How fast do you read,
speak — and think?

Most people read this script silently faster than they can read it out loud. That matters. As presenters, when we fill our slides with text, it triggers the urge to read. People start reading, and when we talk over that, we interrupt their concentration. Since reading is faster than speaking, they finish before we do — making us both a distraction and a slowdown. One more thing: in theatre, upstaging means something on stage pulls focus from the speaker. That's what our slides do when overloaded with text. The worst part? We designed them that way. We're upstaged by our own slides.