13 – Prepare a talk the easy way
List all potential topics; Select 3 main ones; Drop topics not connected to the main ones
Has this ever happened to you: you’re preparing a talk or writing a review or paper, when you think, “I should add this topic, and perhaps that one too”? Two hours later, your talk or piece of writing has ballooned out of proportion, and worse, you know it’s bad.
It has ‘bloated’. Help is on its way! Over the years, I’ve learned a simple but powerful method to avoid bloating. I use it all the time, not only for talks but also to outline my papers, courses, books, and blog posts.
Bloating comes from the fact that some topics pop up in our brain after we’ve started writing our paper or designing our talk. To avoid it, you need to:
- List every topic that you can think of connected with your subject;
- Select 3 main topics;
- Cross out topics that are not connected to these main topics.
1) List every topic that you can think of connected to your subject
I’ll use the example of a presentation, but this method also applies to composing reviews and can even be adapted to articles (see below). First, list every topic you can think of that’s related to your subject, without censorship. This step is very important, because it’s the act of listing everything that comes to mind before designing your paper or talk that will avoid new topics popping up when you’re writing up.
For example, imagine that you want to make a presentation about your research subject, “Car accidents”. You could brainstorm dozens of elements connected with that subject. I’m only listing some here:
- Main causes of car accidents
- Exiting an accidented vehicle
- Progress in preventing car accidents
- What happens before an accident
- Types of cars accidented
- Types of drivers who have an accident
- Where car accidents happen
- What happens after an accident
- Reactions of a car during an accident
- History of car accidents
- Cars automatically calling help services after an accident
- Reactions of the driver during an accident
- On what days accidents happen
- What happens during the accident
- Making accidented cars visible to road users
Now that you’ve listed all topics you could think of, you need to choose your main topics – let’s see how.
2) Select 3 main topics
Now comes the time to prioritize: choose 3 main topics among those that you’ve listed. It isn’t easy (who said research was easy?), but having all the topics listed in front of you will be a great help.
Let’s say you chose these 3 topics:
- What happens before an accident
- What happens during an accident
- What happens after an accident
Which sounds like a logical and memorable 3-part plan, doesn't it?
All that’s left now is to eliminate the topics that don’t relate to these ones. That’s the subject of the next section.
3) Cross out topics that are not connected to your 3 main topics
Now comes the fun part: crossing out unconnected topics. For example, ‘history of car accidents’ has nothing to do with the main topics we chose in step 2 (what happens before, during and after an accident), so we cross it out.
At this stage, you can also decide to eliminate subtopics that are connected to your 3 main topics but that you don’t want, or don’t have time, to talk about. For example, ‘Types of drivers who have an accident’ might fit the topic ‘What happens before an accident’, but you might feel it’s a whole subject in itself that you don’t have time to talk about – so cross it out. Here we go:
- Main causes of car accidents
- Exiting an accidented vehicle
- Progress in preventing car accidents
- What happens before an accident
- Types of cars accidented
- Types of drivers who have an accident
- Where car accidents happen
- What happens after an accident
- Reactions of a car during an accident
- History of car accidents
- Cars automatically calling help services after an accident
- Reactions of the driver during an accident
- On what days accidents happen
- What happens during the accident
- Making accidented cars visible to road users
You are left with a series of manageable topics, which you can now rearrange under the 3 main topics:
-
What happens before an accident
- Main causes of car accidents
- Where car accidents happen
-
What happens during an accident
- Reactions of the driver during an accident
- Reactions of a car during an accident
-
What happens after an accident
- Exiting an accidented vehicle
- Making accidented cars visible to road users
- Cars automatically calling help services after an accident
Et voilà! Your plan is ready, and it will not bloat, because you have already considered all potential topics and carefully selected the ones you wanted to talk about.
As you can see, this method could also be called ‘Writing a review the easy way’ :-) It saves so much time, by avoiding bloating and the frustration that goes with it.
Before parting, a last tip to avoid bloating in research articles.
To avoid bloating in research articles, eliminate results that don’t contribute to the article's title
Many researchers also complain of bloating when writing research articles. To avoid this, there is a simple method. We’ve seen in a previous post that articles should present a chain of evidence towards the article’s conclusion (which should be stated in the title). Therefore, to avoid bloating, simply:
- list all results that you have obtained. The act of listing prevents some results from popping up later while you’re writing the article, as in step #1 above.
- cross out results that don’t contribute to the paper’s title (i.e. that don’t fit within the chain of evidence that proves the paper’s logical conclusion). This pruning step is similar to step #3 above.
And that’s it. What about you? Do you have problems with bloating? Have you tried out this method after reading this post? Tell me at david@moretime4research.com. David
PS: If this post is useful, consider linking it to your website, and let me know at david_at_moretime4research.com. Thanks.