PUNCHCARD Download Get Punchcard $9

How long does it take to make a presentation? Measure your next deck

· 6 min read

Nobody can give you a fair number from outside, because the slides are the last and often the shortest part of a presentation. The same twenty-slide deck can take an afternoon if the message is settled, or most of a week if it is not. The dependable answer for your decks comes from measuring one real deck from first note to final export, split into thinking, gathering, building and revising, and planning the next one from that.

Why per-slide estimates keep failing

The usual rule of thumb counts slides and multiplies. It fails for a simple reason: it prices the part you can see. Laying out a slide is quick once you know what it says. Deciding what it says, finding the number that belongs on it and agreeing it with whoever signs off is where the days go, and none of that happens in the presentation app.

It also ignores reuse: a deck built from last quarter’s template is a different job from one that starts with a blank screen and an unclear brief.

So the question worth answering is not “how long per slide” but “how long does one of my decks take, and which part takes it”.

The four kinds of time inside a deck

Before measuring, it helps to name the parts, because each one lives in a different place on your Mac.

  1. Working out the message. Outlines, rough notes, a draft in a writing app, a conversation. Some of this happens away from the Mac entirely: on a whiteboard, on a walk, in someone’s office.
  2. Gathering. Looking up figures in a spreadsheet, digging through old files, searching the web, asking colleagues in mail or chat for the latest numbers and waiting for replies.
  3. Building. The presentation app itself, plus whatever you use for images, diagrams or charts.
  4. Revising and rehearsing. Feedback rounds, rebuilding slides after a change of direction, running through it in presenter view.

When a deck “took three days”, the days you remember are usually the building and the last-minute revisions. The first two parts are spread across the week in fragments, which is exactly why they get left out of the next estimate.

How to measure one deck on your Mac

Pick the next deck you have to make, ideally one with a real deadline, and keep a record of it from the first note to the final export. Punchcard does the recording without any setup: it sits in the menu bar, notices which app is in front through the day (app names only, never document names or window titles), and at the closing time you set it prints a receipt with one line per app, its time, and a day total.

  1. Write down the start. In a running note, record the date you first started thinking about the deck in earnest.
  2. Tag each day in one line. When the receipt prints, add a line to the note: “Tue: deck most of the morning, gathering figures after lunch”. Twenty seconds, while you still remember.
  3. Pull the deck lines out of each receipt. The presentation app line is almost all deck time. Add the spreadsheet or image-editing time you know was for the deck, based on your one-line note.
  4. Add what happened away from the Mac. A whiteboard session or a meeting in a room will not appear on any receipt. Estimate it from your calendar and add it by hand.
  5. Stop at the final export. Include the revision rounds after the first version went out; those count.

The Sunday week roll gives the week total if the deck spanned several days. How long a video edit actually takes walks through the same approach for another kind of project with a long tail.

Reading the numbers

Once the deck is done, you will have four rough figures. The useful part is the ratio between them, not any single total.

Building is a modest share. If this is what you see, it is good news: the slides are not the problem, so a better template will barely help. The time is in deciding what to say or in gathering what goes on the slides.

The browser line dwarfs everything. If the deck days are dominated by browser time, some of it is research and some is everything else a browser holds. Your browser is the biggest line on your time report covers how to read that line honestly.

Revision is as large as the first build. That usually means the message was not agreed before the slides were made. The fix is upstream of the slides.

The presentation app line is huge. Then building really is the long part, and templates, a master slide layout and a library of reusable charts are worth setting up.

Whatever the split, add the four figures together. That total, not a per-slide guess, is the number to use for the next deck of a similar kind. If a client or manager asks how long a deck will take, How to estimate hours for a quote shows how to turn one measured job into a range rather than a single promise.

Making the next deck faster

Each finding points at a different change.

  • If working out the message was slow, write the whole presentation as plain sentences, one per slide, before opening the presentation app. If you cannot write the sentence, the slide is not ready to build.
  • If gathering was slow, ask for figures and approvals on the first day, not the day before the deadline.
  • If building was slow, make a template with your usual layouts and chart styles once, and start every deck from it.
  • If revising was slow, show the one-sentence-per-slide outline to the person who signs off before you build anything.

Then measure the next deck the same way and compare. Two measured decks are a far better basis for estimates than any rule of thumb.

What this measurement cannot tell you

Punchcard records the app in front on this Mac, by name. It does not know which file is open, so if you worked on two decks the same day, the presentation app line holds both, and your one-line note is what separates them. It has no projects, tags or timers, and it cannot see time away from the Mac. It cannot judge whether the deck was any good. It gives you the hours; the note gives you the meaning.

Questions

Is there a standard time per slide? Not one that holds up. Slides range from a title over a photo to a dense chart that took a morning of data work. Your own measured total per deck is more useful than any per-slide figure.

I build decks in a browser-based tool. Does this still work? The time appears on the browser line, mixed with everything else you did in the browser, because Punchcard never reads URLs or tab titles. Your daily one-line note becomes the main way to split it out.

Does rehearsing count? Running through the slides on the Mac counts on the presentation app line. Rehearsing out loud away from the desk does not appear; add it from memory if you want the full figure.

What does it cost to try this? Tracking never expires and the first seven receipts are free, which covers many single decks. After that it is $9 once.