How Much Is Too Much in a Presentation?

There’s a pretty good chance you are busier today than you were five or ten years ago. So is everyone else I meet. So is everyone you face in a presentation.

It’s a common complaint: “I’m so busy. I never have enough time.”

Why everyone is in that situation is a topic for another day, but recognizing that there is a universal condition of feeling overwhelmed is an important step toward building the content in your next presentation.

Avoid Too Much in Your Presentations

Presentations work pretty much along the same lines of most things your mother probably taught you as a kid: Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.

When it comes to content in your presentation, keep in mind that your audience is probably already overwhelmed with the 9,573 things on their to-do list. They don’t have much breathing room.

Cramming one more key point, one more slide, one more spreadsheet, one more study into your presentation doesn’t usually serve your audience.
It overwhelms them.

Stick to the Rule of 3

When constructing your presentation outline, have the discipline to limit your key points to no more than three. You don’t have to use three. Just don’t use more than three.

If you go beyond three key points, you will usually overwhelm your audience, leaving them with more information than they can process and you’ll lose control of what information they take away from your presentation.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Gerry Sandusky – View the original post .