Reduce Stress and Save Time

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By Claudyne Wilder

One of my clients’ major issues is time or lack of it. They have to prepare between presentations. Needless to say, this causes stress. Consider the following scenario.

Ginger has a presentation to give to new customers. She was told about it last week. She worked on it to the detriment of a critical project, even practicing out loud the night before the talk. She gives it and feels successful. But she has some revisions to make before sending it to the customer.

At the same time, she has to prepare a talk next week to division managers about her project (the one she has been neglecting). Now she has two presentations to work on simultaneously, one to revise and the other to create from scratch. She has no time to rehearse for the second talk and feels nervous. She doesn’t sleep well. Although acceptable, she feels tired, overworked, and frustrated. But today she’s got to revise the first presentation.

Image: Yay Images

Yes, it’s stressful to be constantly getting over one presentation while preparing for the next. There is no one solution. The best way to reduce stress is to analyze the way you go about creating presentations and figure out where you can save time. If you don’t use the following strategies, then you are probably taking twice as long as you need. Use them, save time, reduce your stress level, and get more work done. And you’ll never give a mediocre presentation again!

1. Create a PowerPoint file for each type of presentation. For example, create a project update file with all the slides set up exactly as you need them. Then you just need to put in your new content.
2. Learn to use the Slide Master. It’s the best time investment you can make. People waste hours creating every slide themselves rather than inserting a slide from the Slide Master that already has a layout. Pay someone to explain how to use it and to create several Slide Master looks you can use over and over again.
3. Keep a file of artwork, tables, images, and shapes. I am not talking about looking at other presentations for ideas every time you are preparing a talk. I am talking about a file with all these images in the right background and color scheme. You open the file and choose several to use.
4. Know how to use PowerPoint effectively so you can save even more time. Taking a PowerPoint class may not help you that much. You need a class on how to create a presentation using PowerPoint.

  Claudyne Wilder is a guest lecturer at conferences, business shows, and corporate events. She is the creator of three presentation seminars: The Winning Presentations Seminar, The Winning Presentations Sales Seminar; and Creating PowerPoint Presentations That Get Your Point Across. She offers The Winning Presentations Seminar publicly about six times a year. She also licenses this seminar to companies and consultants to teach.

Do visit Claudyne’s site at Wilder Presentations to learn more.

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