The greatest presentation lessons usually are not found in a book on using PowerPoint (or any other presentation tool). I have always said that some of the greatest advice on presenting on stage comes from the world of standup comedy. In the over twenty years of Presentation Zen, I have often pointed to the lessons from comedians. Stand-up is the most naked and most difficult kind of public speaking gig I can think of. For every famous stand-up comedian you know, there must be ten thousand others who tried but eventually gave it up.

One of the most enjoyable auto-biographies I have ever read is Steve Martin's Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. It's brilliant. I stumbled upon the book shortly after it debuted many years ago. Recently I purchased the e-book and reread the whole book cover to cover on my the iPad and found myself highlighting over one hundred passages.

In this post, I share just thirteen of those Steve Martin quotes while elaborating on how they relate to the world of speaking and presenting at large. Anyone who performs or otherwise makes their living presenting in front of audiences big or small will get something from Martin's account of his 20-year career as a stand-up comedian. You'll learn how he made it to the top, but also why he walked away from it. It's an inspiring story and also a cautionary tale. And there are lessons for us all.

In the Presentation Zen book, I speak briefly about the legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans and his great appreciation for simplicity, and his capacity for tremendous amplification through honest simplification. Amplifying through simplifying is something we want to do in the art of presentation as well.

I’d like to point you to this 1966 documentary below, The Universal Mind of Bill Evans.This rare and remarkable documentary features an interview Bill Evans did along with his brother—also a wonderful pianist—Harry Evans. If you can find time to sit down and watch the entire interview, it may be the best thing you see all week. The interview begins a few minutes into the video here.

In an age when it is so easy to off-load thinking to AI—letting it draft the outline, suggest the content, and even generate the visuals—the temptation is greater than ever to place speed, ease, and efficiency over originality. But if you are going to do something different, if you are going to craft a talk that engages, illuminates, and even inspires, then your preparation is going to take creativity. We are at our core creative beings. Creativity is in all of us, it's who we are. And yet, regardless of our professions, we can benefit greatly from being even more creative. So how to do that? One way to start is to listen to the legendary John Cleese and incorporate his tips into your daily work and life where possible. This speech is from 1991 and is as relevant as ever.

In order to establish a connection with an audience, we must grab their attention right from the beginning. A punchy opening that gets the audience's attention is paramount. Granville N. Toogood, author of The Articulate Executive also stresses the idea of starting off quickly and beginning with punch. “To make sure you don’t get off on the wrong foot, plunge right in," he says. "To galvanize the mind of the audience, you’ve got to strike quickly.” There are many ways to strike quickly and start with punch to make a strong initial connection. Conveniently, at least five proven ways to begin a talk form the acronym PUNCH. Some of the best openings include content which is Personal, Unexpected, Novel, Challenging, or Humorous. Some of the best presentations contain at least one or more of these elements.

Turning words/text into visual representations is a part of visual thinking, but it's only a small part. For example, in the summer of 2007 in a Waikiki hotel—six months before the first edition of Presentation Zen was published—I spent days writing my ideas—mostly in text form—onto sheets of paper before I begin writing the actual book (right). Eventually, those ideas become an outline and then a book, but first I needed to get all the ideas out in a space where I could see the big picture and see how the parts can fit together. I needed to go from the abstract (a new book on presentations) to the concrete (content details plus structure). I knew I wanted ten chapters for the book, so I placed ten large sheets of paper on the wall, and then over several days, I filled in all the sheets (chapters) with a word or two or a crude drawing representing each idea of concept that I wanted to cover.

Let's embrace the spirit of the Rebel Alliance and push back against Imperial AI slop propaganda and the scourge of habit and conventional wisdom. If you have a large screen, use it to show visuals, not lines of text that remind you what to say. Stand with your visuals, becoming a clear part of the visual experience from your audience's point of view. Do not stand meekly in the corner or behind a lectern, removed from both the audience and the bright screen.

Forest bathing, or shinrin‑yoku, is a Japanese practice of mindful immersion in nature, a practice that can help us step back from the stress of modern life. It is not about hiking necessarily, but about slowing down and simply being in the forest, engaging all the senses, listening, breathing, and letting the atmosphere wash over you. Research shows that this quiet presence in nature can lower blood pressure, reduce cortisol, and even support the immune system. The practice is beautifully simple: walk slowly, sit quietly, breathe deeply. No special gear or training is needed. Forest bathing is a gentle, accessible way to reconnect with nature, restore calm, and bring a bit of quiet clarity back into our lives.

Sometime in the mid-1990s, I serendipitously found a lovely book called The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams (the designer). As the title implies, this is a book for non-designers who need/want to learn some fundamentals about design that will help them make better graphics. The book focuses on four essential concepts: Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, Contrast. Of course, there is much more to graphic design than these four fundamental concepts, but understanding them can give anyone a solid foundation on which to build. In this post, I share a link to a PDF containing the section (with slide examples) from Presentation Zen that explains these four concepts.

When designing our presentations and creating the supporting visuals, we should keep in mind the way our audience will actually process our presentation. We must design our visuals in ways that take advantage of how people process information. As a general rule, then, make slides as simple and visual as possible and limit the about of text. Here I show you how Steve Jobs used simple, clean, and visual slides—not bullet points—to take people on a journey from the stage.

A key tenet of the Zen aesthetic is kanso (簡素) or simplicity. In the kanso concept beauty, grace, and visual elegance are achieved by elimination and omission. Says artist designer and architect Dr. Koichi Kawana, "Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means." When you examine your visuals, then, can you say that you are getting the maximum impact with a minimum of graphic elements, for example? When you take a look at Steve’s slides and Bill’s slides from 2005, how do they compare for kanso? Often, the question is not what can you add, but what can you remove, or resist adding in the first place. Always ask yourself whether the old refrain “less is more” can be applied to your particular visual.