Imagine you’ve just settled down on a seat in the business class on Amtrak about to enjoy reading your Wall Street Journal. And then some joker behind you conducts a loud cell phone conversation with his spouse about who has the more annoying mother in-law.
Are you happy yet?
Imagine you have just unwound in first class on an airplane trip from New York to Los Angeles. The only thing you have on your mind is being able to read some new James Frey fiction. But then sitting in front of you are two “blow hards†who insist on pontificating loudly on why the President you hold in greatest contempt will ultimately deserve is head on Mt. Rushmore.
Are you steamed yet?
Yes, those can be annoying people. But even if they were being polite, the reality is that it is very hard to read when people are talking around you. In order to read, we need to be able to “hear†ourselves think.
Everyday, in my public speaking training practice, I wage a war, not against PowerPoint slides, but against PowerPoint slides that contain text. Why, because I am convinced that nobody wants to read while someone else is speaking, i.e. the brilliant speaker who put up the slides in the first place.
I routinely test clients on their ability to recall information presented on PowerPoint slides. Their recall is extremely high when the slides contain pictures and images reflecting a single idea. However, recall goes to nearly zero when my clients are tested on slides that contain text without images.
Sadly, most speakers lack self-awareness. They fill their slides with text because that is the easy, lazy way of preparing a PowerPoint presentation. But these speakers shouldn’t kid themselves, they are no different then the loud talking cell-phone user in the seat behind you on the train who is too lazy to walk back to the diner car before making a call in front of strangers.
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