Preparation unlocks spontaneity

You actually have to prepare to be spontaneous. And that's counterintuitive, but when you think about it in athletics or jazz music, it's like of course you would prepare and practice.

The only solution I found consistently to being concise is preparation. It's not a very glamorous solution by any means, but the clearer I am going into a meeting, going into a conversation, going into a pitch, the better I am at being concise and being able to bring the conversation back to the most important points.

Your talk is now internalized, not memorized. You have these pillars, you know where you're going and you're ready to perform it.

The "accordion" refers to de Montebello's method of practicing talks by progressively shortening time limits (3 min → 30 sec) then expanding back up.

Instead of preparing our talk by writing, we're going to prepare our talk by speaking, using time constraints going down the accordion to create extreme clarity.