An interview with the author of “Your Best Just Got Better”
by Peter Watts
I recently wrote a blog about a productivity book called “Your Best Just Got Better” It’s a book that has made a huge personal difference to how I work, where I set my priorities, and how I go about defining those priorities.
As a follow-up to that review, it’s my pleasure this week to be able to welcome to The Presenters’ Blog the author himself, Jason Womack.
Jason has conducted over 1,500 seminars. To each audience he brings not just knowledge, but energy, experience, and passion.
1,500 audiences! How does he do it?
During this podcast, you’ll find out how the personal performance ideas that Jason shares in “Your Best Just Got Better” can be applied to the world of the presenter:
- Overcoming barriers that might be holding you back, such as nervousness
- Why it’s essential to know, and to believe, that your ideas truly matter. That you have something to say!
- How to identify your key message: the one thing that you want everybody in the room to have heard and understood during your presentation
- The role that dissonance plays in the hard-wiring of our brains, and why it’s essential to proactively take charge of our own post-presentation coaching
- Why it’s important to keep every presentation delivery as fresh as the first, thereby honoring your responsibility, as a presenter, to your audience
This podcast is packed with ideas and tips from Jason. Listen to it by clicking this link for the Jason & Peter PodCast, or if you’d rather read the conversation, we’ve included this transcript as well.
In addition, Jason and I have also put together ideas to boost your presenting; how you can identify your own unique knowledge, craft your message, and then take that to the stage…. this week! It’s combined with a very short video message.
Enjoy the Jason & Peter PodCast, and do please leave any comments that you might have.
It would be great to hear from you.
The Presenters' Blog 
What a great dialogue – I like the idea of presenting or even conversing like Twitter – you must get to the point quickly, but also provide enough background and/or context so that your intended audience knows what you’re talking about. Your discussion about Mind Mapping was interesting and spurred a thought; could you do a post on Mind Mapping? I’ve tried to embrace it, but it just doesn’t seem to help me in presentations or projects. Perhaps a “how to” or “Pro Tips” post or two?
Thanks for the comment Wheatley, and for the inspired suggestion. One post on MindMapping coming up!
Wheatley and Peter, what a GREAT prompt! One thing that I’ve found over the years I’ve used mindmapping (beginning as a high school teacher, here in the states, back in 1995) is that there is a tendency to make it “VERY” important.
Mind Map: a quick way to write down things that are connected in my mind, but don’t (yet) make complete sense…
Can you give some examples of how you use mindmaps? I understand the “how” and the “why” of mind mapping, but just haven’t seen how I can apply it in my work life which makes me think I’m not thinking of it in the right way. Perhaps I should do a mind map on the uses of mind mapping in my daily life!
I use MindMaps as an alternative to lists, for a method of note taking, and above all for any sort of creative planning. The main thing about them is that whereas lists are linear, and restrict our thinking, MindMaps are these wonderfully branching structures where you can have numerous topics running simultaneously, all open at the same time. Let’s take the simplest use of them, which is for note-taking. (I’ll be doing exactly this with a MindMap a little later today). A speaker will talk have principal topics that that they want to address in a presentation, but it’s rare that they are such an organised speaker that those topics are neatly segmented into discrete blocks. Instead most speakers duck and dive around their topics. This makes note-taking by lists frustrating, unless you’re using a MindMap. All those branching lines of thought on the map are never formally closed-off, so as the speaker reverts back to a previous topic, so can the note-taker. Try it out next time you are listening to a presentation.
Here’s a post from MindJet on how I mind map… http://blog.mindjet.com/2012/08/mindjet-user-spotlight-jason-w-womack/
Great podcast. Very much enjoyed listening and it brought much of his philosophy to life and practical application. More please!
Thank you for your kind comments and encouragement Christopher. More podcasts to come!
Thanks SO much for listening! As always, we LOVE to hear if there were any specific things we talked about that you especially liked listening to. This will help us, as we’re already talking about the second conversation to record!