One of the things I dislike about the use of blocks of time when scheduling is the tendency to use that entire block of time. When a speaker has an hour for a presentation, they’re going to use that full hour. When a pastor has 45 minutes, they’re going to use that 45 minutes. When we schedule a half-hour for a meeting, we tend to use that half-hour.
Don’t be afraid to keep things as short as possible!
Can what you said in that 30,45,or 60 minutes be shortened down to just 20 minutes of the good stuff? People will love you for the good stuff, and everything else might just be getting in the way.
Excellent points. You should catch up with Charlie (Wollborg) Curve at http://charliecurve.com. He often shares similar ideas about “brevity of your message”.
Oh, and nice sun glasses.
Thanks, Dave! Will definitely check out that site.
2 things:
#1 If your an interesting speaker, the time should fly by… no matter what the subject is.
#2 I always leave 10-15 minutes in my allotted time for Q&A. I'm a firm believer of it and want the social interaction more than I want to talk AT people for the entire time.
So are you going to make it back down for BizConf this year?
Good points, sir! That's exactly it: If you're interesting and have 60 minutes of good stuff, then filling a 60 minute block is perfectly fine. If you have 30 minutes of good stuff, then don't try to stretch it. And, in the case of a presentation, leaving time for Q&A is a much better use of the extra time.
I'm probably not coming down this year. Boo hoo! AWESOME conference though. Looking to try to get to more WordPress-related events this year.
Great Post …and funny because I was just reading Seth's blog before I came over here. I know what you're saying and I agree! I respect the minimalist.
I'm usually very long winded when typing, but I've noticed twitter has actually helped me chop down my unnecessarily wordy text in emails, scripts, and beyond. I'm in the middle of editing a product explainer video for ShutterCal's “secret new product”, and I'm trying to get it under 1 minute long.
Public speaking is another story… I gave a talk once at the SoHo Apple Store and was convinced I was speaking too fast and rambling. I was very surprised when everyone said I did a great job. My concern is usually “Will my talk be too short?”
I've thought that very thing before speaking in public, Scott. I never feel like I've got enough, but then I get really long-winded. I will admit that doing these regular vids on AnywhereMan has helped me keep main points in my head and keep things a bit more brief…still a long ways to go!
Totally agreed… One of the chapters from REWORK comes to mind here. They talk about how meetings not only take time spent during the meeting itself, but they can severely interrupt your workflow. It can take up to an hour to really get into a the “zone”, especially for us designers/developers. If you've got a 30 minute meeting in the middle of your day, you have to take into account the time spent before and after the meeting wrapping up your work and opening it back up again.