A 22-minute micro lesson
If your slides feel cluttered, busy, or just “meh,” it’s almost never a creativity problem. It’s three habits.
What you’ll learn
Each one fixes a different problem. Together, they cover 80% of what makes a deck feel professional.
More slides isn’t worse. Crowded slides are. Each slide gets exactly one job.
The viewer’s eye should know where to land in under one second.
It’s not empty. It’s a frame. Aim for ~40% breathing room.
Shift one of three
More slides isn’t worse. Crowded slides are. Each slide should have exactly one job: one takeaway your audience walks away with.
One sentence summary
If you can’t describe the slide in a single sentence, split it.
Headline as takeaway
Make the headline a complete thought, not a topic label.
Five-second test
A viewer should grasp the takeaway in five seconds or less.
Shift 01 · See it in action
Six ideas competing. No takeaway. The audience reads instead of listens.
One idea, one number. The other points become their own slides, and each one lands.
Checkpoint · Shift 01
Look closely. Don’t count words. Count distinct claims a viewer has to absorb.
Keep this handy
Download the one-page audit checklist and run it on your next deck.