Presentations and Email

I site through a LOT of presentations. Distraction is deadly for a presentation - it can come in the form of animated graphics, noises in the room, or if the presentation is given over the phone, poor sound quality. One type of distraction I see a lot is that little window that pops up that says you've got mail - the pop up is used by a lot of MS Outlook users and provides a quick overview of the email: who it's from, couple lines of text from email, etc.

First, very rarely does anyone need to know instantly that they've got email. We can't have great thoughts if we're interupted every 3 minutes by a new email coming in. That's another discussion about email use, but in this case having that little popup appearing during a presentation is very distracting to the people being presented to and the person presented. It communicates to the audience that their second priority and suggests that given the right email, they may be put on hold. Not good.

So the recommendation is first, turn off that pop up - it will ruin your productivity - you'll be glad you did. At the very least, turn it off before a presentation.