Productivity and the Presentation

Are you the employee that catches up on the latest celebrity drama every afternoon? Do you spend a linger a little longer at the water cooler after downing the last drop of liquid? How many times a week (or better yet, a day) do you catch yourself dozing off in the middle of a project? Let’s be real for a moment. You aren’t a machine. You’re a human. And 89% of us beautifully-flawed individuals take work time and shove it down the receptacle each and every day. The time we do trash amounts to 2 days out of the 5 in a standard work week. Put on your presenter shoes and walk a mile down this thought track. If the presentation point person is your average human being, he or she is working 3 out of 5 days on their daily job activities. Just imagine the small sliver of time this person is most likely to invest in a deck. Probably a half hour here or there. In order to create the presentation capable of producing the results you want, you must first evaluate internal processes and determine areas that could be more efficient, effective, and appealing to all involved parties. This analysis is comprised of two different pieces: the individual presenter (THE ONE) and the entire presentation design team (THE MANY). Both components of the presentation puzzle can harness knowledge of our cognitive limitations and implement valuable tools to improve productivity.

The One

1. Capture your thoughts

Wake Forest University School of Business associate dean and professor of management, Scott Shafer, argues that the lists we assemble and store in our minds may seem productive on the surface; however, they are recipe for disaster – disrupting the development of solutions. Oftentimes, taking notes is the first step towards a completed presentation.

Productivity Tips:

It seems obvious, but the suggestion to write ideas out in any fashion preferred really comes down to the practice of active thinking. Ask yourself the following questions if you are struggling to forge a path for your content:

  • What do our internal and external processes, overall strategy or mission, and past and current results remind me of as far as a general theme/concept?
  • What conflict have we experienced as a company or have our clients or customers experienced with our products/services that could enhance comprehension of the narrative?
  • How will X event impact the next section? What purpose does it serve in driving the story?
  • What is the overall message I am trying to convey through this deck?
  • What is the most significant idea, information, or event in the assets I am working from for this presentation?

Store your notes in a single place; we recommend using Evernote, an accessible note-taking application. Create an Evernote document solely for jotting down the parts of your presentation that you are most stressed or concerned about. Categorize those stresses into 2 separate headings: Manageable and Unmanageable. Devise a plan to fix the problems you can and lay those you can’t to rest.

Productivity and Presentation

2. Inspire action

Francesco Cirillo founded a time management and productivity methodology called the Pomodoro technique in the late 1980s. The premise of the hack is this: following every 25 minutes of highly-focused work, a presenter would jot an ‘X’ on a piece of paper. If an ‘X’ doesn’t motivate you, find some item that does to use as a reward for accomplishing every mini-goal. By engaging in reward-seeking behaviors, presenters will utilize different areas of their brains. Through a recent Vanderbilt study, those willing to exert the effort required for rewards increased the level of dopamine in two primary brain regions – the striatum and prefrontal cortex. On the other hand, those less swayed by rewards experience a slight increase in dopamine in the anterior insula, which plays a significant role in matters of emotion and risk assessment. Let’s say you are not fully invested in the presentation. Chances are, you have a dopamine shortage and have deemed the costs of creating better content or a more sophisticated design as outweighing the benefits. So there is an entirely different issue to solve than reduced productivity.

Productivity Tips:

Combine the Pomodoro technique with a rewards-based system to achieve optimal productivity as you prepare your presentation. With RescueTime, the productive presenter can track and categorize their online activity. The application enables presenters to set a project goal focused on time and set reminders to reward productive behavior – whether it be by writing a definitive ‘X’ on a sheet of paper or popping a sweet mint in your mouth.

The Many

1. Prioritize collaboration

Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies researcher, Alexander Michael Petersen, studied 473 scientists and their respective publications. His findings suggest that researchers who unite as long-term partners for projects produce 17% more published articles. But that’s not where the benefits of collaboration end. In fact, including a group component in the design of a presentation enhances accountability. This is because social facilitation encourages accountability on the part of individuals within one group. For example, if you are tasked with providing an outline of the presentation narrative structure, social facilitation theory posits that you will be most effective if you are around others. While you don’t necessarily have to be around your group members to harness the power of the theory, the professional presenter would find the strategy to be advantageous. The Hawthorne effect is evidence for the validity of social facilitation as it describes the positive impact on production of outside observation. It would likely demonstrate your commitment to the slides, as well as motivate you to perform at the highest standard possible so as not to disappoint your teammates.

Productivity Tips:  

Although strong communication is a crucial component of collaboration, email tends to be the platform where most of the discussions occur during the project time period. In today’s increasingly digital environment, the need for real-time solutions to problems is on the rise. And so is the number of messages flooding our inboxes. A productive presentation team needs to ditch email for a more intuitive and free-flowing format. Slack, a tool offering instant messaging, archiving, and search capabilities, maintains transparency among team members, while also enhancing organization and expediting the decision-making.

2. Promote a proactive mindset

The biggest mistake any company, organization, or group can make is the neglect of their yearly presentation schedule. Every entity is acutely aware of their product launch dates and milestones or important industry events. The same thought and preparation needs to go into presentations. The more prepared you are in the weeks prior to an event, the more productive you will be in all aspects of presentation design. For example, allow at least 3 and at most 5 weeks for most presentations – from determining the concept and theme to storyboarding the content and establishing the visual look and feel. Then, get even more granular with the planning process. Each meeting you schedule with your presentation team should include an agenda of sorts, but more like a checklist of items you absolutely need to cover and make actionable decisions on to ensure that progress is being made on the project.

Productivity Tips:

Do you need to assign certain tasks to specific individuals? Try using Float to allocate time and resources to each member of your presentation team. Keep everyone accountable to the project timeline with Basecamp. The online project management platform has a calendar on the dashboard which displays the daily deliverables clearly and concisely.

Conclusion

Although there are multiple tools individuals and groups can use to improve productivity, the main indicator of success for any presentation is the amount of engagement and ownership every person involved has in the project. But today, you can make personal steps in the right direction by taking notes and indulging in some self-motivation. As a group, foster a positive and efficient environment of collaboration and encourage the adoption of a proactive mindset. For more information to guide you towards your perfect presentation, check out the resources below:

Your Brain, Your Productivity

How to Kickstart Your Productivity: 33 Tips in 140 Characters or Less

Procrastinating on Your Presentation? Here’s How to Get Motivated.

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