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How to Manage Time

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About this lesson

How to manage time when preparing, rehearsing and giving your presentation.

  • 00:05 So how do you manage your time when you're giving a presentation?
  • 00:10 If this is a problem, let's look at the source of the problem.
  • 00:13 Quite often.
  • 00:14 The biggest source of the problem is you didn't give thought to time
  • 00:18 when creating your presentation.
  • 00:20 What most people do is they spend all their time gathering more facts,
  • 00:24 gathering more data points, building more slides, more bullet points per slide.
  • 00:30 Figuring, if they just tell people everything they know about the subject,
  • 00:34 they will cover their, you know what, and no one can criticize them.
  • 00:39 That's a profoundly negative, defensive mentality when going into a presentation.
  • 00:45 And it almost guarantees you're going to have timing problems,
  • 00:48 because you're gonna look at the clock or someone is gonna hold up a sign and you're
  • 00:53 going to have two minutes left and you're only half way through your presentation,
  • 00:56 or a third of the way, and then it's panic and
  • 00:59 it sets off a negative chain reaction where you start speaking faster and
  • 01:03 faster and wasting time apologizing that you don't have that much time.
  • 01:09 Big problem.
  • 01:11 Now as you remember from our initial discussions in this course,
  • 01:16 I recommend you narrow your points down to literally a handful.
  • 01:22 Even if you have a two hour time slot for your presentation.
  • 01:26 Use the rest of your time for examples, case studies,
  • 01:30 stories, pictures, images to drive home those points.
  • 01:36 But the next thing you've got to do to make sure your timing is right is you have
  • 01:40 to practice out loud on video, and then you can see what the time is.
  • 01:46 What most people do is they read their speech silently, and
  • 01:51 they say, oh, wow, that only took seven minutes, and I have ten minutes.
  • 01:56 And then they get up and give the presentation in real life and
  • 01:59 12 minutes in, they're a third of the way through.
  • 02:02 It takes a lot longer to talk to people than it does to read in your own head.
  • 02:08 So never, ever get your timing by how long it takes to read in your head.
  • 02:13 You must speak it out loud.
  • 02:15 You've gotta put the pauses in.
  • 02:19 You have to allow for time to move around a little, for people to ask questions.
  • 02:25 So you gotta practice on video, and
  • 02:27 make sure the length of the video is the time that you want to be speaking.
  • 02:32 Now in many presentations, you want to allot time for
  • 02:36 questions at the end, or throughout.
  • 02:41 The bigger issue is you have to be comfortable enough with your material.
  • 02:44 You have to know your material enough, so that if all of a sudden you've got more
  • 02:49 time than you planned, or less time than you planned, you can react accordingly.
  • 02:55 Not by speaking faster than usual, but
  • 02:58 by focusing on what's most important.
  • 03:03 So if all of a sudden, the CEO or the most important person asks
  • 03:08 a very detailed question that has nothing to do with your presentation, which you've
  • 03:13 got to give them ten minutes on that, and now you've lost half of your time,
  • 03:19 in your own head you have to figure out what's most important, what can I cut out?
  • 03:24 You're far better off,
  • 03:26 using the remaining ten minutes to really nail those two points.
  • 03:31 With example case studies and stories,
  • 03:34 they're trying to quickly cover ten points and nobody remembering anything.
  • 03:40 Other tips for timing, what I do,
  • 03:43 when I'm giving a presentation, if there's not a big clock visible on the room.
  • 03:47 I'll just take my watch off and I'll put it on a table or
  • 03:52 a lectern, and that way I can be aware of it.
  • 03:54 Some of you, some of you think I'm old cuz I have a watch, you can also use your
  • 03:58 cellphone and put the timer function on it, so you can be aware of it.
  • 04:04 These are all tips that will help you with timing but
  • 04:07 also realize if you've realized if you've covered all the points and
  • 04:11 you're interesting and you we're memorable and you answer people's questions,
  • 04:17 there's nothing wrong with finished ahead of schedule.
  • 04:20 No one ever complains about that.
  • 04:24 And if everyone is on the edge of their seat, and there's not an immediate speaker
  • 04:29 coming right after you, and there's not a hard, hard deadline like five o'clock,
  • 04:34 and you know people have to catch trains, then going a few minutes longer typically
  • 04:40 isn't the end of the world when it's your own meeting, your own organization.
  • 04:43 Obviously respect time limits if you're a part someone else structure,
  • 04:49 conference or meeting.
  • 04:51 Follow these tips and your timing of your presentation will be just right.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

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02m:33s
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