The unspoken contract of a workshop is this: the audience grants you temporary control of their attention (and actions) in the belief that you will transmute it into something new and valuable. If you violate this contract by asking too much before returning sufficient value, then they grow suspicious of your authority, their goodwill evaporates,

In terms of scheduling, the discussions themselves should be fairly brief (2-5 minutes), but the overall exercise will still end up consuming a decent chunk of your schedule (10-15 minutes).

For example, you might ask them to sort careers on a 2x2 where one axis is “high-earning vs. low-earning” and another axis is “excites me vs. bores me”. And then, a few minutes later, you could throw them for a loop by asking them to resort the same cards along a different set of criteria, which would cause new options to bubble to the top. (e.g.

This outline shows what your workshop is really about. Not a vague topic, but a set of clear takeaways. It’s quick to create, quick to iterate, and hugely simplifies the task of delivering a wonderful workshop. When you eventually start making your slides (not yet!), you can follow the outline to create a deck which is laser-focused on exactly what

Instead, your job is to provide your audience with a small, curated set of sharp, useful takeaways which meaningfully improve their lives. A workshop designer is a curator and deciding what’s out is as important as deciding what is in.

Another big improvement is to stop using your phone as a clock and timer. We’ve already covered this in the previous section.

Every workshop lives or dies by two factors: What the audience learns How the audience feels (i.e. energy and attention)

Folks with deep expertise are especially vulnerable to the tangent trap, since they know a ton of stuff and are highly tempted to include it all. But that’s how you end up with a rambly, vague lecture. Instead, start with the main Learning Outcomes, add a few key supporting arguments, and delete anything which doesn’t directly support those points.

These essential slides include: Summaries of your Learning Outcomes and supporting arguments Exercise prompts (instructions, rules, discussion topics, etc.) Resource lists (recommended books, your contact info, etc.) And if you’re teaching a topic which demands it: Visual examples for fundamentally visual topics (fashion, architecture, etc.)