The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

This blog post from Guy Kawasaki, a VC/author/serial adviser-and-board-member, is one of the best pieces of productivity advice I've seen in a long time.

We've all sat through long boring PowerPoint presentations, and for Guy it's endemic to his VC job because he has to listen to funding pitches all day. So he has developed (or at least is evangelizing) the 10/20/30 rule for PPT presentations:

- 10 slides max
- 20 minutes max
- 30 point font at minimum

Guy maintains that ten concepts is the most any human can comprehend at a time, and 20 minutes is a good goal because the average presenter will spend the other 40 minutes setting up the laptop to work with the projector.

The 30-point part is especially amusing, as well as salient. Guy theorizes that people who cram more words onto a PPT page don't really know the material and need more text as a crutch, thus forcing a smaller font to fit it all in. His alternate recommendation: determine the age of the oldest person in the room, and divide it by two -- that's your minimum font size.

This is one of those pieces of productivity advice I latch onto immediately and never forget.