specifies court martial for any officer who sends a soldier

into battle without a weapon.

There ought to be a similar protection for students

because students shouldn't go out

into life without the ability to communicate,

and that's because your success in life

will be determined largely by your ability to speak,

your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas,

in that order.

I know that I can be successful in this

because the quality of communication,

your speaking, your writing, is largely

determined by this formula.

It's a matter of how much knowledge you have,

how much you practice with that knowledge,

and your inherent talent, and notice

that the T is very small.

What really matters is what you know.

This point came to me suddenly a few decades ago when

I was skiing at Sun Valley.

I had heard that it was Celebrity Weekend, and one

of the celebrities was Mary Lou Retton,

famous Olympic gymnast, perfect 10s in the vault.

And I heard that she was a novice at skiing,

so when the opportune moment arrived,

I looked over on the novice slope

and saw this young woman who, when she became unbalanced,

went like that.

And I said that's got to be her.

That must be the gymnast.

But then, it occurred to me, I'm a much better skier

than she is, and she's an Olympic athlete-- not only

an ordinary Olympic athlete, an outstanding one.

And I was a better skier because I had the K, and I had the P,

and all she had was the T. So you

can get a lot better than people who

may have inherent talents if you have

the right amount of knowledge.

So that's what my objective is today, and here's my promise.

Today, you will see some examples

of what you can put in your armamentarium of speaking

techniques, and it will be the case

that some one of those examples, some heuristic, some technique,

maybe only one, will make--

will be the one that gets you the job.

And so this is a very non-linear process.

You never know when it's going to happen,

but that is my promise.

By the end of the next 60 minutes,

you'll have been exposed to a lot of ideas, some of which

you'll incorporate into your own repertoire,

and they will ensure that you get the maximum opportunity

to have your ideas valued and accepted

by the people you speak with.

Now, in order to do that, we have

to have a rule of engagement, and that

is no laptops, no cell phones.

So if you could close those, I'll

start up as soon as you're done.

Some people ask why that is a rule of engagement,

and the answer is, we humans only

have one language processor.

And if your language processor is enga--

could you shut the laptop, please?

If your language processor is engaged browsing the web

or reading your email, you're distracted.

And worse yet, you distract all of the people around you.

Studies have shown that.

And worse yet, if I see a open laptop somewhere back

there or up here, it drives me nuts, and I do a worse job.

And so that ensures that all of your friends

who are paying attention don't get the performance

that they came to have.

So that's it for preamble.

Let's get started.

First thing we talk about, of course, is how to start.

Some people think the right thing to do

is to start a talk with a joke.

I don't recommend it, and the reason

is that, in the beginning of a talk,

people are still putting their laptops away.

They're becoming adjusted to your speaking parameters,

to your vocal parameters, and they're not ready for a joke.

So it doesn't work very well.

They usually fall flat.

What you want to do instead is start with empowerment promise.

You want to tell people what they're

going to know at the end of the hour

that they didn't know at the beginning of the hour.

It's an empowerment promise.

It's the reason for being here.

What would be an example?

Oh, I see.

At the end of this 60 minutes, you will know things

about speaking you don't know now,

and something among those things you know

will make a difference in your life.

Yeah, that's an empowerment promise,

so that's the best way to start.

So now that I've talked a little bit about how to start,

what I want to do is give you some samples of heuristics

that are always on my mind when I give a talk,

and first of these heuristics is that it's a good idea to cycle

on the subject.

Go around it.

Go round it again.

Go round it again.

Some people say, tell him what you want to tell him.

Tell him again, and then tell him a third time,

as if people weren't intelligent.

But the point is--

the reason is-- well, there are many reasons, one of which

is, at any given moment, about 20% of you

will be fogged out no matter what the lecture is.

So if you want to ensure that the probability that everybody

gets it is high, you need to say it three times.

So cycling is one of the things that I always

think about when I give a talk.

Another thing I think about is, in explaining my idea,

I want to build a fence around it so that it's not confused

with somebody else's idea.

So if you were from Mars, and I was teaching you

about what an arch is, I might say to you,

well, that's an arch.

And that's not to be confused with some other things

that other people might think is--

this is not an arch.

That's not an arch.

I'm building a fence around my idea

so that it can be distinguished from somebody else's idea.

So in a more technical sense, I might say, well,

my algorithm might similar--

might seem similar to Jones's algorithm,

except his is exponential, and mine's linear.

That's putting a fence around your idea

so that people can not be confused about how it

might relate to something else.

The third thing on this list of samples

is the idea of verbal punctuation.

And the idea here is that, because people

will occasionally fog out and need to get back on the bus,

you need to provide some landmark places where

you're announcing that it's a good time to get back on.

So I might, in this talk, say something

about this being my outline.

The first thing we're going to do is talk about how to start.

Then we're going to deal with these four samples,

and among these four samples, I've

talked about the first idea-- that's cycling.

The second idea, building-- and now,

the third idea is verbal punctuation.

So I'm enumerating and providing numbers.

I'm giving you a sense that there's a seam in the talk,

and you can get back on.

So now, we're on a roll, and since we're on a roll,

can you guess what fourth idea might be here--

an idea that helps people get back on the bus?

AUDIENCE: Ask a question.

PATRICK WINSTON: Yes?

AUDIENCE: Ask a question.

[INAUDIBLE]

PATRICK WINSTON: Ask a question, yes.

Thank you.

So ask a question.

And so I will ask a question-- how much dead air can there be?

How long can I pause?

I counted seven seconds.

It seemed like an eternity to me to wait and not say anything

for seven seconds, but that's the standard amount of time

you can wait for an answer.