Whirlwinds, Stories and Recharging

This week felt like a whirlwind for me, the polar opposite of the previous one. While weather kept me cooped up for a couple days and limited my travel, this past week was just the opposite. Lots of running and working at a furious pace. And lots of presenting. Storytelling really ought to have a more prominent place in our society. Behind every media clip, newspaper article, blog post, novel, radio banter, and so on - there's a story. Someone is trying to tell you that story and hopefully generate a reaction to those words or images.

The challenge is telling the story right. Telling it in a way that will move the listener. Motion. Now add an "e". And that's the key: emotion (thanks Mark and Mike). Does the story create a change in your emotion?

I read or listened to plenty of stories that have led to feelings of disinterest and the urge to doing something else with my time. The problem with those stories was that they didn't grab me. Just one description after another. One fact after another. Nothing poked and prodded my heart. They didn't make me care about their characters or the narrator or any other element in the story except for its eventual end.

I find this often in news stories where we are given information up front, the story winds along and then the last two paragraphs go back in time to some point before this story started. It's kind of like "this stuff was way too important to leave out, but not important enough to lead with or else you would have gotten bored and moved on, so we threw it in at the end and so when you finish the story you'll have all the information." Sorry, but when I read articles like that I put the paper down and mumble, "Huh?".

Storytelling is really an art and if I learned anything this week, and I certainly did learn, it's that you've got to practice telling a story if anyone is going to give a hoot about it. Ever listen to someone fielding a question or giving a speech that's disjointed, full of uhm's or loaded with superfluous phrases? I particularly abhor these phrases during storytelling: for all intents and purposes, in and around, what I'm trying to say is, in spite of what you may think, contrary to popular belief, as you can see on the slide right here. I could go on and I 'm sure I'm not remembering some of the more egregious ones but you get the point.

After watching several hundred presentations over the last few years, there is something that comes into focus. I didn't always know this, but my two favorite weekly podcasts, Manager Tools and Career Tools have lifted the veil for me. People don't write down their thoughts like a story to persuade people. We hope our pretty slides or voluminous handouts will win the day. In the end that stuff becomes eye candy or recycling bin filler. What matters are the words.

How did you feel when that presentation ended? If you didn't feel anything you certainly won't remember it. When I clean my desk I always throw out old presentation decks from meetings I cant remember. Someones hours of last minute labor going all for naught. Guess what I do save? My notes. I have a couple file folders that contain notes from every meeting I've ever attended in the last three years. At the bottom of those notes are the critical points that I either need to know, execute or create.

I haven't always done this. It was a learned skill but the process of good note-taking is highly undervalued. It's my attempt to capture the story or at the very least, my role in it. Presenters would show their audiences higher levels of respect if they could just remember, it's about the story.

The ironic part of this piece is that in order to accentuate my story this week, I purchased a clearance PowerPoint graphics package for $9 from a company in Germany. It accomplished exactly what I intended. The graphics were sharp and different. The charts I put together were simple and enhanced my message, There were not the message. Even though it was a 2010 clearance set, it was so different from what my team usually sees, it worked.

It's reassuring that even at 40 I can learn like sponge-brained kindergartner and then successfully execute that new stuff. A side benefit to the whole process was that I became a more effective speech writer. I wrote it out long hand twice, practiced it several times, reduced it to an outline, practiced again, and then whittled it down to a single note card. Something to be said for preparation, eh?

A final observation from this week. I've never felt as tired at the end of each day as I did this week. I think I poured so much into each day, I really needed to recover. I read something recently that said you should strive to be in bed by 10pm every night during your work week. Your brain needs to recharge and requires a respite from stimulus.

The author also said you should take one day per week and do nothing that involves a laptop, cellphone, smart phone, TV, or book. Get outside and move around. Take walks, work outdoors, work out, compete in sports. Do anything that uses your brain in a more instinctive and reactive way versus a thoughtful and sharply-focused way. That is sound advice, but I think in our tech driven world, that is a tall order for most.

I told a story this week about an apartment. I lived in alone in that two room apartment. Nestled in a pine grove far enough from main roads, the apartment offered solitude and silence. Unlike right now. My kids have interrupted the creation of this piece about eight times now and I'm ready to stop and enforce some discipline! Ok. That's taken care of, we should be good for another two minutes! All I owned was a radio, a bed, a dumpster-rescued coffee table, clothes and a car. How did I ever survive? I need to play that song "Enjoy the Silence"!