Ready. Set. Go. (A Manifesto for 2026)


Every year people make resolutions about steps, sleep, inboxes, diets, finances, habits, fitness, mindfulness…
but almost no one makes a resolution about the thing we all do more than anything else:

Communicate.

We speak in meetings.
We teach.
We explain.
We pitch.
We persuade.
We present.
We stand up in front of rooms — small, large, virtual, fluorescent, hostile, bored — and we try to share ideas that matter.

Yet very few people ever say:

“This year, I’m going to be better at this.”

So here’s your one resolution for 2025:

Be better at sharing your ideas.

And here’s how you start.


🔴 READY — Before you open PowerPoint

When you're crafting a talk, it's easy to fall into the trap of saying everything you know—especially if you’ve worked hard to become an expert. But clarity doesn’t come from sharing everything. It comes from asking the one question that cuts through everything else:

“So what?”


Not “What’s the evidence?”
Not “What’s the most important slide?”
But: Why does this matter to the person in front of me?


That question changes the shape of your presentation. It moves you from content delivery to meaning delivery—from dumping knowledge to making something stick.

🟠 SET — Shape your talk

Design your talk with intention, not habit.

This is the moment where most people autopilot straight into PowerPoint and start building a museum exhibit of bullet points.
But the “set” of your talk — the physical experience — is where clarity is won or lost.

Design choices aren’t decoration. They’re pedagogy.

A slide with one message respects cognitive load.
A slide with ten things on it is a crime scene.

But SET isn’t just slides.
It’s everything the audience will see and feel:

• The amount of text (less is merciful).
• The images you choose (purposeful, not decorative).
• Whether there’s a prop, a demo, a reveal.
• Whether you embed a moment of interaction.
• Whether you leave a beat of white space — literal or visual — for air.

Your “set” is the container the message lives inside.
Make it clean, clear, and deliberate.

A talk doesn’t need to look clever.
It needs to look understandable.

Most speakers overbuild their talks.
The best ones stage them.

🟢 GO — Deliver the damn thing

Slow down. Then slow down again.

Your internal tempo is lying to you.
From inside the body, a pause feels like a chasm.
From the outside, it feels like clarity.

Audiences don’t crave speed — they crave space.
The millisecond needed to absorb a slide.
The half-breath that lets an idea land.
The silence that signals importance.

This is processing fluency.
This is respect.
This is how human learning actually works.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is memorable.


🧭 ASK YOURSELF THIS

If you did nothing more than these three moves all year —
one sentence,
one story,
one slower delivery —
how much better would your talks be?



Speak soon,

Andy

PS If 2026 is the year your talks need to actually land, I can help you start strong. Send me your next idea.

TEACHING ISN’T A SCRIPT. NEITHER IS THIS.

One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.

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