5 ms·

How many talks do you give a year? Seems like a waste of time to practice the talk that many times. what works for me and is more time efficient is to get the

by j7ake 3y ago

How many talks do you give a year? Seems like a waste of time to practice the talk that many times. what works for me and is more time efficient is to get the introduction polished, then have a clear take away at the end. The middle stuff is better to go impromptu.

karaterobot 3y ago
When I have a talk to give I can't think of any better use of my time than getting it right. If you don't need to practice, good on you—a lot of people who don't probably should, though.
Loughla 3y ago
The number of people who believe they are good at impromptu speech is WAAAAYYYY larger than those who are actually good impromptu speech. In general, the best speakers are those who a) know the material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Maybe because I am in research, but the middle parts of research talks are talking about their own research. If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. Intros and ends though I agree require careful thought to appeal to the right audience and give the right message.
  - elijaht 3y ago
    > If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. I don't think this follows. There are many things I am an expert in that I'm not an expert in communicating about impromptu- I've been to many talks where the speaker is clearly an expert but was not prepared to speak. I certainly think there are people for who expertise == ability to speak about it, but that's certainly not always or usually the case.
- jghn 3y ago
  I agree with you but that doesn't necessarily invalidate GP's point. It all depends on how familiar one is with the content. For one off talks, or decks that one doesn't use often, yes you're 100% right. When I'm in that situation I rehearse the talk over and over and over again to the point where I no longer need notes. My goal is to get to a point where I neither sound like I'm reading from a script, nor would I get thrown off if I get interrupted. However for material that I've presented a bunch of times, I no longer need to rehearse. There was a period of my life where I could on the fly give a talk on a particular topic at a moment's notice. Ideally I'd have a bit of time to customize some bits to the specific audience/venue, and sure I'd rehearse those. But the bulk of it I could stitch together content in just about any order on the fly.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Exactly. If you hand me a presentation and hopefully some notes associated with it and tell me that I need to fill in, I can do it but I'm going to need to spend some time (and will probably rearrange things a bit). But if you tell me give some variation on your talk about $X, I can probably be ready in about 30 minutes. (And, in fact, I've dropped in a conference presentation in response to a 3am email because another speaker forgot they were supposed to be there.)
  - toast0 3y ago
    > However for material that I've presented a bunch of times, I no longer need to rehearse. All of those previous presentations basically count as rehearsals. Depends on you, but if it's been a year or several since you gave one, it's probably a good idea to do at least a mini rehearsal before you do it again, but if you're doing one a quarter, once you're good, you should be good.
- nickjj 3y ago
  > a) know the material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads. I remember the first time I went in front of a live audience to give a 2 minute intro. It was a meetup with ~60 people and all I had to do was go up and talk about a course I was selling. On the train ride in, I scripted it out on paper and then re-read it like 30 times. By the time I got off the train and closed the notebook I forgot everything and dreaded the walk to the venue. I got in front of everyone and tried to recall what I wrote, had a quick internal dialog with myself for about 3 seconds and mentally noted "you're a moron, just wing it". Then I winged it. In the end it converted ~15% of the room on a tech topic that was ancillary to the main meetup's subject. On that day I learned I can do well writing something out on paper but I can't remember shit when trying to deliver it live. I have to fall into category (A) and trust myself to deliver but really committing to that with no backup plan does make every experience interesting to say the least. I've recorded around 300 videos since then and I still need to do the intro about 20 times before I get into the flow to do the rest of the video in basically 1 take. They are usually unscripted with no preparation, I just pick a topic and go.
  - jldugger 3y ago
    > On that day I learned I can do well writing something out on paper but I can't remember shit when trying to deliver it live. Fascinating. What I learned from your anecdote is that massed practice didn't work, just as the literature on human memory predicts. Spaced repetition still sounds like a winner. Practice, sleep, forget almost everything, then repeat until it's go time.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    So you didn't really prepare, forgot your non-existent "preparation", and then the take-away is that preparation doesn't work..?
    - Loughla 3y ago
      That is exactly what I'm trying to get across. Preparation isn't immediately before the speaking engagement. It's days, weeks, or if it's a big enough deal, months ahead of time. I don't know why people don't seem to understand that. If it's a topic that is low stakes and I know a shit load about, I'll practice for a day or two. If it's a topic that I know and it's high stakes, I may practice daily for two or three weeks. Everyone who knows me professionally remarks about how relaxed I seem when public speaking. That's because it's all intentional. Every pause. Every single thing. I seem relaxed, because I am relaxed.

by j7ake 3y ago

karaterobot 3y ago

When I have a talk to give I can't think of any better use of my time than getting it right. If you don't need to practice, good on you—a lot of people who don't probably should, though.

Loughla 3y ago

The number of people who believe they are good at impromptu speech is WAAAAYYYY larger than those who are actually good impromptu speech. In general, the best speakers are those who a) know the material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads.

j7ake 3y ago
Maybe because I am in research, but the middle parts of research talks are talking about their own research. If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. Intros and ends though I agree require careful thought to appeal to the right audience and give the right message.
- elijaht 3y ago
  > If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. I don't think this follows. There are many things I am an expert in that I'm not an expert in communicating about impromptu- I've been to many talks where the speaker is clearly an expert but was not prepared to speak. I certainly think there are people for who expertise == ability to speak about it, but that's certainly not always or usually the case.
jghn 3y ago
I agree with you but that doesn't necessarily invalidate GP's point. It all depends on how familiar one is with the content. For one off talks, or decks that one doesn't use often, yes you're 100% right. When I'm in that situation I rehearse the talk over and over and over again to the point where I no longer need notes. My goal is to get to a point where I neither sound like I'm reading from a script, nor would I get thrown off if I get interrupted. However for material that I've presented a bunch of times, I no longer need to rehearse. There was a period of my life where I could on the fly give a talk on a particular topic at a moment's notice. Ideally I'd have a bit of time to customize some bits to the specific audience/venue, and sure I'd rehearse those. But the bulk of it I could stitch together content in just about any order on the fly.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Exactly. If you hand me a presentation and hopefully some notes associated with it and tell me that I need to fill in, I can do it but I'm going to need to spend some time (and will probably rearrange things a bit). But if you tell me give some variation on your talk about $X, I can probably be ready in about 30 minutes. (And, in fact, I've dropped in a conference presentation in response to a 3am email because another speaker forgot they were supposed to be there.)
- toast0 3y ago
  > However for material that I've presented a bunch of times, I no longer need to rehearse. All of those previous presentations basically count as rehearsals. Depends on you, but if it's been a year or several since you gave one, it's probably a good idea to do at least a mini rehearsal before you do it again, but if you're doing one a quarter, once you're good, you should be good.
nickjj 3y ago
> a) know the material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads. I remember the first time I went in front of a live audience to give a 2 minute intro. It was a meetup with ~60 people and all I had to do was go up and talk about a course I was selling. On the train ride in, I scripted it out on paper and then re-read it like 30 times. By the time I got off the train and closed the notebook I forgot everything and dreaded the walk to the venue. I got in front of everyone and tried to recall what I wrote, had a quick internal dialog with myself for about 3 seconds and mentally noted "you're a moron, just wing it". Then I winged it. In the end it converted ~15% of the room on a tech topic that was ancillary to the main meetup's subject. On that day I learned I can do well writing something out on paper but I can't remember shit when trying to deliver it live. I have to fall into category (A) and trust myself to deliver but really committing to that with no backup plan does make every experience interesting to say the least. I've recorded around 300 videos since then and I still need to do the intro about 20 times before I get into the flow to do the rest of the video in basically 1 take. They are usually unscripted with no preparation, I just pick a topic and go.
- jldugger 3y ago
  > On that day I learned I can do well writing something out on paper but I can't remember shit when trying to deliver it live. Fascinating. What I learned from your anecdote is that massed practice didn't work, just as the literature on human memory predicts. Spaced repetition still sounds like a winner. Practice, sleep, forget almost everything, then repeat until it's go time.
- matsemann 3y ago
  So you didn't really prepare, forgot your non-existent "preparation", and then the take-away is that preparation doesn't work..?
  - Loughla 3y ago
    That is exactly what I'm trying to get across. Preparation isn't immediately before the speaking engagement. It's days, weeks, or if it's a big enough deal, months ahead of time. I don't know why people don't seem to understand that. If it's a topic that is low stakes and I know a shit load about, I'll practice for a day or two. If it's a topic that I know and it's high stakes, I may practice daily for two or three weeks. Everyone who knows me professionally remarks about how relaxed I seem when public speaking. That's because it's all intentional. Every pause. Every single thing. I seem relaxed, because I am relaxed.