clock-watching as the most important skill in any event

If you're invited to be a guest speaker at other people's events - this post might be a bit uncomfortable for you.

If you're someone who sits through 'expert presentations' at events - this post should offer you some solace and comfort.

Earlier this year I was in a group call with fellow facilitators to explore a subject that was highly anticipated (as evidenced by more people booking a place to be on screen than usual, in the organisers' ongoing series) - but this story isn't just about / for facilitators. 

As the session began, we were introduced to our speaker as being a global leader in their field, and who promised 3 linked strands/buckets of insights on the topic (which added to our interest and excitement...)

But then it all started to go wrong - in the time scheduled for the session, this 'global leader' only managed to cover 2 of the promised groups of insights. And worse, they had to be abruptly cut off mid flow by the host as they were still energetically speaking well after the advertised end time for the session: people were increasingly exiting the zoom screen because it had overrun by so much... This also meant that there was no ability get any closure or conclusion to what we'd started to reflect on and consider, leaving us further frustrated that we couldn't resolve or make best sense of the first 2 sets of insights without the third.

Sadly, my sense is that this scenario is one that most of us probably recognise as more commonplace than we might like (and is equally as likely at an in-person gathering, as well as an on-line one) - the speaker or session leader allows things to overrun, leaving us all less time for any wider discussion and reflection on content and ideas. Which in turn means that we leave feeling we've been talked at, rather than has the opportunity to learn. Also, that we've not been shown any respect from the timings not being kept to, and content not being covered, simply because the 'global expert' (or their equivalent) hasn't had the foresight to practice their timings.

I'm sharing this story here as part of 'drawing back the curtain' on one of my own professional practices - specifically, always prioritising trying to make sure I end any speaking or led sessions early, against the time advertised that they'd be running for. This isn't me trying to shortchange people, but makes it easier to flex content to be delivered if I suddenly have less available time from other speakers overrunning (my personal best on this was shortening what should have been a 20 minute keynote at a national conference to only 3 mins after all speakers before me heavily overran, and by time I was invited to take to the stage, the (hot) conference lunch had started to be served at the back of the hall we were in...). It also allows space for people to reflect together so they can start to initially consider how they'll best apply their new insights and knowledge with some of their peers (never a bad thing?).

So if you book me to run a session, and you're concerned that any draft notes etc I share with you in advance seem 'light' in the context of time allocated, please be assured that it's part of a plan to make sure I don't leave people without the final pieces they need to make sense of what I'm bringing; and they also have some opportunity to start to reflect on and apply their new knowledge I'll be sharing, so it can start to create change and impact for them. 

And if you book me for an in-person speaking gig, please know that a part of making sure I stick to this, I sometimes bring a water pistol and clock with me for the event host to use against me, in the event I get carried away and struggle to stick to my own rules...

4 years late, my first book finally has an index

A book that happened by accident - and what went wrong

Back in 2022 I wrote and self-published my first book.

I did it because other people said I should.

And I did it all by myself, because I wasn't in a position to be able to afford to buy in the book editing, design, etc services that would have helped me spot and avoid any 'rookie gaffes'.

And just like anyone else who's ever self-published their own book, it was only after it started to appear in other people's hands that hindsight arrived (late as always) to point out to me all of those 'rookie gaffes' that I'd somehow failed to spot, before pressing the button to release it onto the wild and onto bookshelves.

My mistakes didn't impact on its success - but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed 

Encouragingly, none of these gaffes which loom large for me seemed to have been spotted by the hundreds of readers all around the world who've bought copies of it and passed them around; they've not stopped the book from winning an award; and they've not prevented interest in it's ideas continuing to catch interest (4 years on, and people are still buying copies of it - without paid for advertising most self-published books stop making sales within a year, but I've never paid for any adverts for it).

But one of those oversights has always niggled me - I omitted to include an index to help readers navigate it. And I have an idea that indexes are also important because they reveal some of the insights and sources of inspiration that the author has drawn on in drafting their book: 

A novel approach to getting the missing pages in readers' hands? 

So 4 years on from when it originally appeared, I've now gotten to creating an index for it - and I'm taking what I think may be a world first approach in how I'm sharing this:

Most people would probably assume that the easiest thing to do would be for me to update the book's manuscript and send this back to the printers. But to my thinking, there's 2 problems with this:

1) it means that everyone who's already bought a copy will miss out on these bonus pages;

2) it means that I'm retrospectively editing the history of the book so that how it's read in the future will be different to how it was read in the past. That somehow doesn't sit well with me: the book as it currently has been that way for the last 4 years in its original form. And its in this form that its generated so many unexpected outcomes that I'm working on a sequel volume to it. To change it now would mean that future readers have different experiences of it, creating inconsistencies in it's own story and history as a book.

So instead, I'm choosing to make these extra index pages freely available to download and share as a 'print and stick in the back of your copy' approach.

This feels far more in keeping with some of the book's ethos in encouraging people to take a more hands-on approach to trying new ways of doing things - and for anyone who's wondering if it might be worth spending a few pounds to get their own copy, it offers an insight into some of the different themes and references I drew on in writing it.

To get your copy of the missing index to 'Loving Your Doubt' -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NCYAIF6Fu63W2-USxP5tMtg_aM7w3hXA/view?usp=drive_link

And for those of you who grab these pages, I'd be interested to know:

1) if you're a previous reader, has it changed how you now think about the book?

2) if you haven't read the book yet, how far does getting it's index influence the likelihood you might get a copy in the future?