I think I've probably spent about 10-16 hours on the 20minute presentation I will make at Lille on Thursday. And this doesn't take into account the time it took for someone else to do the French translation. I'm still working on the presentation and need to do a few time trials, so the hours keep stacking up.
I don't think its right to spend such a disproportionate amount of time on such a short presentation. Everytime I go through the presentation I find 'something' that just doesn't sound right and I cant seem to stop myself from continually tweaking the freaking thing.
I wish I were more confident about what I want to say and simply have a couple of rough notes that accompany each slide and then just wing-it. This would certainly reduce the amount of preparation time. Will this approach change the overall message of the presentation, does all this preparation substantially add value to the final performance? I know what I would have told my students - practice makes perfect, the more time you put into it, the more reward you will reap. But personally I don't see a correlation in my recent presentation experiences.
Last night it dawned on me that I have 2 years left to complete this PhD and I was filled with a sense of urgency and respect for time. I hope this respect for time becomes a more engrained feature of my daily practices because I do feel I take time for granted and worry that I could be caught out.
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