paulmck

This is part of the Kernel Recipes 2025 blog series.

The other posts in this series help with small improvements over a long time. But what do you do if you only have a few weeks until your presentation? Yes, it is best to avoid procrastination, but sometimes you simply don't have all that much notice.

First, have a very clear picture of what you want the audience to gain from your presentation. A carefully chosen and tight focus will save you time that might otherwise have been wasted on irrelevant details.

Second, do dry-run presentations, preferably to people who won't be shy about giving you honest feedback. If your dry-run audience has shy people, you can ask them questions to see if they picked up on the key points of your presentation. If you cannot scare up a human audience on short notice, record your presentation (on your smartphone if nothing else) and review it. In the old pre-smartphone days, we would do our audience-free dry runs in front of a mirror, which can still be useful, for example, if your smartphone's battery is empty.

Third, repeat the important portions of your presentation, which usually includes the opening, the conclusion, and any surprise “reveals” in the middle of the presentation. If it is an important presentation (but aren't they all?), do about 20 repetitions of the important portions. If it is an extremely important presentation, dry-run the entire presentation about 20 times. Yes, this can take time, but on the other hand, most of my extremely important presentations were quite short, on the order of 3-5 minutes.

Fourth and finally, get a good night's sleep before the day of the presentation.