The science of timing

What are the ingredients for a great talk?

One needs solid content at the core, something that would be of value for the audience. It needs to be packaged well with a good script, that can interest the audience. Finally, it needs exemplary delivery, unfurled in a way to captivate the audience.

The Guest Keynote by Dan Pink at the recently concluded Gartner conference hit all these points, and was extremely well received. I found a lot of people raving about the talk, hours into the evening.

The talk had great content, and the crux was from his latest book “When: The Scientific secrets of perfect timing”. It was packaged with a great script, and I found later that Dan used to be speechwriter to VP Al Gore. The delivery was perfect, in fact his earlier TED Talk is amongst the top 10 most viewed ones.

Here are some key takeaways on Timing from this talk:

• 1. Positive mood rises in the morning, dips in the afternoon and recovers in the evening. Plan your tasks based on the phase — Analytic in peak, Administrative in trough and Insightful during recovery.
• 2. Breaks give a jumpstart to flagging productivity. The right kind of break makes a difference: moving beats stationery; social beats solo; outside beats inside; fully detached beats semi-detached.
• 3. People hold special significance for endings. Use closures as meaning-makers; shine a light on endings to energise yourself and others.

Here’s the link to Dan Pink’s interesting Ted talk on motivation at workplaces.