ONE THE BADDEST WAY TO PREPARE

Start Breaking the Rules Before You Even Hit the Stage

There’s just too much going on in presentations: information to remember, slides crammed with data, your pulse racing, and all those rotten rules to follow. Focus, people, focus! You need to peel away the excess stuff that gets in the way of efficient, authentic presenting.

Let’s put on our geek hats and consider why this matters. Neuroscience is uncovering more and more information about the importance of focus. David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz have done insanely cool research into how our brains connect to our leadership abilities and to our everyday human behavior. As we dump behaviors that stand in our way (i.e., break old rules) and replace them with new ways to focus our thoughts and energy, we are actually rewiring our brains. Being ourselves becomes easier and easier if we focus on it.

Over time, paying enough attention to any specific brain connection keeps the relevant circuitry open and dynamically alive. These circuits can then eventually become not just chemical links but stable, physical changes in the brain’s structure… the brain changes as a function of where an individual puts his or her attention. The power is in the focus.

So instead of focusing on what you’re doing wrong (which the rules of presenting just love to do), focus on your strengths and being yourself. Get this: if you focus on new behaviors, you can change your brain to embrace patterns that make you a better, more authentic speaker. Rock and Schwartz call it “attention density,” and it applies to many areas of human behavior, as well as mood and learning skills. Put simply, if you start presenting in new ways, your brain will open up circuits to support your confidence and capabilities. If that doesn’t make you feel like you have a bionic brain, I don’t know what will.

Passion and focus may seem like surprising ideas with which to begin talking about presentations. Most discussions start with the rules. But trust me: it’s all part of the business of getting down to business. If you can let your passion out of the stable to run free, you can certainly try a few new techniques to replace the old rules.

There’s impact and influence in knowing just what you want to share and doing it at just the right time. And that means you can use techniques that feel right for you. Whenever a technique gets in the way of you being authentic, it’s time to break the rules.

So let’s do it. Let’s break fourteen of those archaic rules and instead present in a way that feels good, fun, and really bad.

Break This Rule