Chris Anderson

Inspiration can’t be performed. It’s an audience response to authenticity, courage, selfless work, and genuine wisdom.

But if you, the speaker, want the audience to come with you, you probably need to give them a hint of where you’re going.

but if there’s no real takeaway, all the speaker has done—at best—is to entertain.

It is throughline, the connecting theme that ties together each narrative element.

Notice that there’s an unexpectedness incorporated into each of them.

More choice actually makes us less happy.

The key is to present just one idea—as thoroughly and completely as you can in the limited time period.

My advice to speakers would be to look for a single big idea that is larger than you or your organization, but at the same time to leverage your experience to show that it isn’t just empty speculation.

That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a 10-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.

But throughlines that connect large numbers of concepts don’t work.