5 lessons from a summer spent drafting my book

Quick journey recap:

I knew the best way for me to get a book done was to do it while away from the day to day business of my regular academic life. So that left the summer. I wanted to finish still with 2 weeks before returning to work at McGill--point 5 will show the lucky wisdom in that plan. I couldn't start until July 7th so I had exactly 42 days, and my contract with University of California Press was for 40,000 words. That math was pretty easy.

Here's how it went, and 5 things I learned along the way.

1)      A proper prep process

I spent a month planning, with a coach, to help me. What you see here are three lessons applicable to presentation development:

• A clear focus: Early-career PhD researchers find their voice and better understand their own knowledge through improved public speaking because the road to better presentations demands it. But first they must conquer (1) their misconceptions about good speaking technique and (2) the inner voices that tell them they’re not as smart as people seem to think they are and that they could never actually become a great speaker themselves.

• With an unexpected twist: What's interesting is that you can't speak with true authority until you've developed the voice that believes it. Fake it 'til you make it doesn't work.

• And a high-level conceptual map:

These reflect closely the first 2 steps I have researchers do in The PresentBetter 5 Step Process. The first step in the process is answering key questions. The second is a 5-step map of the proposed content flow of their presentation. Both are done before any slides are built. Click to learn more about the individual program for PhDs, Postdocs and other early career researchers OR the cohort program for PIs, supervisors and others mentoring them.  

2)      Time blocking with a twist

If you don’t know about time blocking, it’s exactly what it sounds like: block the high-quality time you need and schedule it into high-need activities.  But it’s never worked for me… until now. The difference?  I only scheduled the end time: at 8 am, I’m done writing for the day.

And it worked. Day 15, I had finished the first 4 chapters. 14,000 words total. Each morning, I woke up early, enjoyed my coffee, walked the dog, checked the Red Sox score and then slid into writing. But only until 8 am. The end time created pressure to start, but let the start time be organic. And the continued right through to the end. On day 42, I had 39,874 words having taken only 2 days off the entire time (more on the issue that created in lesson 5).

Transferring this process to presenting is easy.  Presentations take time to develop and need time to breathe. A little bit of time consistently every day for a month will get you further in less time than trying to cram the whole presentation development into the last week before the conference. I build all my coaching programs this way.

3)      Start where you know

I told you that I had written the first 4 chapters, but that’s not technically true. At the time, I had not yet written the introduction but came back around to it later on when I felt inspired to write that part. . .

When building presentations, I’ve never found starting with the intro works well.  For one thing, it almost always gets changed later and all the effort to get it just right too early is wasted.  My advice: wait to build your presentation intro until after you are at least halfway done the rest of the work.

4) Remember content is modular

When I was writing the middle section of the book on presence, the content pieces fell apart on me. I couldn't find the flow I know I needed. So I rebooted. I asked myself a key question: what if I have the sequencing wrong? That one question unlocked a whole new path. 

It's the lesson I stress again and again in my presentation programming: we need to think about content as being modular. 

a) how you put the content pieces together is often the key difference between good and great presentations.  

b) you need to stay flexible building it as they never quite fit together the way you thought they would.   

5)  And the not so good last one 

I finished the last sentence of draft 1 with a triumphant shout and about 5 hours of elation.  By dinner I was doubting everything I had written, and by the next morning I was a hot mess. That wasn't totally unexpected.  What was unexpected was that this self-doubt consumed me for almost 2 weeks--thus the lucky wisdom of having planned that as time off.

The deeper you push, the longer you need to recover. The last time I worked that hard to push a draft manuscript over the finish line was my dissertation. I had forgotten (thankfully) just how draining it is.  

Presentations often feel this way too. The output from being on stage is so high that rather than elation after, we feel exhaustion. This is normal. You need to do 2 things: 1) proactively manage your time so that after a big presentation you have a lighter schedule; 2) remember the low after the high is normal and wait until it passes before reflecting (or watching the video and trying to learn) from the presentation you did.

Those are the drafting lessons. I'm editing now and will share lessons from that process as well. Check back here in a few months, or, if you want more real time reflections straight to your inbox, sign up for my newsletter here.

PS If you haven't checked out the PresentBetter digital programming yet, here are the links: