How to be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate!

Chapter 8. Styles and Approaches

Have you ever noticed that there is no such thing as an uncreative child? Take a look around the next time you're at the park: How many briefcases do you see? Are any three-year-olds taking meeting notes so that there is a record of the day's play? Are any of the children in the sandbox pontificating about style guide violations?

Of course, by the time children reach grade school, we adults have usually found a way to tamp down their wild spirit. Cars don't have mouths. Grass can't be pink. Alligators don't have sheep heads. Blah, blah, blah.

I've never been able to discover what adults love so much about conformity. Maybe it's the month-by-month pressure of bills that leads us to crave predictability. Or maybe we trade the pursuit of novel excitement for stability (try as we might). Whatever it is that leads us to shun creativity, it is a thorough impulse that happens to nearly all of us. Reclaiming the free-spirited brain of youth takes a concerted level of energy and practice; however, it is a vital step in the quest for presentation god status.

The first thing we need to do is rethink our definition of creativity. If it means the ability to create something new or unseen, then why have we been designating landscape artists as creative? If it means, quite simply, having the ability to create a tangible object of any sort—be it art, furniture, writing, songs—then why do we consider a philosopher's ideas so creative? The truth is, most of our ...