TJ Walker says make two PowerPoint decks: one visual for projection with one idea per slide, another text-heavy document for people to read later. Use the Notes section to keep both in one file, but only show images on screen. The goal is to engage your audience, not just get through the slides.
Chapters
I'm about to give you the single biggest tip, biggest piece of advice that I give my private clients who come to me for a day long or two day long PowerPoint presentation training. It's controversial, most people don't do it, but it will solve the vast majority of your problems and make you a thousand times more effective as a speaker presenter and a PowerPoint presenter. Here's the piece of advice you need to have two separate presentations. You need to have one that you project to your audience that follows a few basic rules. No text. One idea per slide and focuses on images, pictures, not text. You need to have another deck that you email to people who like to read, that you can print out for people and give it after your speech to people who want to read. This second one can have tons and tons of words. It can have 10,000, it can have 100,000 words. You can have wildly complex charts, graphs, people who want to read it on their own time before your speech can. Those who want to read it afterwards can those who don't want to. You don't have to. When you try to put everything in just one document, you have guaranteed failure. Think about it with any other form of content you like to absorb. No matter how much you love reading, a particular novel could be the best novel you've ever read. Let's say you love Gone with the Wind. No matter how much you love reading Gone with the Wind, if you go to a movie theater and you pay a bunch of money to watch Gone with the Wind in a movie theater and the curtain parts, all of a sudden you see the text of the book from Gone with the Wind, you're not going to be happy. You like reading Gone with the Wind. It's well written, but that's not the experience you want when you're sitting in a theater looking at a screen. Now, even though you're not in the entertainment business, most likely you do have to respect how people like to absorb and use different media. People like to read on their own time where they turn the pages and it's right in front of them. They like to listen and watch a big screen with images on it. So respect that. Now in Microsoft PowerPoint there's something called a notes section, so you can put all the words, text, sentences, bullet points you want in the notes section. So you can still have one document. But when you're projecting it, it's only showing the images above the notes section. If you're emailing it or printing it, people can see all of the notes. But TJ this takes extra time. This takes extra work. Guess what? Nobody cares. Your audience doesn't care about you. All they care about is are you going to give them something that's interesting, useful, helpful to them, and can they remember it? You better care if your audience has fallen asleep, because unfortunately, that's the number one problem with PowerPoint presentations. Your audience has fallen asleep or they have pulled out their cell phone and started to check their email. If they're on their cell phone, you have lost them. You're not communicating. Your job is not to get through the slides. Your job is to communicate. So that is why I recommend you have two separate presentations. One you're projecting, one that you're emailing or handing out. They could be in the same one if you use the notes section, but they could be completely different. You want to be prepared. You have to prepare for each medium, the medium of what's projected on a big screen, completely different from the medium of paper or what people like to read on a computer screen.
