Seek simplicity
Today's world is filled with information. More data is produced and collected in a day than you could consume in a number of lifetimes. Every 'expert' is urging us to create content, content, and more content. Share more stuff! Put yourself out there! Get noticed! Add more value! Pack in more things!
A rising tide might lift all boats, but beyond a certain point doesn't it just flood the whole town?
I think this mindset - "more is better" - leaks into many areas of life where it shouldn't be welcome. Speaking is most certainly one of them. Many speakers say too much, which results in them communicating nothing. Mastery of speakership means knowing how to say only that which needs to be said, and nothing more. You might have prepared a 45 minute keynote, but if you truly know your stuff, you'll equally be able to deliver your key message in 5 minutes or less, should you need to.
And more than that, presenting under a time limit needn't even be stressful. We've all seen the stressed-out, time-constrained speaker rushing to get through their slides at the end of a presentation that they needed to cut short by ten minutes because the previous speaker went over time. Truly understanding your message allows you to avoid that anxiety. Just say what needs to be said, and leave out the rest.
One of my favourite exercises in the Speakership book is the "speech on an envelope". It forces you to condense your entire presentation down into a few words on the back of a scrap of paper. I design all my keynotes exactly this way (though as the child of a digital world I do it using Mindmeister or Notability). If I find it difficult to reduce my topic to just a few "big words", I know I need to do more thinking; understand the topic more deeply; uncover what is really important... and what is just 'stuff'.
“[An artist] has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
P.S. — If you know a professional (accountant, consultant, economist, engineer, lawyer, researcher, etc.) who speaks to drive commercial goals (or they should), please send them the link to this article.
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