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Should you ever use your smartphone as a place for your notes when giving a presentation?

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Good Lord, no. This is an easy question. It is a question I do get from time to time, and I see people using their smartphones holding it for notes. Now, there's nothing wrong with using notes when you're giving a presentation. I, of course, recommend you have your notes on a single sheet of paper. Typically fold it over sitting flat on a table, a lectern, other places, so that you never have to touch it, pick it up and put it in large font. But for whatever reason, people seem to think that's way too difficult and they come up with this great brainstorm of putting their notes on a cell phone. Now, there's numerous, numerous problems with using a cell phone as your notes for a presentation. Let me start going through them so I can, I hope, dissuade you from ever using your cell phone for notes when you're giving a presentation. For starters, it's very easy to accidentally hit something on a tiny little screen and you zoom to the bottom of the page, you flick to another page, something happens and then you're flummoxed. If you have your notes on a simple piece of paper, even if you're holding notes, and I don't recommend that you hold notes, you can't accidentally hit something and everything be deleted. Everything you have can accidentally be deleted easily on a phone. Here's another problem with a phone that people don't ever talk about. When you're using it for your notes, it can ring. Now, even if you have turned the settings so that the ringer is off, it's going to vibrate, it's still going to light up the screen and it's going to be distracting. And what if you're getting a phone and you're obviously looking at it? You might not be talking about it, but you're looking at it and that's going to be distracting to you. It's going to take you out of the moment. The other, not the other problem, one of many other problems with using a cell phone is it calls attention to it. I remember it was probably 10 years ago. I was at one of these large public speaking Peter Lowe events that had Colin Powell and every other famous person in the world giving a presentation which the organization's gone bankrupt. But it is a great way to see a lot of good speakers. Tiki Barber was speaking. He was at the time about to retire, was still an active player for the New York Giants football team. And I'll never forget he stood up on a stage in front of probably 12,000 people, huge arena, and he was glancing down at his cell phone for notes the whole time. I have no idea what he said, and if you'd asked me five minutes after his presentation, I wouldn't have been able to tell you that either. But it was so obvious that he was looking at his and he was doing it in sort of like a sneaky way, like we wouldn't notice. It became the most noticeable thing and the most memorable thing on the screen. I'll give you even more problems with using a cell phone. And and by the way, all these things apply to iPads as well in just a moment.

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So another problem with holding a cell phone up for your notes is people may fixate on the brand. Oh, is that an iPhone? Isn't he special? Or oh, I'm a galaxy person. I don't like people with iPhones. Or is he? It is a galaxy and the person's thinking, what, you're too good for Steve Jobs? So it sets off these emotional debates in your audience sometimes. Why distract? Now I have a protective cover on mine, but if you see the Apple logo or a Samsung logo on your phone and it's on video, or there's a tight shot on you from an image magnification that front of a large audience, then people may be thinking you're doing some sort of brand placement or endorsement. That may be the furthest thing from your mind. But again, it confuses people. There are other issues. So for example, I am, let's say I was using this for real and I held it around. Some of you will discern that. Forgive me. For those of you listening on audio podcast, I'm now holding this up for for the video portion of the show which you can see on YouTube and Facebook. My screen is cracked and I have taped over it. Now the reason I've done this is my contract is up in a couple of weeks and I can get a brand new phone for very little money, whereas I'll have to pay $650 if I buy it today. So I Am going to wait a couple of weeks. And I don't mind taping up my phone, but someone seeing that may think, oh, wow, TJ's taping his broken phone up. He must be poor. He must be very unsuccessful. We shouldn't hire him. All these things that could be going on in people's minds just because they're taking a glimpse of my cell phone that's cracked. Why do that? Why distract? I'm all in favor of using technology when it helps you, but here's a piece of technology known as a piece of paper that has never let me down in any presentation I've given. It's never asked for electricity. Its batteries never died. It's never accidentally deleted itself. The way I touched the paper, the ink never magically turned into invisible ink. It didn't distract people. So I'm a big fan of technology, but use each one in a way that's most effective for you. If you need notes for your presentation, then stick with paper. Now, I'll never forget the first time I saw somebody using an iPad as notes for their presentation. The beauty of the iPad is it is a bigger screen. You can make the font larger. Someone sent me a video of a preacher delivering a Sunday morning sermon holding his iPad. Now, the problem was the iPad had only been out for maybe six months or a year, so it was still really interesting to see. So the first thing you do is you look at it and think, wow, that's an iPad. That must be really cool if you didn't have one yet. You're now thinking, oh, wow, I'd love to get an iPad. You start talking to your spouse or your parents or your boss, why can't I have an iPad? Meanwhile, you've completely lost focus on what this person was saying. The other big problem I have with the again, I shouldn't say the other as if there were only one. There's so many problems is periodically it powers down. So you've got to touch it, you've got to turn it on, you have to maybe go to a screen. Paper does not require power. Whether you touched it in the last 30 seconds or it's been an hour, it's going to look the same. So that's another huge, huge problem with using any kind of electronic screen is you can lose the power. It can go dark, it can make hums, it can make words. You can get a text. Again, I know you're telling me, well, teacher, I can just turn that part off. You can, but you won't. You will forget at some level, it looks almost like you're just showing off too, and it's distracting to people. It also forces you to hold something in your hand. In the case of an iPad, it's so big you can easily drop it. But I'm a big fan of keeping your hands completely free anytime you're presenting, so you can move your hands so you can gesture naturally. You put paper on the on a table or even on the floor. You don't have to touch it. You still see it the same way with phones, iPads. You have to touch it periodically or it's likely to go into the hibernation mode again. You can change the settings so it doesn't do that. In my experience, most people either don't know how to do it or are too lazy to do it. And when they're practicing their presentation, they're holding their cell phone. It doesn't seem awkward to them. It will seem awkward to the audience. So I beg of you, I plead with you. Use technology. Have smartphones and iPads. I certainly do. Don't use them when you're giving your presentation. It will not help. It will distract. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. If you have questions on any aspect of dealing with presentations, talks, PowerPoints, media interviews, please write to me. You can even call me. You can call me at 212-764-4955 and leave a message and I will answer your questions on a future program. Thanks. See you next time. Which mark your calendars is tomorrow.

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