Have you ever struggled to give up a bad habit? Something you knew was unhelpful, unproductive but it was just so easy to slip back into despite knowing many reasons why you shouldn’t be? Your presentation style is probably the same and these are the common excuses for not changing:
- I’m going to reduce the number of bulletpoints
- I need some bulletpoints
- I don’t have time to plan like that
- I’m only going to use it as a prompt rather than a script
- It’s what the audience expect
- NEXT time, when I have more chance
- Not this time, it’s an important meeting
- I don’t have time to practise
- You just don’t understand how hard this is.
These are excuses, not reasons. I do understand that breaking a bad habit is difficult. And you understand that your current method of delivering presentations is bad. So, stub it out, stop right now, go cold turkey don’t just make excuses. It won’t be easy and of course it won’t be perfect the first time. But was your last presentation perfect? Imagine how good it will feel to say, “Today, I didn’t do a bad presentation.”