Speaking of presentation, we might first come up with fancy animations, well-designed slides, even like motion pictures. You can search for tons of presentation templates on the Internet, but the presentation really matters about styling? Fancy animation? Instead, it’s more than that.

Presentation is about communications and built based on storytelling. According to Darya Manukhina’s mind map made by XMind.

To begin with, let’s start from briefing a story.

Brainstorming

Simply jot down anything on your mind first in ZEN mode, and let one of them be your temporary central topic, then extend several main topics. If you have some ideas that temporarily cannot be categorized, simply put them aside. Forget about logical connections, or whether the point is reasonable or not for a moment.

Keep developing ideas and later use Outliner to find if it’s readable and reasonable. Switch between Outliner and mind mapping back and forth helps you to pick up what’s left behind, revise topics or bullet points, and even generate new ideas.

Prepare for a Presentation

We might get freaked out even we can memorize all the points when rehearsing alone, then get stuck when scrolling next slide, and later get lost in the delivery. Hence, leaving the audience with confusion.

Don’t let PowerPoint decide how you use PowerPoint, instead, define your way to deliver the presentation.

Presentation is never about fancy slides or non-stop animations, but your ideas and the clear delivery.

Mind mapping is a better tool to organize and reshape the clutter. Use ZEN mode to create a full-screen display, combining with related structure, for better display for your audience. Apply topic link to cut distractive slide transition, but replace it with a direct hit to the next topic Click here to check how topic link leaps between your topics).

2/4/8 Rule

Attention is like a melting iceberg. Keep each sheet/slide simple is comprehensive for the audience while keeping them to engage.

The 2/4/8 Rule stands for:

No more than 1 slide every 2 minutes. No more than 4 bullets per slide. No more than 8 words per bullet.

If the number of bullets is beyond 4, try to use the short and simple phrase, or replace them with an image for a pleasant reading experience. Use your delivery to enrich the topics, instead of asking people to focus solely on what’s shown on the screen.

In case of blank mind occurs, save Outliner as PDF and print it in hand for a quick catch-up or hint when presenting.

Relax, breathe and enjoy. May the force be with you.

For more useful presentation tips, visit: here.