The ‘rule of three’ when making presentations

This is a guest blog post from Olivia Mitchell, a presentation trainer based in Wellington, New Zealand. Her website is called Speaking about Presenting and she teaches courses in presentation skills and effective speaking. Subscribe to Olivia Mitchell’s free e-mail newsletter by clicking here.

This tip is about limiting what you say in your presentation. Many presenters (maybe you included) have a problem keeping to time in a presentation. That’s because we tend to want to say so much.
It’s a brutal truth, but the more you say the less your audience will get.
So once you’ve prepared your presentation, ruthlessly edit what you’ve got. One way of doing this is to pare down any lists you have (lists of reasons, lists of benefits, etc.) to no more than three items.
This is known as the speaker’s “rule of three.” Three items is easy for both you and the audience to remember. Adding more items also dilutes the impact of the first items on your list.

If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them, just click the “comments” link and type your question.

Go well in your next presentation!

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