e-mail and presentations

Merlin Mann’s (at 43 Folders) presentation at Google over how to manage your e-mail has gotten more and more hype on the blogosphere. It’s based on a typical Get-Things-Done way of doing things. He basically says there are five actions to do with every e-mail….

• Delete
• Delegate
• Respond
• Defer
• Do

Merlin says that if you limit yourself to those five actions for e-mail you can keep your inbox clean and really increase your productivity. I put some of these things in practice when I worked at the paper due to the number of e-mail lists and news releases I received but since I’ve been working for the county I’ve let it slide and now my e-mail inbox has become more like that pile of clothes that collects in the corner of the room. It started with a jacket and now there’s pants, shirts, socks etc.
I’m going to see if I can put these things back in place – especially with personal e-mails. Luckily I’m not at Google where employees are saying they get at least 500 e-mails a day just from within their company – not including all the e-mails they get from inside.

You can watch Merlin’s talk to Google here:

More information on Merlin’s plan, Inbox Zero can be found at inboxzero.com which links to Merlin’s series of blog posts about the process.

He also has his presentation online here which is another great topic for discussion.
He also has information on his blog about making presentations better.

Some of Merlin’s tips for better presentations include:

• “Tell a story that makes the audience into the protagonist, then demonstrate how your approach to solving their problem will help them win in the end.”
• Also, suck up your pride, and make yourself fill out Cliff’s Word template (available here) for telling your story
• It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.
• I love the look of a very simple graphic alongside a very few words
• Do a cold open
• Work the notes field
• Think: “Stephen Colbert”

<5th email just showed up>

• Finish early – this may be one of my hardest things to do. I want to be sure I include every ounce of information possible so there are no questions at the end. But I may be giving way more information than I need to. Finish early and give everyone a chance to ask questions if they want/need to. Merlin says, “Running long not only says you weren’t properly prepared for the time you were allotted, it leaves no time for the best part of every presentation for me: the Q&A. I love interacting with the audience and getting a chance to apply all that hand-waving to real-world questions.”

Well that should give you some fun things to look at and consider over the weekend – how do you handle e-mails? What works best for you? Are you like some people I know who just check it and delete everything or are you more like my dad where it builds and builds and builds and builds and builds until it takes an hour everytime you check your email?
Also anyone out there have any good presentations tips they want to share? What works for you? How can you/we apply these things to say a small group meeting at church? Can we use these ideas for a small meeting at work or does it only work when you’re presenting to a group of 50 or more?