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Illustrate, Illustrate Illustrate

When a speaker loses an audience, too often it is a mystery to him. But for the audience, it is not a mystery. The simple fact is that many speeches we listen to spend a lot of time in some theory or idea. And we as humans have trouble focusing on an abstract idea for very long before losing interest. This is one of many reasons one of the central rules of public speaking is to use lots of stories and illustrations to make sure you hold the audience’s attention.

Some speakers look down on the need of audiences to connect to the speaker via concrete illustrations. But this is a basic form of human communication. In fact, some of the most brilliant speakers in the world have acknowledged that if a speaker cannot express his ideas in concrete illustrations, then that speaker does not have a grasp on those idea yet.

The use of stories and humor should get started as soon as the talk begins. One of the problems that public speaking encounters has to do with the speed of processing. Science has shown us that the human mind can think at least 10 times faster than it can hear. That means that for 90% of the time you are talking to a group, their minds have time on their hands. If you give them a concrete story to work with, the details of that story give that excess brain power something to do.

By opening with a light hearted illustration, you capture the minds of your audience quickly. The best kind of opening story is a humorous one particularly if it is an anecdote from your past. This method not only is a wonderful way to get your talk off with a enjoyable story, it connects them to you and opens up the speaker to the audience which causes bonding. When selecting the perfect opening humorous story, use two criteria to select just the right illustration. First select a story that links to the problem to be solved by the presentation. If the problem is an abstract tone such as spiritual hunger or political theory, that can be tricky. But try to get close with the illustration, at least close enough that you can have a transition ready to take the audience from the story to the concept you wish to discuss first.

Secondly, connect your opening story and every illustration in your talk to your theme. In this way every step of the way, the illustrations reach out to the audience, rescue them from drifting and gently bring them back to the talk and what you want them to be thinking about at this part of your presentation.

You can tell if your audience is drifting. Any public speaker has looked out and seen the audience begin to lose interest in what is being said. The eyes begin to look away from the speaker. Often they will take interest in something in their lap or on their person. You might see them writing but its probably not notes from your talk. Or their heads bob or you just see them go to sleep entirely. So when you see that happen, your presentation has spent too much time on theoretical ideas and you need to go back and think through a different mix of ideas and illustrations.

A good illustration at least will keep the audience involved in the discussion. But a great illustration will actually become part of the presentation so you can tell the story and then proceed to use elements of the story as part of your next points in your conceptual talk. When that works well, you will stop losing the audience because the concrete story serves to anchor the rest of the presentation perfectly.

So learn the art of telling a good story. Any long time story teller will teach us that the heart of a good story is detail. But in a public speaking setting, a story should be brief but easy to understand. If it has humor, that’s the best story of them all but above all, it should have personality. And it should help to compel the audience to connect to the talk and understand the ideas you want them to grasp. And if that happens and you have a stronger talk as a result, you will be glad you followed the advice of experts in public speaking to illustrate, illustrate, illustrate.

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Compost Smells: This and Other Composting Myths

Composting is a natural and simple process and yet it has been complicated by machines, fallacies, misinformation, myths, and misunderstandings that came out due to erroneous publications and aggressive commercial marketing approaches. Some of these misinformed facts have been passed around so many times that the general perception has become truth. An example would be the seemingly accepted fact that all compost smells. But before we go into that, let’s discuss some other composting myths first.

Myth: Composting requires a lot of work

Truth: Composting is a natural process which involves basically the elements of nature doing the job for you. All you need is to gather all the materials, lay it on, and let nature do her job. Composting is a low maintenance activity as well. You only need to turn the compost file every once in a while to keep the air flowing to quicken the decomposition process and that’s it. You practically sit and wait for the the compost to finish.

Myth: Composting is limited to farms and wide open spaces
Truth: On the contrary, people living in urban areas who have no luxury for space can create their own composting bin from a trash can. How much space would that take up? Also, there is another technique which you can use, the so-called vermicomposting which involves the use of red worms in a contained bin where you feed them table scraps.

Myth: Composting needs precise measurements

Truth: Even though composting ideally would be best achieved with the right combination of greens and browns elements, having the exact measurements is not that necessary. Estimates work just fine. And those neatly piled up layers of composting piles you see in commercials, books, pamphlets and brochures of composting products, those are all for show. You don’t need to copy those, composting works the same way as you pile them up haphazardly.

Myth: You need specially formulated chemicals as starters or activators

Truth: Well, despite the claims of commercially available products that applying them to the compost pile will speed up the process of decomposition, buying them is not really necessary. It is often the practice to just throw in some finished compost into the newly formed compost pile and that itself will serve as the activator to get things started. There’s no need to buy those expensive stuff.

Myth: Adding yeast will boost the compost’s performance

Truth: This is not true at all. What you’re doing is just wasting your money by adding yeast to the compost pile. Yeast does not do anything to the compost pile and neither does it affect the performance quality of the compost.

Myth: Animals are attracted to composting piles

Truth: Yes, this to some degree is true. Composting piles do attract the occasional cat, dog or raccoon. Small critters will likely go for open compost piles and for piles that have kitchen scraps like meat, fat, dairy products, bones and pet manure to the pile.

Myth: Compost smells

Truth: Compost should not smell. If you find bad smelling compost, then the maker did a poor job picking the materials for the compost pile.

Other composting myths exist and it would be best to do your research first before accepting them as truth.