3 things that go wrong when a presenter mismanages time
Posted by Marc Shiman on March 1, 2006
One of my real pet peeves in life is a presenter that doesn’t manage his/her time properly. Imagine what happens when a presenter realizes he/she only has 10 minutes left to present 25 minutes of material
- They go really really fast and cover all the material so that they can stuff it in and feel like they have accomplished their goal even though by this point nobody can understand a word they are saying and everything gets lost…. ok, you get the point
- They recognize they are running out of time, and they state “moving quickly now”, and then they proceed to cover all 25 minutes in… 25 minutes. Books are closed, pencils are down, one buttock cheek per person is off the chair, but on and on the presenter goes; tossing in an occasional “bear with me”
- At the end of the 10 minutes they cut off the presentation – THWAP! and well, if there was anything important in the missing end, read the book.
Please, I’m begging you – know how much time you have to present, and where you are (on time? ahead? behind?) NOT just at the end, but also halfway, 2/3, and 3/4 of the way through. If you are behind SKIP some slides that don’t matter. Remember what you want to achieve.
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Matthew Cornell said
Thanks for the reminders, Marc. I’ve started doing presentations “for real,” and I try to be keenly aware of errorslike this. Much better to do a good job (i.e., to communicate) than to cover an arbitrary amount of ground – I agree.