One of the best ways to improve your presentations is to think about your message and make it clear and easy for your audience to understand. To do that, sometimes all it takes is looking at your current presentation and taking out the stuff that’s unnecessary. You can also use the following techniques while going through each draft of your presentation.
The 3 ways I talk about in the video are:

  1. Unnecessary repetition
  2. More than one point per slide
  3. Make your presentation shorter

Check out the video or read the full transcript below. If YouTube is unavailable in your area, please watch or download the video here: 3 Ways To Take the Garbage Out of Your Presentations

Video length: 3:04


In this video I’m going to show you three ways to create a lean, mean presentation by taking the garbage out of your presentations.

In Korea, we have one of the best recycling and garbage management systems that I know of.

When we take out the garbage at home, we get to live in a cleaner, healthier environment. The same can be said for presentations when you take out some of the unnecessary stuff that’s in there. What you’ll get is a presentation that’s clear, concise, and that moves along at a good pace.

So here are three ways to take the trash out of your presentation.

First, take out any unnecessary repetition or filler words. It’s good to have a key message that you repeat, which is something I’ve talked about before. But you might be overusing certain words. For example, words like “basically” or “actually”. And when you’re practicing, see if you use certain filler words a lot, such as “like” or sounds such as “um”. Get rid of those because they make you sound unprofessional and unprepared, two of the biggest presentation sins.

Second, take out content that doesn’t support or add to your presentation’s message or purpose. In other words, you have to put your thinking cap on and consider what your audience really wants to hear. For example, it’s probably unnecessary to have an extended introduction if your audience is already familiar with you or your company. A lot of times, it’s better to just get to the point.

And the third and final way to take the garbage out of your presentations is to make your presentation shorter. Whatever length your presentation first appears to be, edit the content for clarity and flow and shorten the presentation. For example, if your presentation is 10 minutes long, I’ll bet you could trim it down to seven or eight minutes, or even 5 minutes if you think about how to better communicate your message. This not only leaves you with extra time for Q and A, but your message will be clear to your audience and they’ll thank you for not making them sit through a presentation that’s too long.

There you go! Three ways to take the trash out of your presentations. And those three ways were:

  • First, take out any unnecessary repetition or filler words.
  • Second, take out content that doesn’t support or add to your presentation’s message or purpose.
  • And third, make your presentation shorter by editing the content for clarity and flow.

Thanks for watching and talk to you again soon.