Over the years, I’ve asked thousands of people to tell me — honestly — what they do with the brick-like handouts they receive after presentations, which are in essence printouts of the presenter’s slide deck.

At first, they hesitate, but invariably, they come around and confess to throwing them in the trash. Either way, the handouts almost never survive long after the event.

If you want your message to be remembered, and especially if you want it to be retold by others, having your document thrown in the trash is probably not a good thing.

But the real problem (and the reason handouts land in the trash) isn’t the handouts themselves. It’s how they are being used.

In almost all presentations today, the handouts that are provided are a printout of the presenter’s slides. Slides and handouts, however, serve very different purposes — thus there is no logical reason that they should be identical. And that’s the first problem.

What is the difference?

In presentations that are done correctly, visual aids are tools used to help an audience learn by visually complementing your presentation’s big ideas. Period. Contrary to common misconception, they are not crutches, teleprompters or any other form of safety net for the underprepared. They are also not meant to be on screen so you can glance up there when you’ve forgotten what you were going to say and “unstick” yourself.