Giving a Presentation
There are two good places to be when giving a speech, talk, or presentation.
The first is Hawaii.
No, sorry, that's a joke to lighten the mood and connect with my audience
The first is when you know the talk forward and backwards, down pat. This is the ideal.
The second good place is when you're familiar with the subject matter and have an outline to follow.
You can vamp and share your insights and thoughts, even if you might forget a detail of two. In between these two sweet spots is the Preparedness Danger Zone.
(next slide please)
The Preparedness Danger Zone is when you know the material pretty well, or you've written a speech you k ow you want to stick to, but you don't have it memorized. It's where you get if you write a long talk, sit on it for 8 months, and run it through the weekend before.
Why is this so bad? Because you k ow there's a script to follow, but you don't know it well enough to improvise.
So you can end up in a couple familiar failure states:
Either you read your slides or notes in a rote fashion, or you blaze through the material; you know it all.
Neither of these are good for the audience!
If you don't have time to get extremely familiar with a topic, don't.
Use the outline and fill in the blanks. Rely less on the notes feature on your slides. It's okay to leave some things out.