Simplifying processes II

Simplifying processes is a fundamental concept when it comes to increasing productivity both at work and in your personal life. You should always ask yourself if you are adding unnecessary complexity and how this benefits both you and others.

For example, if you are a consultant for one of the top consulting firms in the world and you are paid hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars a year to do consulting projects for large corporations, it makes sense to have extremely complex PowerPoint presentations where you can give five-hour presentations to clients. This is because you are billed by the hour and clients seem to want and expect that, and are willing to pay for it.

But for everyone else in life, when you give a presentation, your primary goal is to communicate your ideas. It's not about racing the clock and dazzling people with complexity. That's why I find that the most productive and successful people in the world don't use PowerPoint at all because they want to simplify their message and their presentations, or when they use PowerPoint, they use one image per slide. They don't put a lot of text, a lot of bullets or complex graphics.

There will be more on how to communicate effectively as productive and successful people do in public speaking later in the course. But for now, focus on this concept: simplify, simplify, simplify. And yes, it definitely applies to how you give a PowerPoint presentation.

Regarding your desired word length, is there a particular topic you'd like to expand on or go deeper into? If not, I can suggest some other important points for productivity in work and personal life.