PowerPoint Presentation Tip: Don't Use Builds

00:00 At some point, if you give enough PowerPoint presentations, someone is going to try to talk you into using builds.

00:07 That's when you have a screen.

00:09 And instead of a whole nother screen, a whole nother slide.

00:12 Coming up, another piece is built on the existing page. And the problem, unfortunately, is that people think, oh, this is great. I don't have to remember anything or practice anything.

00:23 I'll just hit the button and the next line of text will come up, and I can sort of boop, boop, boop, boop, no friends.

00:32 This is an awful way of using PowerPoint.

00:34 If there is something important enough for you to add it to a screen with a build, then give it its own entire slide, preferably without using text, preferably using an image, a picture, a graph.

00:49 Because what happens in a lot of situations, especially, you need to get behind in time.

00:53 You're hurrying. All of a sudden you're like one of those birds at the checkout counters at a gas station, bobbing up and down.

01:00 You're hitting enter so often to get that next thing at text, that next thing a text, it's distracting.

01:06 It's not interesting.

01:07 It's boring.

01:09 And you know what people can read at home? They didn't need to come here. You speak for that.

01:13 So my advice, do not use builds.

01:18 The only exception is if there's something truly visual, you're showing architectural drawings, and you want to show, here's what the ground floor looks like now.

01:29 Here's what the second floor will look like on top and how you can look there.

01:33 If it's truly something visual in layers, fine.

01:37 If it's just a way for you to throw up a bunch of text and use the poor man's teleprompter, don't use builds.