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.
No slides. No problem.
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We spend so much time making things look polished - obsessing over slides, animations, transitions. But sometimes, clarity comes from stripping things away. 💡 ONE IDEA WELLWhen the projector failed, everything worked better. I was mid-way through an ALS course, ready to deliver the “Cardiac Arrest in Special Circumstances” lecture. I’d done it many times. The generic slide deck was burned into my brain - blue background, yellow Comic Sans, and all. But then the slide projector failed. No visuals. No bullet points. No fallback. So I just… talked. I told stories. I leaned on experience. I brought the nuances to life - the little things that don’t fit neatly on a slide but do stick in people’s memories. And it flowed. When the tech was stripped away, the connection came through. The session landed more deeply than any previous one. It taught me something: sometimes the best slides are the ones that never show up. 🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGEHere’s a challenge: If the answer is no, try this:
🧭 ASK YOURSELF THISIf your slides disappeared, would your audience still understand the key takeaways? |
GIVE TALKS PEOPLE ACTUALLY REMEMBER.
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.
I paid my electricity bill during a pre-recorded lecture on assessment. Not after it. During it. The lecture played in one tab and my bank in another. Somewhere between the reference number and the confirm button, the speaker made what was probably an important point. I couldn't tell you what it was. I wasn't listening. This wasn't a one-off. I've watched every lecture of my Master's with something else open. Emails. Bills. Whatever was shouting loudest that day. The lecture never brings me...
I was on my laptop at home after a day at the hospital with my daughter, looking at three lines I still hadn't sent. Talk withdrawn. Slides already submitted. Apologies for the short notice. Three lines to unwind months of preparation and tell a room full of people, a week out, that I would not be walking onto their stage. I didn't press it straight away. I was thinking. Who would I miss? What would I miss? What does it cost the guy who is trying to build a small career on being the one who...
Five minutes into the monologue, and the room had gone still. I was on stage at the Goodwood Theatre in Adelaide, working through Vinh Giang's Stage Academy course, in a small, old room that usually holds school plays and dance recitals, close enough that you can see every face in the crowd. The lights were warm and near. I was telling the story of driving to the hospital, and the sentence that ended that drive. My daughter had died. Five minutes built from the worst day of my life, said out...