Become a success by stacking your talents or skills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Bo Campbell at the Davidson Blog in 2018 titled Talent stacking – the key to standing out from the crowd. Bo explained that:

 

“The term ‘talent stack’ was coined by cartoonist Scott Adams – best known as the creator of the Dilbert Cartoon series – to describe developing a variety of skills which combine to make someone a sought-after commodity. Adams describes his own talent stack [as shown above] in the following terms:

 

‘I am a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn’t have much artistic talent, and I’ve never taken a college-level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humour, I’m fairly unique.’ ”

 

Success may not continue unabated. The Wikipedia page about Scott Adams notes that in 2023 he was dropped by both his book publisher and his comic strip syndicator.

 

There is an article by Darius Foroux on November 6, 2018 titled Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success. A second article by Thomas Oppong at The Ladders on January 15, 2020 is titled Skill stacking: Instead of mastering one skill, build a skill set. And there is a 2020 book by Steven West titled Skill Stacking: A practical approach to life, beat the competition and do what you love. And there is a post by Naressa Kahn at the Mindvalley Blog on February 16, 2025 titled How skill stacking can future-proof your career and make you indispensable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My stack of skills (shown above) includes writing magazine articles and reports, speaking in public, creating graphics for presentations, telling stories, and blogging. I had editing experience with reviewing magazine articles for both the materials science magazine Metallurgical Transactions and the corrosion engineering magazine Materials Performance.

 

Pearls Before Swine cartoon about navigating with maps or atlases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When traveling, I currently navigate using Apple Maps on my iPhone, or my Garmin GPS. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But when I fly somewhere, I take along an AAA map (shown above) as a backup. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And when I drive around a state, I carry a road atlas (as shown above). With it open on my lap I can keep track of exactly where I am, and turn off when traffic is blocked up ahead.

 

On June 1, 2025 Stephan Pastis has a Pearls Before Swine cartoon with dialogue about how we previously used maps:

 

Stephan:

 Well, I had all of these fold-out maps in the trunk.

 And a bound book of maps called a ‘Thomas Guide.’

 And if it was an unfamiliar city I got free maps at the AAA office.

 Then the person in the passenger seat would look at them and try to tell you which way to go.

 And if all that failed you could ask for help from a gas station service attendant…

 I see a question.

 

Young girl: My friends and I were wondering if you had electricity back then.

 

Stephan: Yes. We had electricity you @*#@!

 

Goat: And that’s why I don’t talk to young people.

 

Rat: Now explain Blockbuster video stores!

 

 

Factfulness is a wonderful book regarding how to think about the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hans Rosling (1948 to 2017) was a Swedish physician. He gave a TED talk in 2014 with his son Ola on How not to be ignorant about the world. There is another 2007 TED talk titled The best stats you’ve ever seen | Hans Rosling.

 

There also is a wonderful 2018 book by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Roennlund titled Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. It has a Wikipedia page too. They discuss ten instincts which can distort our perspective. In March 27, 2025 I blogged about one chapter in a post titled There may be no warning before as disaster.

 

 There are eleven chapters in the book, ten of which end with as summary as follows:

 

“Chapter 1 [page 46]: To control the gap instinct, look for the majority.

 

Beware comparisons of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all.

Beware comparisons of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.

The view from up here. Remember, looking down from above distorts the view. Everything else looks equally short, but it’s not.

 

 

Chapter 2 [page 74]: To control the negativity instinct, expect bad news.

 

Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g. better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.

Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.

Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.

More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.

Beware rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories,

 

 

Chapter 3 [page 100]: To control the straight line instinct, remember that curves come in different shapes. [See the image shown above].

 

Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines, but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to.

 

 

Chapter 4 [page 123]: To control the fear instinct, calculate the risks.

 

The scary world: fear vs. reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected – by your own attention filters or by the media – precisely because it is scary.

Risk = danger x exposure. The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it? And how much are you exposed to it.

Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.

 

 

Chapter 5 [page 143]: To control the size instinct, get things in proportion.

 

Compare. Big numbers always look big. Single numbers on their own are misleading and should make you suspicious. Always look for comparisons. Ideally, divide by something.

80/20. Have you been given a long list> Look for the few largest items and deal with those first. They are quite likely more important than all the others put together.

Divide. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions.

 

 

Chapter 6 [page 165]: To control the generalization instinct, question your categories.

 

Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories. And…

Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant. But also…

Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g. you and other people living on Level 4 or unconscious soldiers) applies to another (e.g. people not living on Level 4 or sleeping babies.

Beware of ‘the majority.’ The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between

Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.

Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think. In what way is this a smart solution?

 

 

Chapter 7 [page 184]: To control the destiny instinct, remember slow change is still change.

 

Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades.

Update your knowledge. Some knowledge goes out of date quickly. Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.

Talk to Grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparents’ values and how they differ from yours.

Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s.

 

 

Chapter 8 [page 202]: To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer.

 

Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses.

Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others.

Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.

Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.

Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise. Solve problems on a case-by-case basis.  

 

 

Chapter 9 [page 222]: To control the blame instinct, resist finding a scapegoat.

 

Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.

Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit.

 

 

Chapter 10 [page 242]: To control the urgency instinct, take small steps.

 

Take a breath. When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down. Ask for more time and more information. It’s rarely now or never and it’s rarely either/or.

Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful.

Beware of fortune-tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before.

Be wary of drastic action. Ask what side effects will be. Ask how the idea has been tested. Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluations of their impact, are less dramatic, but usually more effective.”

 

The image of a chart on children came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

According to a Pearls Before Swine cartoon there are four groups of people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrixes. The Pearls Before Swine cartoon by Stephen Pastis for March 30, 2025 has a line drawing of the graphic shown above (without axis labels), and the following dialogue:

 

Pig: Oh, great Wise Ass, help me to understand humanity.

 

Wise Ass: Of course, my son… All people can be classified into one of four quadrants which look like this…

 

Wise Ass: We love Group(A), tolerate Group(B), and pity Group(C).

 

Pig: That all sounds good, but what about Group(D)? The Dumb and Arrogant.

 

Pig: I know who’s been running our lives.

 

 

There may be no warning before a disaster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I was reading an excellent book from 2018 by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Roennlund titled Factfulness, It is subtitled Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. The fourth chapter is titled The Fear Instinct, and it begins with an essay on pages 101 to 103 titled Blood All Over the Floor:

 

“On October 7, 1975 I was plastering a patient’s arm when an assistant nurse burst through the door and announced that a plane had crashed and the wounded were coming in by helicopter. It was my fifth day as a junior doctor on the emergency ward in the small coastal town of Hudiksvall in Sweden. All the senior staff were down in the dining hall and as the assistant nurse and I searched frantically for the folder of disaster instructions, I could already hear the helicopter landing. The two of us were going to have to handle this on our own.

 

Seconds later a stretcher was rolled in, bearing a man in dark green overalls and a camouflage life jacket. His arms and legs were twitching. An epileptic seizure, I thought; off with his clothes. I removed his life jacket easily but his overalls were more problematic. They looked like a spacesuit, with huge sturdy zippers all over, and no matter how I tried I couldn’t find the zipper that undid them. I had just registered that the uniform meant this was a military pilot when I noticed the blood all over the floor. ‘He’s bleeding,’ I shouted. With this much blood, I knew he could be dead in a matter of seconds, but with the overalls on, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I grabbed a big pair of plaster pliers [scissors] to cut through the fabric and howled to the assistant nurse, ‘Four bags of blood, O-negative, Now!’

 

To the patient, I shouted, ‘Where does it hurt?’ ‘Yazhe shisha… na adjezhizha zha …’ he replied. I couldn’t understand a word, but it sounded like Russian. I looked the man in his eyes and said with a clear voice, Bce Tnxo Tobapniii Wbenckaya Bojbhniia,’ which means ‘All is calm, comrade, Swedish hospital.’

 

I will never forget the look of panic I triggered with those words. Frightened out of his mind, he stared back at me and tried to tell me something: ‘Vavdvfor papratarjenji rysskamememje ej …’ I looked into his eyes full of fear, and then I realized: this must be a Russian fighter pilot who had been shot down over Swedish territory. Which means that the Soviet Union is attacking us. World War III has started! I was paralyzed by fear.

 

Fortunately, at that moment the head nurse, Birgitta, came back from lunch. She snatched the plaster pliers from my hand and hissed, ’Don’t shred it. That’s an air force ‘G suit’ and it costs more than 10,000 Swedish kronor.’ After a beat she added, ‘And can you please step off the life jacket. You’re standing on the color cartridge and it is making the whole floor red.’

 

Birgitta turned to the patient, calmly freed him from his G suit and wrapped him in a couple of blankets. In the meantime she told him in Swedish. ‘You were in the icy water for 23 minutes, which is why you are jerking and shivering, and why we can’t understand what you’re saying.’ The Swedish air force pilot, who had evidently crashed during a routine flight, gave me a comforting little smile.

 

A few years ago I contacted the pilot, and was relieved to hear that he doesn’t remember a thing from those first minutes in the emergency room in 1975. But for me the experience is hard to forget. I will forever remember my complete misjudgment. Everything was the other way around: the Russian was Swedish, the war was peace, the epileptic seizure was cooling, and the blood was a color ampule from inside the life jacket. Yet it had all seemed so convincing to me.

 

When we are afraid, we do not see clearly. I was a young doctor facing my first emergency, and I had always been terrified by the prospect of a third world war. As a child, I often had nightmares about it. I would wake up and run to my parents’ bed. I could be calmed only by my father going over the details of our plan one more time: we would take our tent in the bike trailer and go live in the woods where there were plenty of blueberries. Inexperienced, and in an emergency situation for the first time, my head quickly generated a worst-case scenario. I didn’t see what I wanted to see, I saw what I was afraid of seeing. Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”

  

We can avoid being dumbstruck from fear by first having a disaster exercise. I blogged about that topic back on September 11, 2012 in a post titled Disasters and triage.

 

As a Boy Scout back in the early 1960s I was part of one of the exercises in Pittsburgh called Prep Pitt. At the Civic Arena I was made up as a casualty with a compound fracture of my forearm. Modeling clay and protruding chicken bones were used. I was sent to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital.

 

And when I was in tech school to be an Air Force Reserve medic in 1972, we had a plane crash disaster exercise. Three years later, I was at Greater Pittsburgh airport when the crash phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. An Air National Guard tanker was going to land on a wet runway with two of its four engines shut down. While we waited beside the runway along with the fire trucks, I sat in the back of our ambulance and thought I’m ready for whatever happens. Fortunately they landed OK.   

 

How to Write Your Speech Outline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Way back on July 5, 2009 I blogged about how there are Two types of speech outlines: speaking and preparation. The less well-known speaking outline is used when practicing your delivery.

 

The Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas has a three-page pdf article on Outlining Your Speech that discusses both types. Preparation outlines are written with full sentences; speaking outlines are written with key words. Main points are headed by Roman numerals, subpoints by Arabic numbers, and sub-sub-points by capital letters, etc.

 

A web page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab titled Four Main Components for Effective Outlines describes parallelism, coordination, subordination, and division. Parallelism means headings and subheadings should have parallel structure. Coordination means different headings should have the same significance. Subordination means that subheadings should be more specific and headings more general. Division means each heading should be divided into at least two parts.

 

On August 14, 2024 I blogged about Six ways to create an outline for your presentation.

 

My cartoon adapted a scroll from Openclipart.

 

Only you can prevent bad presentations in 2025!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For New Year’s Day I traditionally post appropriating the Smokey Bear slogan that “Only you can prevent…” and tell people to do better presentations by planning.  My first image comes from a 1794 cartoon by Robert Dighton.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A second has a portrait of orator Anna Elizabeth Dickinson from around 1860.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third has a cartoon of Bourke Cockran by George Yost Coffin from 1896. (All three images came from the Library of Congress).

 

There is a long article by Charlotte Hilton Andersen at the Reader’s Digest on November 21, 2024 titled 50 New Year’s Resolutions You’ll Want to Keep. Her twelfth is to Do something that scares you:

 

“Make a list of things that scare you: public speaking, skydiving, holding a spider, eating Brussels sprouts, asking your boss for a raise, calling your crush. Now, pick one thing on the list and find a way to do it.”

 

There is another long article from ElegantLivingEveryday titled 76 New Year’s Resolution Ideas for a Fulfilling 2025. Number 14 is to take a public speaking course to boost confidence.

 

Last year I posted about how In 2024 only you can prevent bad presentations, and linked to my previous posts.

 

Molly Graham shares an interesting message - that career stairs are just an illusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw a good article by Maurice DeCastro at Mindful Presenter with an iconic visual on December 5, 2024 titled Molly Graham’s TED talk shares an interesting message, “The stairs are an illusion.” He embeds the nine and a half minute TEDNext video, titled Forget the Corporate Ladder – Winners Take Risks | Molly Graham | TED that also can be found at YouTube. Molly advises you to get good at three things:

 

actually jumping off the cliff [4:20]

surviving the fall [5:21]

becoming a professional idiot [6:33]

 

I modified an image of some illusory Penrose stairs from Openclipart.

 

To prepare food faster just make it thinner

 

 

Preserved Lemons

 

Preserved lemons are a Middle Eastern food ingredient. A typical recipe like one in the New York Times calls for slicing them part through in quarters lengthwise, as shown above, and packing them with salt in jars. But then you have to plan ahead and wait for an entire month. I never got around to trying that recipe.

 

But then I saw another one in a book from 2023 by Bee Wilson titled The Secret of Cooking. Her recipe instead calls for cutting the lemons paper thin using the slicer disk on a food processor. And they will be ready in a day.

 

 

 

Griddled Flatbreads

 

Many cultures long have quickly cooked flatbreads on griddles, like the corn tortilla shown above. There also are wheat flour tortillas (called piadina in Italy), and Indian chapatis (made from whole-wheat flour). Other grains are used elsewhere. In Brittany there are crepes made from buckwheat. In Scotland there are oatcakes. On the Mediterranean coast there are chickpea flour cakes called Socca in Nice. And In Norway there is lefse made with potatoes.

 

 

 

 

Schnitzel and its cousins

 

A common entrée is meat pounded thin, breaded, and fried. The classic Austrian one from veal is a Wiener schnitzel. The Israeli variant uses turkey. The Texas beef version is a Chicken-Fried Steak. The midwestern Pork Tenderloin is a deep-fried version served as a sandwich. And the chicken version is called a paillard.    

 

Images of cut and salted lemons, a tortilla, and schnitzel all came from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

Master public speaking with the PRESENT method

 

There is a good, brief article by Amanda Connelly at Forbes on November 18, 2024 titled Master Public Speaking With The PRESENT Method. She discusses seven essential steps:

 

P: Prepare Thoroughly

R: Research Your Audience

E: Engage From The Start

S: Simplify Your Visuals

E: Express With Body Language

N: Nurture Your Nerves

T: Tailor Your Conclusion

 

 

What mix of happiness and unhappiness do you have?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I have been reading the 2023 book by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey titled Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. (There is a brief preview at Google Books). On page 14 they explain that:

 

“We all have our own natural mix of happiness and unhappiness, depending on our circumstances and character, and our job is to use the mix we’re given to best effect. The first task in doing that is learning where, in fact, we are.

 

One way to get evidence of your natural happy-unhappy mix is by measuring your levels of positive and negative affect – mood – and how they compare to others’ using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, or PANAS.”

 

That schedule is described by Brooks in a pdf article titled LESSON TOPIC: Positive Affect and Negative Affect. (There also is a Wikipedia page). You rank twenty different emotions on a scale from one to five where 1 = very slightly or not at all; 2 = a little; 3 = moderately; 4 = quite a bit; and 5 = extremely.

 

And on pages 16 to 18 of the book they elaborate that:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Unless you are the highly unusual person who is right at the average on both positive (about 35) and negative (about 18), you will fall into one of four quadrants, as illustrated in Figure 1. If you have above-average positive affect and above-average negative affect, you’re one of the ‘Mad Scientists,’ who are always spun up about something. If you’re below-average positive and below-average negative, you’re a sober and cool ‘Judge.’ ‘Cheerleaders,’ with above-average positive and below-average negative, celebrate the good in everything and don’t dwell on the bad. ‘Poets,’ who register below-average positive and above-average negative, have trouble enjoying good things, and always know when there is a threat lurking.

 

We know, we know: you wish you were in the cheerleader quadrant. But we can’t all be cheerleaders, and the world needs the other profiles as well. On a moment’s reflection, you’ll likely realize that it would be a nightmare if everyone saw only the bright side of everything, because we’d keep making the same mistakes again and again. Poets are valuable for their perspective and creativity. (And everyone looks great in a black turtleneck.) Life is more interesting with Mad Scientists in the mix. And Judges keep us all from blowing ourselves up with impulsive ideas.

 

You have a unique role to play in life. Your profile is a gift. But no matter what that profile is, you have room to increase the happiness in your life. To do that, you have to understand your natural happiness blend, manage yourself, and then play to your strengths. For example, let’s say you are a Mad Scientist. You will tend to react very strongly, good and bad, to things in your life. This might make you the life of the party, but it can exhaust your loved ones and coworkers. You need to know this, and work to manage your strong emotions and reactions.

 

Maybe you are a Judge. You are cool as a cucumber, and perfect for jobs like surgeon or spy (or anything in which keeping your head is an advantage – like raising teenagers). But with friends and loved ones, you might seem a little too unenthusiastic at times. This knowledge can be useful so that you work to muster a little more passion than comes naturally, for the sake of others.

 

Or perhaps you are a Poet. When everyone says everything’s great, you say, ‘Not so fast.’ This is important, because it can literally or figuratively save lives – Poets see problems before others do. But it can make you pessimistic and hard to be around at times, and you can tend toward melancholy. You need to learn how to brighten up your assessments and not catastrophize.

 

Even a Cheerleader needs emotional self-management. Everyone loves being a Cheerleader, but keep in mind that you will probably avoid bad news and have a hard time delivering it. That’s not always a good thing! You will need to work on that so you can give people the truth, see things accurately in life, and not say everything is going to be all right when it just isn’t true.

 

Learning your PANAS profile – your natural blend of happy and unhappy feelings- can help you get happier because it indicates how to manage your tendencies, but in separating the two sides, it also points out vividly that your happiness does not depend on your unhappiness. The PANAS test is empowering, because using it, many people understand themselves for the first time, and see that there is nothing weird or wrong with them. For example, some people go for many years thinking they are defective because they experience more negative feelings than others around them, and have a hard time mustering as much enthusiasm as others. They learn that they are simply Poets. And the world needs Poets.”  

 

On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrices.

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at Openclipart.

 

Six ways to create an outline for your presentation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Magic Slides on July 22, 2024 there is a useful article titled How to Create a Presentation Outline: A Step-by-Step Guide with Examples. It describes the following methods:

 

Method 1: Create Your Outline from Scratch

Method 2: Use an AI Presentation Maker

Method 3: The Mind Mapping Technique

Method 4: The Storyboard Approach

Method 5: The Reverse Engineering Method

Method 6: The Comparative Layout

 

I have previously discussed four of these methods. On July 5, 2009 I blogged about Two types of speech outlines: speaking and preparation. And on August 4, 2009 I posted about Mind mapping and idea mapping for planning presentations. Also, on March 17, 2011 I blogged about Use a storyboard to organize your presentation. Finally, on December 11, 2022 I posted about how to Get a bird’s eye view of a presentation with a reverse outline.

 

At Toastmasters International the mandatory Level 1 Pathways project on Writing a Speech with Purpose contains a Speech Outline Worksheet starting on page 22.

 The number six was modified from this image at Openclipart.

 

Try slow productivity to accomplish things without burning out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Ada Community Library I recently found the interesting 2024 book by Calvin C. Newport titled SLOW PRODUCTIVITY: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. There is a review of it by Jennifer Szalai at The New York Times on March 6, 2024 titled The Very Busy Writer Telling Everyone to Slow Down.

 

He defines slow productivity on page 41:

 

SLOW PRODUCTIVITY

A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:

1] Do fewer things.

2] Work at a natural pace.

3] Obsess over quality.

 

Then he defines those principles in more detail:

 

PRINCIPLE #1: DO FEWER THINGS (page 53)

Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.

 

PRINCIPLE #2: WORK AT A NATURAL PACE (page 116)

Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.

 

PRINCIPLE #3: OBSESS OVER QUALITY (page 173)

Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term.

 

Cal describes his goals in conclusion on page 216:

 

“I have two goals for this book. The first is focused: to help as many people as possible free themselves from the dehumanizing grip of pseudo-productivity. As noted in the introduction, not everyone has access to this outcome. The philosophy I developed is meant primarily for those who engage in skilled labor with significant amounts of autonomy. This target audience covers large swaths of the knowledge sector, including most freelancers, solopreneurs, and small-business owners, as well as those in fields like academia, where great freedom is afforded in how you choose and organize your efforts.

 

If you fall into one of those categories, and are exhausted by the chronic overload and fast pacing of pseudo-productivity, then I urge you to consider radically transforming your professional life along the three principles I proposed. Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality. Depending on the details of your role, this probably won’t mean spending weeks staring up at tree branches or typing notes on a typewriter, but it will almost certainly lead to a more sustainable relationship with your job.”  

 

The Antonio Zanchi painting of Sisyphus was modified from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

What we can learn about speechwriting and PowerPoint from storyboards on a Disney ship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the cruise my wife and I took in late April on the Disney Wonder I noticed there were framed selections from storyboards hung on the walls to the landings for some stairways. One set of eight from the 1942 eight-minute Goofy animated film How to Swim is shown above. A storyboard is an old but important planning tool for preparing animation – but it also can be used both for speechwriting and PowerPoint.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another dozen frames from the 1940 animated film Tugboat Mickey (Mickey Mouse Installment 107) are shown above.

 

At LinkedIn Pulse on February 6, 2024 there is an article by Jaimie Abbott titled Using storyboarding to plan your presentation. And way back on March 17, 2011 I had blogged about Use a storyboard to organize your presentation.