Cake Day

Here is something for you to do today.

Take something you know how to do very well – for this example, let’s assume you know how to bake a cake. You can bake a cake in your sleep, right? You’re amazing at it. (And if not – just pick something where you are.)

Now do it while recording yourself. Talk out loud; speak through your process. Stop to snap some pictures. Video the whole thing.

Next, take that raw data, and turn it into a presentation. A nice slide deck with quotes from yourself, images of important steps, video clips of the hard parts. Put all of that into a presentation.

Why? Because being able to take an action and turn it into a talk about that action is a really high-value skill. Most people try to do it for the first time with an action they don’t know very well, and then deliver it to an audience they’re unfamiliar with in a high-stakes scenario.

Ever had to deliver a talk at work? Maybe even for an interview? Yeah, like that.

If you did it instead with an action you already know intimately in a setting where nothing at all is at stake, you would be able to spot ways to improve your performance by a factor of ten, easily. You don’t even have to show it to anyone but yourself if you don’t want to (though you’d be surprised how easy it is to underestimate the interest others might have)!

And, as a nice reward for yourself: you get a cake.