“. . . To the beat of a different drummer”

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.
    
At the website Yahoo!Answers, an unknown respondent wrote the following in response to this prompt: “Henry David Thoreau said.....march to the beat of a different drummer....?”  “In the conclusion to 'Walden,' Thoreau writes, "If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away." He meant,” said this respondent, “that one should do things in one's own way regardless of societal norms and expectations.”
    
There is no doubt that society encourages (forces?) conformity, so the question, “How do you march to the beat of a different drummer?” is a legitimate one.  Or, to state it a bit differently, “How can you make yourself stand out?”  The essential bottom line has to do with social skills, and there are many things you can do.
    
There are two underlying characteristics that will lubricate the social skills I will discuss in this essay.  The first, is confidence.  Confidence, alone, will convince others of your credibility and worth.  What you need to do is reveal the characteristics that demonstrate confidence:  When you act independently, assume responsibility, take pride in your abilities, deal maturely and intelligently with your emotions, willingly accept new challenges, and handle problems effectively and efficiently, you convey confidence.
    
The second underlying characteristic that will lubricate your social skills is a sense of humor.  How do you develop a sense of humor?  First, observe others who are funny, and mimic their behavior.  Start laughing when other people laugh.  Make this a  habit.  Natural laughing will follow, and it will become automatic when funny things take place.  Also, see the funny side of things even if they are difficult or embarrassing.  Injecting lightheartedness into situations filled with angst, fear, and unhappiness, if done in good taste and without stepping over the line where mourning, death, loss, and pain are involved, is often appreciated and a valuable commodity..
    
Now, what are the social skills for which both confidence and a sense of humor are catalysts?  The following ideas were listed on WikiHow where a number of authors have weighed in and offered suggestions for “How to make your personality stand out.”  The first is, “don't be loud.  Other people find noisy people to be obnoxious and annoying. We don't want that, do we?”    The second suggestion is, “know when it is right to argue with someone. Learn to accept that others may be right and you may be wrong. Nobody likes to be around someone constantly pointing out that they are right.”
    
There are four other suggestions for making your personality stand out.  Third, “know when to speak up. Defend friends in tough situations.”  Fourth, “don't be afraid to talk to others. Always look people in the eye when you're talking with them. It makes you appear more confident. Nobody wants to talk to someone who can't stop staring at their feet. Remember to stand up tall. Never slouch.”
    
I have skipped their fifth suggestion, “having a sense of humor” since I use that as an element that can positively affect all of these suggestions.
    
Their fifth suggestion, then, I have re-written so it makes better sense.  It is the importance of your personality.  Revealing your personality “doesn't mean that you should have [good] looks.”  It means letting others know who you really are.  The confidence referred to above must show in your eyes, voice, and it must be reflected to others.
    
Sixth, “don't be afraid to be different. People will admire you for your unique personality.”  If you hold ideas or opinions that are different from others, express them with conviction.  If you have knowledge and experiences that are unique, work them into conversations and discussions.  If you have hobbies, read sources, know people, or do things that vary from the norm, be certain that others become aware of them.
    
The seventh and final social skill they mention could, too, be listed as an overriding element that affects all the others.  It is, “be kind and considerate. People who truly practice these virtues to everyone they meet can be true to themselves and still stand out.”
    
I would add several more social skills to their list.  The first would be to keep an open mind.  Do not automatically stonewall or block out people who hold contrary views to your own, rather, look at them as an opportunity to learn new things.  Every person who touches you in some way can offer something positive to your knowledge, background, and experiences.  They have the potential of expanding your horizons and opening your mind even further.  Allow these possibilities; encourage these opportunities; invite these situations.
    
The second social skill that I would add to theirs is to become a more effective listener.  At EssentialLifeSkills.net the essay there, “10 Ways to Improve Your Personality,” lists being a better listener as their first item for improving your personality.  You can make a better impression through effective listening to others than by asserting yourself or injecting yourself into conversations.  Look others in the eyes, hang on their every word, and make them feel important.  “There is nothing more appealing than having someone listen to you intently making you feel like you're the only person in the world.”
    
 At “”10 Ways to Improve Your Personality,” a second item not yet mentioned in this essay, and one I feel is essential, is their seventh item: “Have a positive outlook and attitude.

Who wants to be around people who are negative, complain a lot, or have nothing good to say? In fact, most of us run when we see them coming. Instead, be the kind of upbeat person who lights up a room with your energy when you enter it. Do it by looking for the best in people and things. Smile warmly, spread good cheer, and enliven others with your presence.”
    
Some of the items discussed in this essay may require giant leaps, and to accomplish and develop these skills requires baby steps.  Begin in small ways, and you are likely to make large gains.  Be patient with yourself, however, as you grow and change in positive ways.   Thoreau had it right.  To march to the beat of a different drummer, Thoreau said, “Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away."
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At Essential Life Skills.Net (referred to in the essay above), the suggestions include a number of additional items in the essay, “10 Ways To Improve Your Personality” to what have been mentioned in my essay.

At the website Knowear the essay, “Building an Attractive Personality” (August 9, 2008), offers a number of additional suggestions and ideas in a rather long, but interesting, essay.
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Copyright November, 2012, by And Then Some LLC

    
    

Not your daddy’s retirement . . .

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.
    
What prompted this essay was a “Saturday Essay” written by Dr. David Andersen for The (Toledo) Blade (March 19, 2005), entitled, “Retirement’s gift is the chance to blaze new trail.”  When I first read this essay, I was just interested in another person’s point of view.  I was closing in on my first ten years of retirement, and I found his perspective interesting but much different from my own.  Although Andersen closed the door on one “life,” he left the door wide open for a new one—“Looking out over what once seemed an abyss, I now begin to see instead, uncharted terrain.  The journey isn’t over.  My destination is still out there. . . .”  

What I did in retirement was simpler.  I cut what I was doing (teaching and writing) in half, and I simply focused on writing alone.
    
Actually, when I read Andersen’s comments about leaving loved ones, “The other aspect that is over is my relationship with a people I have grown to love. . . .,” I was reminded of the retirement joke: “Why does a retiree often say he doesn't miss work, but misses the people he used to work with?  He is too polite to tell the whole truth.”  I am not making fun of Andersen’s comment nor am I suggesting it wasn’t true.  (Having known him quite well, I know the truth of his statement.)
    
One of the aspects of Andersen’s column that caught my interest, too, was simply that I really wasn’t familiar with retirement—what it means or how it is handled.
    
What is interesting about this essay title, “Not your daddy’s retirement,” is that I really haven’t had much experience with anyone else’s retirement.  My father, a university professor, died with his boots on at 53-years-old.  My father-in-law, at 98-years-old as I am writing this, retired at the age of 70 (in 1984) from the University of Michigan and has, since his retirement, completed writing 3 books.  His retirement is probably the closest to “normal” (if there is such a thing!) with which I am familiar.  We are both authors.
    
There are so many factors that influence retirement, one being pharmaceuticals.  One website said, “Superior pharmaceuticals and better education about health are available now, making it possible for people to live longer, healthier and more energetic lives.”  That alone is enough to differentiate “your daddy’s retirement” from present-day circumstances.
    
Technology alone has changed the nature of retirement for many people.  Instead of sitting in a room someplace, reading books and magazines, and watching sports on television (which sums up much of the life of my father-in-law now), they can become completely absorbed in the Internet—playing games, joining chat rooms, staying in contact with friends and relatives, etc.
    
Watching sports on television reminded me of a sports-related, retirement joke: “Two old timers in their 90's were chatting in the rest home.  One was healthy and the other quite ill.
    
The healthy one asked, ‘I wonder if there is baseball in heaven?’
    
His chum replied, ‘I'll be there soon, and I will let you know.’
    
A few days later the old gent passed on and that night the surviving friend was awakened when he heard a voice.
    
‘Edgar, it's me Bob. I have good news and bad news. The good news is there is baseball in heaven. The bad news is you're pitching on Wednesday!!’”
    
I am not suggesting that I am a model with respect to retirement behavior, and I’m not pretending that I am perfect; however, when I read the “proven tips that you can implement right away” by Cynthia Barnett at the website Right At Home, in her essay “Seniors—Effectively Manage Your Time In Retirement” (posted by Jeannie Locy on April 18, 2011), I have to say they struck a nerve.  For me, they represent all that I have been doing now for 15 years of retirement.  Remember, these are Barnett’s ideas, not mine; I have adapted them.
    
When I began my retirement in 1996, I did not know exactly what I wanted to do, but soon after that, I created a personal mission statement.  I evaluated my life, figured out what was important to me, wrote down my priorities and what I hoped to accomplish in my life.  My specific goal was to become the writer I always wanted to be.
    
Because I had written a lot previously, I knew that I could do it, but I had never done it full time, so I kept track of how I spent my time.  I knew that writing demanded “alone time” with no distractions, and my wife had already lived over 40 years with a “writing husband” in addition to teaching, so I knew I could survive and overcome the time stealers.  But that was essential since I worked in a study at home.
    
I developed a realistic plan.  Basically, I wrote essays for The (Toledo) Blade, while I worked on one book after another, all the while writing new editions for Communicating Effectively, 10th (McGraw-Hill, 2012), every three years.  When editors changed at The Blade and the “Saturday Essay” column was dropped, I set up a blog to have an outlet for my essays, and later I established a publishing company for my books.
    
I got organized at once, and since I was already a writer, I had a computer, a study, and all the necessary supporting apparatus—books, dictionaries, thesaurus, pens, pencils, and paper. I found that the cliche was true: the more organized I was, the more productive I became.  I get up at 3 when I exercise, but on all other days I am up at 6 a.m. to begin writing.
    
I had to prioritize.  If certain activities didn’t fit in with the bigger plan and would waste too much time, I didn’t do it.  My retirement years were too important to waste, so I guarded my time with a vengeance—as all serious writers must do.
    
I found that I could combine activities.  My textbook included practical advice and so did my blog essays.  Often I could combine those efforts.  It saved time.  When I had to run errands, I only go if I have 3-4 things to do.  Combining saves time.    
    
I plan all my activities, and I take the time to follow my plans. The absolute best way to accomplish goals is to plan out all my activities—no matter what they are.
    
I delegated work to others, too.  I have a number of editors who work for and with me at McGraw-Hill.  I brought my son onboard to construct websites and market my books.  I hire my daughter as a proofreader of my books, and I had for some time another person who posted my book reviews on Amazon.com.
    
I am a perfectionist; however, I am a realistic perfectionist.  It means that I know that I can always do better and improve, but I follow the 80-20 rule.  It takes 80% of my time to write an essay, and it takes the other 20% to bring it to absolute perfection.  My essays are not perfect, but they come close enough.  “Trying too hard can lead to feelings of frustration and wasted time,” writes Cynthia Barnett, “Therefore, know when good enough is good enough and simply be willing to move on.”
    
“In conclusion,” Barnett writes in a summary to her essay that could just as well have been written for this essay, “you can take control over your time and get more done than you ever wanted. Although this requires careful planning and learning, you can accomplish all of your goals by not being a perfectionist, delegating to others, setting long and short term goals, planning and combining activities, prioritizing, getting organized, developing a realistic plan, keeping track of your time, and creating a personal mission statement.”
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At Retirement-Online  the essay, “Retirement Activities,” offers a half-dozen great ideas.  The key, of course, is to stay active.

At The Retirement Café Ernie J. Zellinsky has written a terrific essay, “Top-ten activities to pursue when you’re retired,” packed full of useful and interesting suggestions and advice.  This article is well worth your time.
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Copyright November, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing LLC

Travel (Introduction for the book “Exotic Destinations and More”)

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.
  
When I lived in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), I mentioned to friends my plan to travel south to Chittagong, Bangladesh, and the woman to whom I was speaking said, “I would never go there, it’s too dirty.”  (Many cities in that part of the world are notorious for sacred cows walking free through the streets, pickpockets and beggars,  trash and litter.)  When I showed a department-store clerk a 20-yuan note, (worth $3.05 U.S.) and told her I had just returned from Beijing, Southeast Asia, she said, “Oh, I would never want to go there! . . . But I’m not much of a traveler anyway.”  This same trip came up in a discussion with close friends, and they said, “We would never do something so risky.”
  
I have never been averse to new experiences, unique opportunities, and potentially exciting encounters.
  
It needs to be said here that at no point in our many travels (and excursions), have we ever encountered problems, troubles, difficulties or any kind of risk.  Our traveling — in all cases — has been smooth, trouble-free, and easy.  “Easy,” of course, is a relative word.  (When I showed my sister, who was visiting us at the time, my essay entitled, “Cruise Number Ten: Bangkok to Beijing,” — published on my blog while she was visiting — she said she would never want to do all the planning necessary to take such a trip.  She did not think what we went through could ever be called “easy.”  The essay, “Cruise Number Ten . . .,” discusses the detailed planning we engaged in planning for our Southeast Asia trip.)
  
Our family (the family I grew up in and the family I am now part of), has been around the world, and we have lived in exotic places (i.e., Pakistan, Hawaii, and Australia).  I knowI how unique we are (speaking of both families) with respect to most other people in the world.  It is precisely for this reason that some years ago I began writing about the places we visited and the cruises and trips we took.
  
When my wife heard I was planning to write a book that chronicled our travels, she did not hesitate to say, “Who would be interested in reading about your experiences?”  It is an excellent question, and it needs to be addressed.  (The easy answer would have been to say, “I would.”  But, then, I have a slight bias.)
  
There are a number of reasons why others might want to read about my experiences.  First, many people want to travel and, for a variety of reasons (e.g., time, money, or fear) cannot.  They get their satisfaction vicariously, and these essays provide vicarious experiences.
  
The second reason others may be interested in reading my insights is that when people travel — especially regular travelers — they love to compare their experiences with those of others.  Did they feel the same way we did?  Did they do something we should have done?  Did they get out of this experience just what we did?  How did they like it?
  
A third, more obvious, reason why others might want to read about my travel experiences is to see if any of these places — exotic destinations and more — might be of interest to them.  The questions I would be asking would be, Would I want to go there?  Would I make these same choices?  How might I want to build on what this traveler did or experienced — or repeat his experiences?  (Others’ experiences often provide us guidance, suggestions, and opportunities.)
  
A fourth reason why others might want to read about my experiences is because everything I write about — all of the experiences discussed in this book — are accessible destinations.  If others have the time, money, and interest, these are places they can go and, for the same reasons we were lured there, might even want to go.
  
One thing that made putting this book (Exotic Destinations) together a thrill for me is simply having an opportunity to relive these experiences.  That, too, has been one of the great joys of trying to capture all these experiences in writing.  At times it has been a bit awkward to find the time to do the writing, but it has always paid off, and I have never regretted it, and now I insist on the time and place to do it.
  
My notes about my travels have become far more specific and detailed than when I first began writing about them.  Also, I have become more focused.  For example, many of the details I first wrote about when we began cruising, are no longer important — e.g., crew-passenger ratios, the countries from where crew come, and various cabin adornments. When I take an excursion in a foreign country now, I am much more aware (than when I first began) about the culture, the people, and the various local traditions, artifacts, and nuances.  These are the very things that bring a foreign culture alive and make the encounter enriching and worth writing about.
  
Perhaps it is just maturity or the accumulation of additional experiences or simply my observational skills (improved through polishing and honing), or maybe it is the continued improvement in my ability to take notes on and write about these experiences, but I think I am continuing to improve, learn, and grow.  Having left my formal education behind many, many years ago, I think I am capitalizing on the very things I was so fond of teaching my students.  It is not the education, per se, it is what you do later with all of your education.  It is the process of learning to learn.  All these experiences serve as my own personal educational laboratory and have, thus, helped me add to my knowledge and education.
  
Another factor that has contributed significantly to my growth is that I am now more relaxed than ever.  Previously, I was teaching and writing textbooks.  Now, with a single textbook in perpetual revision (Communicating Effectively, 10e (McGraw-Hill, 2012), when I complete work on a new edition, I am through (with the exception of collecting more information) for another couple of years (on a three-year-turn-around time frame), and can truly turn my attention to other things — including relaxation,  travel, and writing.
  
One thing that traveling does (until you can’t do it anymore) is whet your appetite for more travel.  It’s is almost like trying to eat one potato chip — you can’t eat just one.  You just can’t travel to one destination without wanting to see more and more diverse places!  It is, indeed, contagious.
  
This book (Exotic destinations) represents years and years of traveling.  Nobody could accomplish what is represented here in just one or two years.  We try now to make two major trips each year — one in the spring and one in the fall.  Because we have now seen so much and so many places, we have decided (at least in part) to try to be more selective in the choices we make.  That is, we are now going to visit those places we have enjoyed and would like to either see again or see more of.  But, there will be more essays, no doubt about that — since I have a blog that like an appetite, needs fuel.  I have a mind, too, that needs fuel, and travel experiences are one type of fuel I truly seek and enjoy.  I hope you enjoy these experiences as much as I did — and as much as I liked writing about them, too.
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Purchase the book Exotic Destinations at Amazon.

Copyright November, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing L.L.C.

    
    
   

Exploring Australia

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.
   
The thoughts about Australia prior to our visit there ranged widely from a country with a primitive road system to an advanced, modern, industrial society.  The reason for this wide range of thoughts (and emotions, too!) is simply that my family had no idea what to expect.  For me, it was a six-month sabbatical, and I had made contact at four educational institutions to teach or lecture.
   
For making arrangements from such a distance away, everything went surprisingly smoothly, and the three-out-of-four of our teenage children who accompanied us, loved the entire experience.  Our fourth child joined us with about a third of our trip left — and loved it, too.
   
One thing we have discovered from all our travels is that people are both friendly and helpful.  As an example, we were standing at the Sydney Opera House looking at a map, and an Australian who overheard our accident, came over to help us out and give us direction.  We were in Australia for about six months, and we visited most of the common tourist sites; however, in all of our travels throughout the country, we never encountered another American — not one!
   
We moved from Sydney to Manly Beach where we stayed for a week.  It is a major tourist destination, and our apartment there looked out onto the beautiful beach and the Norfolk Pines that lined it.  The Corso at Manly is a partly-malled promenade area between Manly Beach and Manly Wharf, an area of cafes, interesting shops, and street entertainment.
   
From Sydney — where I delivered several lectures at the University of Sydney — we traveled north to (Australia’s answer to Florida) Queensland (in a rental car) where I taught a course at Bond University in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.  It was a rhetoric course in which I taught a speech-communication component.
   
Bond University rented a place for our family in a luxurious, resort-oriented motel-like location nearby the university; thus, our family had outstanding accommodations where we could swim and walk just a short distance for groceries.  We used our “home” as a base for exploring Queensland — the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, the white-sand beaches, and some of the interior areas where “hippies” had created a self-sufficient lifestyle.  I also delivered one lecture at the University of Queensland.
   
Our next destination was Melbourne, and before heading there, we had to make some plans.  We had no place to stay, but we found one advertised in the newspaper in St. Kilda; we purchased rail passes for each of our family members — timing their purchase to cover our future trip to Perth. While in the U.S., we arranged a faculty exchange with a professor from St. Albans University.  It is located just south and west from Melbourne.  So, from Queensland, after our six-week stay was complete, we boarded a train bound for Sydney and then on to Melbourne. 
   
The faculty member from St. Albans, whom we never met, left us her car to use while there (it was a French Peugot), and her mother and father invited our family over for a typical Australian meal.
   
Just a quick aside here.  Every family we met thought it would be a special treat to give us a typical Australian meal; thus, we had lamb and potatoes and some kind of pumpkin for each of these meals.  The only exception was in Perth where we met one of my wife’s relatives who treated us to an American meal instead.
   
Melbourne is a large, diverse city with much to see.  One of our biggest treats was to travel to Phillip Island to see the fairy penguins (called that because of their tiny size).  It is the second most popular tourist attraction in Australia — second only to the Sydney Opera House.  Because our older son was not with us yet, our other three children traveled by train from Melbourne to Sydney to meet him and ride with him to where we were living.  Once they were all back in Melbourne, we went a second time to see these little penguins.
   
While in Melbourne, we traveled the Great Ocean Road (some call it the Great Coastal Highway), visited the Old Melbourne Gaol (Jail) — the site where 135 people, including infamous bushranger Ned Kelly, were hanged. — Flinders Street Station, the Royal Botanical Gardens, Ballarat (which has a topnotch historical park in Sovereign Hill in this goldfields town).  Ballarat has Australia’s largest recreation of a phase (1851-1880) in Australia’s history.
   
We had to miss a trip north from Adelaide to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock (Uluru).  With six adults, the trip on the Ghan Railroad, a stay at one of the Ayers Rock hotels, and a bus trip and tour out to see the Rock, was going to be far too expensive for us.  One website on the Ghan says, “The Ghan train fare is substantially more than what it would cost you to fly – and if you plan to stay over at Alice or Katherine you should make sure that your budget can stretch to cover the sightseeing activities.”
   
Instead of going north, however, we went west.  We took a three-day, three-night trip on the Indian Pacific Train from Melbourne, through Adelaide, across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth.  About this plain, Wikipedia says, “The Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. The word Nullarbor is derived from the Latin nullus, ‘no,’ and arbor, ‘tree.’”
   
About the train ride, one website explains it in this way: “One stretch of track goes for 478km [297 miles] without curve, kink or bend. Dead straight, and the view at the start is the same as it is at the end. It may seem mind-numbingly boring, but the sensation, and the sense of achievement is what makes this one of the world’s greatest train journeys.”
   
We had two highlights of our trip to Perth.  The first, “Leaving Perth eastward along the Great Eastern Highway, as you drive up Greenmount Hill in the Darling Range, you are climbing up onto the oldest plateau on earth: a huge slab of granite, part of ancient Gondawana, sitting in the sun, wind and rain for more than a thousand million years. It has eroded down into the soils of the valleys, and the chains of lakes, and the old blind volcanos like Hyden Rock have been exposed.”  It is called Wave Rock, and is a site that must be visited.
   
The second highlight was our visit to Nambung National Park and the Pinnacle Dessert, one of Australia’s best known landscapes.  “Here, thousands of huge limestone pillars rise from the shifting yellow sands, resembling a landscape from a science fiction movie”
   
I delivered several lectures at the University of Western Australia, and our visit to Perth ended our six months in Australia — an interesting, spectacular, and memorable visit.  We did everything we could do within our time limit and budget, and it is a place to which we would gladly return.
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If you are planning a trip to Australia, make sure you visit Australia’s Official Tourism Website Not only are there terrific pictures, but the “Learn More” icon associated with every picture offers great information.

At the Viator website offers, “Top 25 Things to Do in Australia & New Zealand: 2010 Viator Travel Awards” (November 28, 2010) and provides much useful information.
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Copyright November, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing L.L.C.




   
   

Review of the speech “Sticky Ideas: Low-Tech Solutions to a High-Tech Problem”*

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

(There is an important caveat to this review of the speech, “Sticky Ideas.”  This is my own speech that I am reviewing.  (I have never done this before!)  I conceived the idea; I constructed the speech; I delivered the speech.  To be certain, I am biased.  This review was written on the day I saw the speech published in the book Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach, 8e by Steven A. And Susan J. Beebe (Allyn & Bacon, 2012, pp. 410-414).  I had not read the speech for four years and, it was my re-reading of it after four years that prompted this review/essay.)

Ask yourself the question, after hearing (or reading) a speech, and knowing that you were impressed by it, what is the ingredient or element that contributed most to that impression?  In some cases, of course, it is how the speech was delivered.  Often, delivery dominates people’s impressions because, first, it is obvious, and, second, because we judge others on how they look and behave.

Although it is hoped that our assessment of others is conditional — that we base any final assessment of others on substantive matters — it doesn’t always happen, cannot be predicted with assurance, and often is suppressed by both habit and the obvious.  Assessing speeches on nonverbal behavior is something everyone does.  Analyzing content is more difficult.
  
In this review — or, whenever a speech is read but never actually heard — the element of delivery is omitted (except where I add a comment at the end of this review).  That ingredient or element that engages a reader (or audience member) is the number and effectiveness of the examples.  This short speech includes close to 25 examples — with an extended example, an illustration — used to close the speech.   Each one holds attention, captures readers’ interest, and, with the exception of the final illustration, moves readers farther into the speech.
  
Let’s examine the entire speech and see why it might have been selected as a sample speech for inclusion in the popular college textbook, Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach, 8e, by Steven A. And Susan J. Beebe (Allyn & Bacon, 2012), pages 410-414.
  
The idea for the speech came to me as a result of the co-alignment of two factors.  First, I was asked to give a speech to a college audience which would largely be composed of students, and some faculty, in a Department of Speech Communication.  Students would range from freshmen enrolled in basic courses through senior majors.  Second, I had recently read the book by Chip and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Random House, 2007), and I was not only deeply affected by their ideas, but I realized they were important to all speakers and could have enormous impact.
  
The theme or central idea for the speech arose from what I perceived as a problem, and I defined the problem precisely in the speech: “The problem, simply put, is the appeal that technology has for the youth of our nation.  Let’s clarify it.  We live in a fast-paced, instant results, eye-catching and attention-arresting, multimedia flash, short-attention-span, world where any idea that isn’t current, relevant, and immediate — and delivered on a screen — is discarded as obsolete, out-of-date, old-fashioned, defunct, and dead.  Many students today can code and decode complex messages in a variety of media, and many, too, are already prepared to communicate with a level of visual sophistication that will carry them through the multimedia-dependent environment of higher education and the modern work environment.  The problem is simply: how do educators compete?  How do we give our thoughts high-tech appeal in a technology-driven world” (p. 411)?
  
It should be noted here that this is an informative speech, and for an informative speech, the central idea should contain the information you want the audience to remember.  It was stated in the speech following the information quoted above: “What I want to do is provide low-tech solutions to this high-tech problem” (p. 411).  Thus, everything in the speech should promote this idea, and the specific purpose of the speech demonstrates what I expected to achieve in this speech: To inform audience members how they (as speakers) can compete in this high-tech world with low-tech solutions.
  
To demonstrate how everything in the speech relates directly to the central idea, let’s examine the organization of the speech — how ideas are arranged.  One of the strengths of this speech is its tight organization.  Notice, for example that everything prior to the actual descriptions of the low-tech solutions lays a foundation for what follows.  The speech opens with an illustration about my background in delivering a lecture on attention and is designed to establish my own credibility with the information that will follow: how long I had been delivering the lecture (30 years), the popularity of the lecture, and how many students had heard it.
  
Following this illustration, I explain the problem (described above), briefly explain the characteristics of “attention” that contribute to the high-tech problem, provide a transition (“What I want to do now, in the remaining part of the lecture, is show you how you can compete . . . .”), give credit to Chip and Dan Heath’s excellent book, Made to Stick, explain “the curse of knowledge” (“once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it.  Our knowledge has ‘cursed” us” (p. 412)), and explain how the “curse” contributes to the high-tech problem.
  
The description and examples of the six low-tech solutions follows a clear topical organizational pattern.  Even though there are six ideas, one following another, this is not a chronological pattern because the ideas are parallel with each other.  They do not build up nor does any one of them depend on any other.  Following five of the solutions ((1) simplicity, (2) unexpectedness, (3) concreteness, (4) credibility, and (5) emotions) there is a brief summary that is introduced so that I could end with the sixth low-tech solution: (6) stories.
  
Notice that the speech ends with the “most powerful of the low-tech solutions” (p. 413), stories, and their effectiveness is underscored twice, first by the statement, “Stories have the power to enthrall, to hold listeners spellbound, to mesmerize, entrance, dazzle, charm, captivate, and fascinate” (p. 413), and second, by the story itself — a personal experience that not only extended over 50 years but a story, too, that was in the process of being remedied.
  
The language of the speech is colloquial with no special jargon, literary flourishes, or complexities.  It was delivered from a manuscript; however, I knew (and had practiced) the material thoroughly; thus, I delivered it without depending on the manuscript much at all, in an extemporaneous manner.  It took about 25-30 minutes to deliver the speech, and several questions from the audience of about 50, followed.

*This speech (“Sticky Ideas: Low-Tech Solutions to a High-Tech Problem,”) was originally published in Vital Speeches of the Day (1 August 2007): 73:8.
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I am grateful to have my speech reproduced in the book Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach, 8e, by Steven A. Beebe and Susan J. Beebe (Allyn & Bacon, 2012).  If you are looking for a comprehensive, well-constructed, beautifully laid out, and thoroughly practical book on public speaking, this book would be an excellent choice.

 At Six Minutes the essay by Andrew Dlugan, “Speech Analysis #1: How to Study and Critique a Speech” (January 18, 2008), is designed to do the following: “The first in the series, this article outlines questions to ask yourself when assessing a presentation. Ask these questions whether you attend the presentation, or whether you view a video or read the speech text. These questions also apply when you conduct a self evaluation of your own speeches.”
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Copyright November, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing L.L.C.