21/07/2026
I recently watched someone click to a slide with fourteen bullet points, all of them appearing at once, and say, "don't worry, you don't need to read all of this."
Then why is it on the screen.
That slide is the whole argument for animation, right there.
When everything shows up at the same time, your audience does not listen to you. They read ahead, half-follow you and land on point nine while you are still explaining point two. You lost the room and you did it with your own slide.
The Animation option is not there to look fancy. It is there to make you the only source of new information in the room.
Reveal one point, and people look at you to explain it, not at the screen to figure it out themselves.
Build a chart bar by bar, and people watch a story happen instead of reading a finished picture and getting bored before you reach the point.
Bring in one line at a time, and you control the rhythm of the whole talk. Pause after a reveal and the room actually sits with it for a second, which never happens when six ideas land in one breath.
None of this needs to be elaborate. A basic appear does more work than a spinning, bouncing entrance ever will. Nobody has asked to see your bullet point cartwheel in from the side.
This was not a one off. I have sat through this exact moment more times than I can count.
So next time you build a deck, try this test. Look at slides. Ask what happens if you only show one thing at a time. Nine times out of ten, the answer is that people finally listen.
PS: animation only ever covers one sense. If anyone figures out how to make a slide that also smells, tastes and feels right, call me first :-)
