I am currently reading Brain Rules by John Medina . It is an excellent book about how our brain works and it has important lessons for everyone. John Medina is a molecular biologist who has shared 12 rules about how our brain works. He calls these brain rules. His rules are based on proper research. I will be sharing some of these rules here which are relevant for presenters. This is the first post about this book. Rule #4 Attention: We don't pay attention to boring things What has John Media said: 1) If we pay complete attention, we learn better. We remember better and remember more accurately. 2) Our attention span is only 10 minutes. 3) We pay attention to things we can relate to. We pay attention to things we like or are important to us. We pay attention to something unusual or unexpected. We pay attention when we get emotional. John Medina says, "Emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events." This basically means that emot...

Recently I was part of a press conference. This post captures my thoughts on how one should prepare and speak at a corporate press conference. If you are going to speak at a press conference this post will be of special interest to you. I will begin with four main lessons. 1. Your audience (the print and electronic media) is short of time. They want you to quickly wrap up your presentation. So keep your content very short and simple . Total presentation time should not be more than 15 minutes. 2. The stakes are very high at a press conference. No company can afford to be caught on the wrong foot. That is why, you need to prepare well for all possible questions. The media will ask you questions and you need to answer them promptly. 3. Plan your content well. Press conference is organised so that media will talk about you. So that TV channels say what you want them to say and newspapers write what you want them to write. Hence you need to know what is it that you want ...

When we use list of bullet points in a presentation, we normally write down all the points at once. Here is an example. I attended a presentation today wherein the presenter presented 20 slides like these. As a rule, I discourage using bullet points but there are situations when bullets work. If you have to use them then avoid putting all the points at once. Use animation and make the bullets appear one by one. So when you talk about the first law of motion, the first bullet is only visible. When you move to the second law, then the second bullet appears and so on. Click here to find out how to do this. Why? Because when such a slide appears, the audience starts reading it. At the same time the presenter it talking about point 1. There is a clash. Do I read all points or listen to the presenter? I am reading point 2 while the presenter is still taking about point 1. As a presenter you want them to listen to you, make sure you do not put all points at once. Either use animati...