Presentations are a form of performance, and like any good performance, they need timing and cadence. That doesn’t mean you have to be a professional speaker or an actor—it just means that once you’ve mastered the basics of presenting, you’ll want to fine-tune your presentation so it’s more entertaining to watch and easier for your audience to follow.
The importance of timing and cadence in your presentation
It’s no secret that timing and cadence are important in all aspects of life. Whether you’re working on a presentation, writing an essay, or performing in front of an audience, being able to control the flow of events is an essential skill. If you don’t have it, your audience will be distracted—and they’ll likely start talking among themselves as well!
A good presentation will create a rhythm for your audience members to follow so they can better understand what’s happening. This rhythm should help guide them through their learning process and give them something familiar with which to identify. A bad presentation will feel like a disorganized mess that never lets the audience catch up or grow comfortable enough with the topic at hand. It may not seem like much at first glance, but having an effective cadence can make all the difference between a good presentation and one that leaves people confused and wanting more information elsewhere (or worse still: bored).
Humans respond to timing and cadence
Humans are the most responsive to rhythm and cadence. If you’ve ever noticed how your heart rate speeds up when you’re excited or slows down when you’re relaxed, it’s because humans respond to timing. The same is true for our brains: we can hear the difference between a heartbeat and a metronome—even if they’re playing identical rhythms at different tempos—because of our natural sensitivity to cadence.
If you don’t believe me, try this simple experiment: tap along with your hand or foot as you count from one to ten in an even rhythm (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10). Then try tapping along again as you count unevenly (7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16). Did your brain feel more comfortable with one pattern over another? The key here is that both patterns were equally even; they just had different amounts of beats per measure!
As speakers, we have control over how many beats we include in each measure—which means we can create our own sense of timing and rhythm on stage by varying our speech patterns accordingly.
Rhythm, rhyme, timing, and cadence in your presentation
Rhythm, rhyme, and cadence are all about timing. A presentation that has no rhythm is like a drum machine with no syncopation; it’ll get the job done, but it won’t be exciting to listen to or fun to dance along with. You want your presentation to have some bounce in its step—a good balance between the calm sections and the fast ones.
Rhythm, rhyme, and cadence make things feel alive because they appeal directly to our emotions by fueling our subconscious minds with sensations of opportunity (e.g., if I hear something that sounds familiar, I should pay attention) or urgency (e.g. if someone is shouting at me).
Rhythm also gives us pleasure by triggering our brain’s pleasure center—the nucleus accumbens—which releases dopamine when we hear something pleasurable (like music). Similarly, rhyming words activate the same area of the brain responsible for romantic feelings like trust and love (the caudate) because they sound similar enough for us to think that they’re related somehow! Rhyming words also give us a sense of control over our environment because every time we hear one come up again later on down in line-by-line text like this article or spoken sentence structure such as dialogue within movies.
How fast should you speak?
We all have different personalities, and it’s important to find the right pace for your speech. If you’re talking too slowly, people won’t be able to follow along and will get bored before the end of your talk. On the other hand, if you speak too quickly and rush through each sentence without giving yourself time to breathe or pause between thoughts, it will seem like a series of unrelated ideas rather than a cohesive narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.
The best way to determine how fast is right for you is by listening back to some recordings of past speeches (or podcasts) as well as taking note of what feels comfortable during practice sessions in front of an audience or mirroring audience members who are watching/listening so they can give feedback on whether they felt like they were able to follow along easily enough or if there were any points where they felt lost because they missed something while distracted by their surroundings (this happens more often than we’d like).
Should you speak slower or faster than normal?
In general, the slower you speak, the more you can emphasize important points. If you’re talking about a new product that will help your audience save time and money, for example, slow down as much as possible to make sure they know how much time and money they’ll be saving.
On the other hand, if you’re talking about something less important—for example, a new feature on an app that won’t have any effect on their lives—you can speed up without losing them.
Timing is what makes the difference between a bland presentation and one that sizzles.
A bad presenter will speak too fast, too slow, or get off-track altogether; their material will be too complex for an audience with little time to spare; they’ll ramble on about things no one cares about; or they’ll simply be boring. An effective speaker, on the other hand, has learned how to use timing as an effective tool in their craft: instead of sounding like they’re reading off of notes or reciting memorized lines (which most people do—and it shows), they make eye contact with people throughout the room; pause before delivering key points in order to emphasize them; and vary their tone by lowering it when talking about something serious (like a tragic event) or raising it for comedic effect (e.g., an inside joke).
To find the perfect cadence, think of the heartbeat of your presentation. Does it beat too fast or too slow?
When thinking about cadence, it’s helpful to think of the heartbeat of your presentation. The perfect cadence will be steady and predictable, with no surprises. You want to find the right speed and rhythm for your speech—the right amount of time between each slide so that you can take in what you’ve just said to convey what’s coming next. At first, this might seem like an impossible task: how do you know when a second is too long or too short? Once you get familiar with PowerPoint and how long things take (as opposed to how long they feel), however, it becomes much easier to find that perfect pace. However, beware of the relentless pursuit of the perfect cadence.
It’s easy to get lost in the pursuit of the perfect cadence. Perfection will always be the enemy of good. Remember that different people will have different cadences, and that’s okay. If you feel confident with your current timing and cadence, don’t try to change it. But if you want to make your next presentation stand out from the crowd, I hope these tips will help you find a rhythm that works for you.
