In the hit song Ten Thousand Hours, rap star Macklemore credited author Malcolm Gladwell for popularizing the now famous rule for turning him into a musical success. By now you know the rule —it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master a specific task.
Ten thousand hours of practice doesn’t just apply to mastering a sport or a musical instrument; it applies to public speaking as well. I’ve made the observation that Steve Jobs, widely considered the world’s best corporate presenter, was not a naturally gifted public speaker. Jobs worked at it and worked really, really hard. He developed public speaking skills only after thousands of hours of practice over many, many years.
In Gladwell’s world, Steve Jobs was an outlier. But you’ve got a company to build right now. You have investors to pitch and customers to persuade and you don’t have 10,000 hours to practice for your next PowerPoint presentation. What should you do? Make the power of 10 work for you—not 10,000 hours, but 10 hours.
Think about it. When is the last time you rehearsed a presentation for 10 hours? It’s a significant amount of time that will boost your confidence, refine your message and delivery, help alleviate stage fright, and, since most people will never rehearse a presentation for anywhere near 10 hours, you’ll look far more polished than the majority of business presentations your audience will have seen.
The 10-hour stopwatch begins only after you’ve built the majority of your presentation slides. In other words, practice your completed—or nearly finished presentation—for a full 10 hours. Take it step by step like an hour a day. Really practice. Get out of your chair, clicker in hand, and advance through the slides exactly as you plan do when you deliver the actual presentation. You’re likely to stumble at first. You might forget what you had planned to say on a particular slide or it might take you five minutes to express a thought that, after a few more practice rounds, you can deliver in half the time.
I deliver keynote presentations at least once a week. And while I don’t have to rebuild every slide for every presentation, I strive to practice each presentation for at least 10 hours. I sit in “fishbowl” type of office with windows on three sides. When my colleagues see me walking around the office talking to myself, they know I have an upcoming keynote speech.
“Carmine, I rehearsed my answers to potential interview questions over and over again,” the graduate told me.
“How long did you practice?”
“About eight to ten hours,” he said.
If you practice your presentations long enough you will reach the famous 10,000 hour mark. Once you do you will be nothing short of spectacular. It’s been said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Consider 10 hours the “first step” on the journey to mastering public speaking skills.