What do you do if you've been told you have to give a 30 minute presentation, you're about to stand up. And the organizer says, Hey, we're running late. Instead of 30 minutes speak for just 15 minutes. Classic dilemma when your time is cut short, here's what most people do. They speak twice as fast. And they throw away all their interesting examples, case studies and stories.

And they waste a lot of time saying, I know I can speak really quickly because I don't have a lot of time they told me to make this fast. So I'm not going to be able to cover all my people and they waste time talking about their time, huge mistake. Never talk about the time you have or the lack of time or how you thought you had more time. Simply use the time you have for maximum effect. Use every second to put a spotlight on an idea that says important to you. That's also important to your audience.

And if you had 30 minutes of material planned and now you have 15, you need to chop in half the number of key points you were trying to convey, because it does absolutely no good whatsoever to strip away the examples, case studies and stories for your points just to cover more points because no one's going to remember the points. If they're that important, give them the PDF, give them handouts. Give them a whole book if you want. But don't try to speak quickly. At an abstract level doing a data dump. Use your normal tone of voice your normal speed.

Just do fewer points and flesh out each one with stories and case studies. And this way, they may even ask you to spend more time talking, if not, people will go out of their way to try to get your PDF, your PowerPoint presentation or go to your web. To find out more information, you can give a great presentation, regardless of the time limitations given you, even if it's a last minute change