Do Improvise

Nietzsche, himself a great thinker, famously suggested that all great ideas are conceived by walking. Since body and mind are integrated, not separate, ideas can just as well flow from the body to the mind as the other way round. Both paths are valid

If he isn’t having fun, he will change what he is doing. This doesn’t mean giving up, or going off in a huff, it means asking himself how he could act differently to make things more fun. This requires presence of mind and discipline. It also requires being willing to be changed (i.e. being prepared to be wrong)

Play around with things at the edge of what is normal or known. Read a magazine you would never normally pick up. Rabbit Owners Monthly will show you a whole world you didn’t know existed (and thus, if nothing else, the limits to your own). Speak to someone you don’t know. Eat different food. Allow yourself to wander off rather than always ‘pushing on’. Look up. Look sideways. Fertile territory often lies in the margins or overlaps.

tool called the Audience Requirements Grid

This is partly about being sensitive to the room.

You will serve yourself best by serving them

The crucial thing to remember is that members of an audience have needs of their own that have nothing to do with your agenda. If those needs aren’t met, they won’t be able to listen to you. If you don’t attend to them, they won’t listen to you

Communicating, even when you
are giving a presentation, is as much about listening as it is about speaking. Seriously. This is what I mean about it being two-way.

hardly anyone ever thinks in a disciplined way about what the audience needs

You, your material and your audience. Of the three, the material is the one that matters least. Yet the vast majority of people focus almost exclusively on the slides.