I almost always have way more talking points than I need by the time I've put together an outline. Editing can be really challenging. What goes? What stays?

Here's a trick I learned quite by accident that, so far, has proven to be really awesome and useful.

This Spring, I did a "5-minute Lightning Talk" at CocoaConf Portland. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, I volunteered with maybe two hours to shape the idea into a 5-minute talk. I'd had this idea for a talk I wanted to do that was a continuation (part II) of my "Burnout" talk.
Boiling the ideas down into something I could communicate within 5 minutes helped me narrow down A LOT of ideas into what the most important ones are. And I've since teased those out into 20, 30 and 60-minute talks. The core message remains the same.

Note: All tips written for my #talktips #30days challenge are written in 5 minutes or less.
if you have more questions or would like more info about any of my #talktips, leave a comment!