Heather Fowler

My brand is Sexy Monsters, Killer Women--literary author, magical realist, screenwriter, lover of art. My pen is🔥. Hi!

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

A great talk on teaching ❤️

[CyrilXBT @cyrilXBT]

A MIT professor gave a 1-hour lecture in 2019 that has 18 million views.

He died 5 months after recording it.

It was his final gift to the world.

Patrick Winston taught at MIT for 50 years.

The smartest engineers on earth sat in his classroom.

And he spent his last lecture teaching them the one skill their degrees never covered.

How to speak.

15 lessons that will change how you communicate forever:

Never open with a joke. Your audience is not ready to laugh yet. Open with a promise of what they will know by the end.

Your ideas are like your children. You are too close to them. What is obvious to you is invisible to everyone else. Explain the obvious.

The 5-minute rule: the first 5 minutes of any talk determine whether people will listen for the next 55. Spend more time on your opening than anything else.

Repeat your most important idea 3 times in 3 different ways. Once is never enough.

Build a fence around your idea. Tell people what it is NOT before you tell them what it IS.

Verbal punctuation. Pause. Let the idea land before moving to the next one.

Ask questions nobody will answer. Then wait 7 seconds. The silence is not awkward. It is processing.

Never read your slides. Your audience can read. They cannot listen and read simultaneously.

Use the board not the slides. Writing forces you to slow down. Slowing down forces clarity.

Inspire before you inform. Nobody learns from someone they are not inspired by.

End with a contribution not a summary. Tell them what you gave them. Not what you said.

Never say thank you at the end. It is weak. End with something that lands.

Stories make ideas stick. Data makes ideas understood. You need both. In that order.

The quality of your communication determines the quality of your ideas in the eyes of the world. Not the ideas themselves.

Practice is not preparation. Practice IS the skill.

Patrick Winston understood something most people spend their entire careers missing.

Your ideas are only as powerful as your ability to transfer them into someone else's mind.

You can be the smartest person in the room and be completely invisible.

Or you can master communication and make average ideas feel like breakthroughs.

He chose to spend his last lecture teaching this.

Watch it tonight.

Bookmark this first.

Follow @cyrilXBT for more lessons from the people who built the future.

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@RevolutionJohnM Oh wow. Sad news. 😞 sorry to hear of your loss. Sheldon was great.

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@Darkdarling00 20

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@mrmikeMTL I’d do it for $.50

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@niyetsel .

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@Matt_Pinner 20

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@CrazyVibes_1 1

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@Mr_Husky1 For 15 bucks instead of several thousand for a dress you already like, it seems like a no-brainer. Just have the alterations lady do anything that you might want, have your hair done and your makeup done and you’ve saved a ton of money and still look great

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

Here is what a ladybug taking off looks like in slow motion 🐞

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@KerryBurgess I don’t even think I’ve opened that many cans in a year. I don’t eat that way. But then I live in California and the people here I think the California people are a little nutty anyway and very health food conscious.

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@Matt_Pinner 11

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@Jindo_1307979 a

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@Matt_Pinner

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@lady_valor_07 Half of Howard Stern’s face coming up from a body of water overlaid over buildings

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@nejsnave @AnthonyEsolen Nice!

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@AnthonyEsolen This list is super dated. There are a lot of modern short fiction authors who are amazing

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@oelma__ Yes

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@HustleBitch_ They supported democracy?

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@2VNews @AP Californians overwhelmingly voted in support of 50. That’s the difference

[Heather Fowler @hfowlerwrites]

@teamtrump47 That should have been a NO