Well it had to happen eventually. Andy Murray won the 2013 Men’s Singles Wimbledon final yesterday.
And I guess it’s inevitable that everyone in the world will be blogging about that fact and twisting it to make whatever point they want to make, about whatever their blog is about. So shallow, so predictable…
So much of a good opportunity that I’m going to do the same! ;)
One of the big things I like about Andy Murray is that he focusses on the moment.
What do I mean by that? Well, take the moment in the second set when he was four games to one down, at a bit past half past three. No sign of panic… just playing each shot as it comes.
Or what about the end of the match when Murray had four Championship points and lost three of them.
In those kinds of circumstances it’s all too easy to ‘bottle it’ – to start to worry about the ‘could have’ or ‘should have’ or ‘must do’. Just like in a presentation when…
you screw up what you wanted to say on Slide four and everything goes wrong like dominos falling down.
And yet in a typical presentation you’ve got the absolutely perfect opportunity to hit the ‘reset’ button – a bit like in tennis when the game is over and there’s a change of ends…
It’s when you change slides.
Think about it. If a new slide represents a new idea (you do do that, don’t you? You don’t try and cram too much onto a single slide? ;) ) then you’ve got the absolutely perfect opportunity to start getting yourself straight.
Here are a few tips that might help you when it’s all going wrong and you need to ‘reset’.
- Move – if the change of slides represents a change of ideas it’s probably a good idea to move to a different part of the stage in any case. That can give you a few seconds to gather your thoughts
- Silence – giving your audience time to assimilate what you’ve just told them is often good practice in any case, so just ‘standing in the moment’ for a while is often a good idea.
- Change the theme/structure/layout of your slides – a visual clue such as changing the black-on-white to something different can work wonders
- Check your notes – I don’t recommend using scripts (they make you sound like a robot) but there’s nothing to say you can’t take a few seconds look at your notes. Maybe there’s a way of slipping in to some other point of your presentation whatever it is you messed up – but don’t over do it
I’m sure you’ll have more than this short list though…. :)
