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How do you manage your time when you're giving a speech?

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Imagine this. You're giving a speech, it's fantastic. The audience is on the edge of their seats, they're laughing, they're responding, they're asking questions. You give a fantastic, wonderful 60 minute speech, you think you've done really well. But is that a great speech? Well, it might be. But what if the organizer of the event was expecting you to give a 30 minute speech and now the rest of the conference is a half an hour behind? What if everyone in the audience was expecting to leave at 4:30 and you finished at 5 and some of them had planes to catch? Guess what? All of a sudden it's no longer a great speech. You're the guy or the woman who droned on and on and on too long. So part of being a good presenter, being a good speaker, is having a sense of exactly what the expectations are as far as time. You need to know now if it's your own business and your own employees and it's something really, really important and affects the entire future of your company. Maybe you say, I don't even care how long it takes, this is the absolute most important thing. And you just start talking and maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's five hours. But in so many business situations, political situations, you have time requirements, you're speaking at a convention, you are a part of a very complex organism. Essentially this three day conference that may have 50 speakers and 150 breakout speakers. If you go too long, you're going to mess things up. If you go too short, that could mess things up too. People feel like you didn't prepare for them or you didn't respect them or care. If you've been booked for an hour breakout session and you only have 10 minutes prepared, people only have questions. You kind of wasted people's time. So it's not about just being brief, it's not about being short, it's not about being pithy, it's about really thinking of what are the ideas I want to communicate and what's the amount of time that I want to give and the audience wants to give. And if there's an organizer or any other third party that they've allocated for this, you've got to factor all of that into play. Of course, the biggest problem most people have is they go too long, they gather everything they know on a subject. They've got 83 slides and they've been given 20 minutes and at 18 minutes they're on slide seven. So no matter what happens, it's going to be a disaster. You cover all the slides, you've gone an hour overboard. You try to speak quickly, everyone just ignores you. You stop right where you are at the allotted time amount and it doesn't make sense and you missed most of your points, so that's clearly not a great solution. I'm going to give you the number one solution at the end of this podcast and this show, but I want to go over a few more basics with you in the short term right after this message.

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Here'S one solution that I use every single day with you. I have a, and forgive me, the audio podcast audience for those of you watching on YouTube or Facebook, Facebook, I'm holding up a large timer. This is about, oh, I guess three inches by three inches. It has a large digital display. I know that I want these podcasts to run more than 10 minutes, but generally fewer than 15 minutes. And so I can occasionally every once in a while just glance down and see exactly where I am. So for example, I am even though the timer is going to be a little different from you because I start it as the opening credits are coming on. I have 4 minutes and 55 seconds so far. And according to your timer that you're watching, it would be another seven seconds or so. Because I start this after, I don't have to be that precise. So that's one technique. And you could have this come out and put it on a table where you're speaking. There are app timers to help speakers where it counts down. Cell phones will do that too. I don't like to use my cell phone because it's just too easy for it to turn off. And I know you can change the settings so that it doesn't, but I don't like to use a cell phone for that. Historically, what I would do before getting up to speak is I would slip my watch off and angle it so that it's faced up so so I could see the face of the watch and as I'm walking around the room, occasionally glance down. And that's helpful. The Problem now, of course, is I've switched. I've gone from one of the so called fancy watches to an Apple iWatch. And that doesn't work unless you motion your hand up and that's what turns it on. I don't want to call attention to the fact that I'm checking the watch because if I check my watch in the speech, it kind of takes you out of the whole moment and the mood of the presentation and it's reminding people, oh, is this guy going on too long? And it may motivate them to check their watches. I don't want an audience member to check a watch when I'm speaking. I want them focused on what I'm saying. Another option is get to the room early and look for where there are clocks in the room. If you're nervous at all or uncomfortable, you didn't think about it in advance. If you're in the middle of the presentation, you're unlikely to really feel comfortable looking at all the walls for a clock. But if you get there early and you get set up and you're comfortable and relaxed, you might see that there is in fact a clock on the wall. Sometimes it's right in front of you and you can reference that and that'll make it easier. Another technique to have a friend, a colleague, a conference organizer to sit up front and kind of give you a hand signal. You may want to say, hey, give me a signal of five fingers up to let me know when I have five minutes left. Here's a technique to help you keep on time. So I'm going to give you the number one way to really solve this problem so you never have to worry about timing. And in just a moment.

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The number one way to make sure your timing is just right. Some of you aren't going to like this because you just aren't going to want to do it. Some of you aren't going to like it because you've heard me say it before and yet most people don't do it. The number one way to make sure your timing is right when it comes to giving a presentation is you've got to practice it out loud in front of an audience. Record it. Keep doing that till you like the recording and you like the time. Because here's the problem. If you write out the speech and you read it inside, you're going to read it silently, twice as fast as you are out loud. So if you're reading a speech silently and it's 20 minutes long to read it silently and you're told you have 25 minutes, you'll think, oh, great, I have time to spare. Guess what? It's going to take you 40 minutes to actually state it out loud. It takes it much longer to talk because when you talk, you have to pause when you talk. Unless you sound like a robot, you've got to have ups and downs and fast and slow. So you need contrast. So that's the ultimate way to figure out how long your set speech is going to take. Now, what's difficult, even more challenging, is depending on the type of speech. If it's a political speech, for example, you don't know how long the applause will take. So you really need to err on the side of shorter because you want to give your audience time to applaud. If you're giving a keynote speech or a major address at a significant political convention and you're told you've got exactly 20 minutes, you don't want to do a rehearsal out loud and it's 18 minutes long because you want to give people time to applaud, to react, to laugh. You don't want to step on them. If your audience is talking back to you in the form of applause, laughter, cheers, maybe even a question. If it's a small enough group, you don't want to step on that. So practice, but still give yourself extra time. Now, some of you have heard my recent reviews of Chris Anderson's book, TED Talks, the Official TED Talks Guide to Public Speaking. He recommends that when you're practicing it out loud, you need to be at 90%. So if you've got 10 minutes, your practice speech out loud should take more than nine minutes. If it's an 18 minute speech, as the TED Talk speeches are, then that needs to be 16 minutes. And I forgot how many number of seconds, but it was very precise. That is a good general rule of thumb. If, if it's any kind of audience where you feel that they may be participating, cheering, applauding, then make your speech even shorter so you don't run out of time. Folks, some people in some cultures have different perspectives on time. I'm not saying anybody is right or wrong. I know personally, I show up on time, I expect other people to show up on time. I finish on time or a couple of minutes early, and I expect other people to finish on time. And it's never gotten me in trouble. So again, different cultures, different people have different perspectives on time. But I find when it comes to speaking, when it comes to presenting, either finish exactly in your time slot or a few minutes earlier and you will be in great shape. Your audience will respect you for it, like you for it. The organizers will, and it'll just leave a good taste in everyone's mouth. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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