Analog first – *then* digital

So, I’ve got a presentation lined up for next week. I’ve talked about this stuff before. Take a couple of slide decks, add a few slides to reflect new work… This is gonna be *easyyyy*

First, lets find those decks. Hmmm…. where did I put them? Okay – let’s try this directory. That one sounds right. Fire it up…. Nope – not what I was thinking of, but I like those slides – let’s keep this one open.

Now the next directory… Aww – forget it. I’ll use my desktop search. Great. 25 matches. Wait – that’s the one that I want. Terrific. And those two – yep – they’ve got some slides I want.

Great. Now, let’s take my base presentation and change the name. Now let’s import some possibly useful slides. Okay… can I just copy/paste? No – weird things happen with the formatting. Let’s import slides from file… great – what directory are those other slides in? Bring them to the front, one by one. Get file info. Okay… Browse…. what slide numbers do I want? Okay – there they are. And now they are in. Other slides packages, same dance.

Finally – I’ve got my slides. Let’s look at these. Oh geeze – Times New Roman in some slides, Arial in others, and what’s this other font? Nope – can’t use that one – I don’t trust the machine I’m going to use to have the fonts. Okay – let’s make it all Arial. I *hate* arial, but it’s sans serif and every machine has it. Let’s go to slide master, change all the fonts. Apply. Good. How’s that?

Damn – I forgot the text boxes. I have to go and fix those individually. Geeze..*how* many slides? Okay – gonna have to cut that back. And what’s with all those damn bullets? I gotta have a graphic that’ll work better than that.

Hold on – what did I want to talk about? Oh geeze – this is all crap. Damn. Okay – let’s start over. File… New Presentation….

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I don’t know about you, but all to often I go through something like the above. A presentation that should be a”gimmee” becomes an hour of busywork before I realize what I’m working on is total garbage. It shouldn’t be that way though. It doesn’t *have* to be that way.

Go analog first. Turn off your screen (you’ll only be distracted by the e-mail anyhow). Get out a pad of paper and a pen. Find a comfy spot if you can. And start thinking about what you want to say. Don’t worry about the slide decks you already have. Just sit down and write out a few points. Now lay them out into the order you want. Make a few notes about the graphics you want. Maybe sketch out an arrangement. If there are some key phrases or themes you want to use, write them down.

Make a mistake? Scratch it out. Rip up the paper, start over. Doesn’t matter.

Note what is happening here. By going analog you are concentrating on your content, not on the fonts, not arguing with your slide software, not searching for a missing slide package. Sure – you may end up doing that later, but at least you will have a clear idea of what you want. The presentation has taken precedence. After you’ve sorted out the presentation, then turn your screen back on and work on creating the slides.

In the end you will have saved time, and your presentation will be stronger because you focussed on it early and clearly. Try it.

Analog first. Then go digital. Your audience will thank you.

[Techniques] Using analogies

The other day I was reading an article about possible water shortages in the future. Now, I have to admit that I have always kind of blown these stories off. I grew up next to a river and 15 minutes from a lake. I went to university about 2 hours drive from a number of glaciers, and the spring flood in town was an annual ritual. My first post-doc was at the juncture of two large lakes, and for my second post-doc I lived on the rainy side of the island of Hawaii.

So the idea of a water shortage seemed to be a bit of, well, fear mongering or something. It certainly didn’t seem real, and although intellectually I could see it being a problem in some parts of the world it certainly wasn’t something that affected, well, me.

But this article quoted a scientist who finally got me to understand, and he did it through an analogy.

In Canada, where I live, we are blessed with abundant water. But the water supply (located in the north, away from the major population centers) was deposited thousands of years ago by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age; this is the water that we are using up and that is not being replenished. The analogy that the scientist made was to consider the water supply as our retirement account. The water initially deposited by the glaciers is the initial principal, and the interest on the account is the water re-deposited by rain. Given this set-up, the scientist made the point that we are currently spending our principal, and the interest is not enough to make up for the spending. The inevitable result – someday we will run out of principal…. water.

I found this to be a powerful analogy in a couple of ways. First, it was easily accessible to everyone – scientist or not – as it relates to a situation that we all have to consider in our financial planning. Secondly, by using this analogy the scientist was able to bypass the skepticism that I held relating to the water supply, and if I accepted the analogy I had to accept (or at least think about) the conclusion – that we do indeed need to better manage our water supplies or risk running our account – and our country – dry.

Those two conclusions show the power of analogies. They can help make a difficult concept easier to understand, and they can potentially help make a contentious point more palatable. Perhaps there are other uses – can you think of any?