don't have your big logo up or today's topic is presented by.
  • 00:40 If you want people to focus on what you're saying, spotlight should be just on you.
  • 00:48 Now, how do you do that if you have a PowerPoint presentation you're giving and
  • 00:53 it's up and it's on, especially if somebody else created the slide and
  • 00:57 you're giving it for your boss or someone else?
  • 01:01 Well, let me tell you the technological fix-it for this.
  • 01:07 You go up to the laptop, or the keyboard that's being used to run the PowerPoint,
  • 01:13 and you just hit the letter B.
  • 01:16 B for black, it blacks out the screen.
  • 01:21 Now the projector's still on, you haven't turned off the projector.
  • 01:25 The computer is still on, you haven't turned it off.
  • 01:28 You just hit B, it blacks it out.
  • 01:32 Works on any keyboard.
  • 01:35 If you hit any key whatsoever on your keyboard,
  • 01:39 it comes back right where it was.
  • 01:43 So, if you want people to listen to you, don't have them look at the screen.
  • 01:48 You want them to look at the screen, what I recommend doing, and
  • 01:51 what I do myself, shut your mouth.
  • 01:55 That's right, when I put something up on a screen,
  • 01:58 when I'm giving PowerPoint, I close my mouth.
  • 02:03 Stop, maybe turn, look at it, only for a couple of seconds because
  • 02:07 you follow my principles, you just have one image up there, it should only require
  • 02:13 being looked at for a couple of seconds, and then you've got it.
  • 02:18 So that's one trick.
  • 02:19 Hit letter B, blacks it out, any key brings it back.
  • 02:23 You can also hit the letter W.
  • 02:27 W whites it out.
  • 02:28 Now that's a bit harsh on the eye.
  • 02:30 Between the two,
  • 02:31 I much prefer black, because the white screen can be just so bright.
  • 02:37 But you heard me mention this in previous lectures.
  • 02:42 All of us think we're great multi-taskers, and yet
  • 02:44 all the research shows human beings are actually horrible multi-taskers.
  • 02:48 Look at all the deaths on the highways with people texting.
  • 02:52 But what do we, as public speakers, as presenters, do?
  • 02:57 We tell an audience, listen to me speak.
  • 02:59 No, read this stuff over here.
  • 03:02 No, look at this handouts here.
  • 03:04 We're constantly asking the audience to multi-task,
  • 03:09 boom boom boom, doing three things at once.
  • 03:12 Why do we do that?
  • 03:15 You don't really have any evidence to suggest that your audience is
  • 03:19 good at that.
  • 03:22 All the research shows if you give one person three things to do ask them to do
  • 03:26 all three at once, and you take another person and
  • 03:29 you say here's one task finish it, give them another task,
  • 03:32 let them finish it, give them the third test, let them finish it.
  • 03:36 This person here will finish sooner with
  • 03:39 fewer errors than the one person trying to do all three things at once.
  • 03:45 So what I recommend when you're giving a speech,
  • 03:47 ask people to do one thing at a time.
  • 03:50 If you're talking, don't have any slides up, don't have anything for them to read.
  • 03:57 If you want to give them something to read, a one page handout for example,
  • 04:03 shut your mouth, don't have any slides up, give them time to read it.
  • 04:10 If you want them to look at the slide, don't have any handouts and
  • 04:15 shut your mouth.
  • 04:16 Let them read it.
  • 04:20 I know it sounds radical, but when you really think about it, it's just common
  • 04:25 sense based on what you know already works on human beings.
  • 04:31 Those of you who have children, do you really think your children are better off
  • 04:34 listening to music, having the TV on, talking to their friends on the phone and
  • 04:40 doing their homework all at the same time, versus just doing their homework?
  • 04:45 Which is really more effective, regardless of what your kids tell you?
  • 04:50 Your audience is exactly the same.
  • 04:52 Now, you could say, well, our corporate culture,
  • 04:55 we do it, I don't care about your corporate culture.
  • 04:59 I care about the culture of your audience that they've been in their whole lives.
  • 05:04 People are in a culture where they're used to, if it's important,
  • 05:08 doing one thing at a time, because that's really how brains work most effectively.
  • 05:14 So, try not to distract people.
  • 05:19 The B is one way of doing that, that's also, I'm not a fan of the builds.
  • 05:24 When I say a build, that's when you have a slide, one sentence goes on, you hit
  • 05:29 a button, another sentence comes on, you advance, something else pops up.
  • 05:35 And it's kinda like one of the birds at the gas station checkout that's like this,
  • 05:39 you're sort of bopping up and down.
  • 05:41 It's very distracting, it's manipulative.
  • 05:44 It's kind of the poor man's, the poor woman's teleprompter.
  • 05:49 Awful way of using PowerPoint.
  • 05:53 Don't do it.
  • 05:53 There are technological things that can help.
  • 05:57 Stick with the simple ones.
  • 05:58 B for black, W for white.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Animation, Video and Special Effects
05m:42s
Time to Rehearse Your PowerPoint Presentation
05m:33s
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