Write your talk in 15 Minutes | By Emma Zangs

Useful read, thank you Emma! Key take away: inspiring moments come when you devote time to yourself, without disruption. Hard to achieve nowadays....By Emma ZangsPeople keep asking, how do you write a compelling talk, story, something that sticks to an audience?!?Do you know the 15minute Rule? I swear by it.When asked to go on stage, give a speech, or a presentation, the first thing everybody does is to sit down and write, re-write, re-read and re-write. A process that can take days and months and drain a lot of your energy.We live by the 15minute rule. We believe you can have a speech written in 15 minutes, you know if a client will buy your services in 15 minutes and you know if you will hire someone in 15 minutes.Mariana Lucia Marquez and I got in the Sadler’s Wells Summer University choreographic/artistic programme (2014-18) by writing our application in 15 minutes or more recently performing at Tedx by sending our application in that time.We believe the first 15 minutes you focus on something, you get the juice of what you want to say. It has energy, wit and more importantly it comes from your heart.So here is a challenge for you. For your next application, presentation, pitch or even board meeting, we’d like you to try the 15minute rule. It’s scary, but it works and yes if you need an extra minute to finish writing or correct typos, it’s allowed. So turn off email, phone notifications, and create some silence around you, every single cells of yours will be required for this.

To write a talk in 15 minutes ask yourself these 3 questions:

•What do I truly want to share, what is dear to me, what do I stand for?•How do I want to start and finish?•What are your 5 key bullet points? (ideally one word only)The 15minute rule is also used to stop procrastination and Zadie Smith, restricts her daughter mirror time to 15 minutes a week. It’s a golden number!PS: this article has been written in 15minutes. 😉