Whether it’s at work presenting to the board or in class presenting to your peers, here are some tips to make that next presentation the best you’ve ever done.

• Having a structured presentation with good flow in between your main points is important. This helps the audience keep track and helps them understand the overall story you are trying to tell.

• A good idea is to try memorise your notes. Constantly looking down means you lose that engagement with your audience.

• Whilst it may seem daunting, eye contact with the audience makes a world of difference and also helps keep them engaged with your talk.  

• Remember to project your voice out so everyone in the audience can hear you. Your tone of voice is also important, especially when you are trying to emphasise particular points.

• Take care to speak at an ideal speed as speaking too slow or too fast can lead to the audience getting bored or missing a point you are trying to make.

• With the right visuals, these can improve your presentation and give it that extra ‘oomph’ it might need. Remember that whilst it may seem like a good idea to have fancy, complex visuals this often deters from the point you are trying to make. Keeping it simple really helps.

If you are using slides, make sure your text is the right font, colour and size. Pictures, diagrams or graphs need to big enough to be seen from a distance.

If it is a poster presentation, likewise make sure to use the right colours and have your font and images at a big enough size. 

With text, it is key to bullet point. Do not try and put all your information into your slide and simply read off it. The audience will get bored very quickly.

If you’re looking for something new rather than the usual Microsoft Powerpoint, try out Beautiful AI (which takes care of all the formatting for you and has many templates to choose from) or Prezi which enables you to zoom in and out of your presentation to emphasise particular points and is particularly helpful if you are wanting to show a story.

• More than anything it’s important to practice, practice, practice! When you know what you’re going to be saying automatically you’ll feel more confident.

• Last but not least, try Arepa's nootropic products before your presentation which are 100% natural, plant based, caffeine-free and New Zealand made. They are packed full of natural polyphenols and anthocyanins which will help lower your stress levels in this high pressure situation and have you (and your brain) performing at your best.