Time Management in a Presentation

00:00 So how do you manage time when giving a speech or presentation? For starters, you should have a pretty good sense of how long it takes you to give the presentation because you should have rehearsed on video.

00:13 And these days that can be as simple as talking to your own cell phone, recording it, looking at the time.

00:19 So this idea that it's impossible to have any idea of how long your speech takes just isn't true.

00:26 Now, the worst thing you can do is time your speech by reading it silently to yourself, because a speech that takes a half hour to give to people in the real world, you can read silently to yourself in 8 minutes.

00:40 So that's not going to have any relationship to the actual length of your presentation. Now, when you're speaking, you need to factor in more time when there's an audience there, because they may have questions.

00:54 There may be reactions.

00:55 You may see someone looking at you, and they don't quite get it.

00:57 You have to go in and explain deeper.

01:00 You also want to allocate time in most situations for questions and answers.

01:05 So if you're told you've got an hour, I wouldn't prepare 60 minutes worth of content.

01:12 I would prepare 40 minutes of content and leave time for questions and leave some time for spontaneity and the ability to go into more detail based on what the audience says.

01:25 Now, there are several ways of managing your time when you're in the middle of a presentation.

01:30 For starters, most cell phones have a timer function.

01:34 You can get a timer app, so you can have that in fairly large font sitting on a table, a lectern near you.

01:43 You could do what I do. I simply remove my watch and I put it on a table , so I can glance down if there are not clocks around.

01:52 Here's the thing, if you speak often enough, and I recommend that you try to speak every opportunity you can, you won't be as nervous when you're not nervous.

02:01 You won't lose track of time if you're completely nervous and feeling tense. That's when you lose all perspective of time.

02:09 You can think you're talking for 10 minutes , and it's really been 50, or you can think you've been talking for 50 minutes, and you look down, and you've been speaking for 7 minutes, and you've got to somehow fill up the next 53 minutes and that's when panic occurs. You don't want that to happen.

02:25 So practice, rehearse on video and also have eyesight to clocks, watches or timers do that, and you'll be in good shape.

02:36 Also remember, though, if you speak, and you finish a little bit early, but you really deliver the goods, you've given people great content and answer their questions.

02:48 Nobody's going to get upset if you only took 25 minutes, and they told you, you had 30 minutes.