Comment by captn3m0 2 days ago
Good advice. One of the things I suffer from is speaking too fast, and yet to find a good solution for it. I put a sticky note on my screen reminding me to slow down these days, but it only helps so much.
Another comprehensive guide for tech-speakers is https://speaking.io/ by Zach Holman.
I wonder if speaking fast is a problem in and of itself. Bryan Cantrill's talks are some of the best around, and he talks very fast. For other speakers, I usually put them at 1.5x speed.
It seems to me that the problem isn't speaking fast per se, but almost speaking where you're tripping over yourself unconfidently. Bryan, for example, often does trip over his words, but he's confident in what he has to say and enunciates very clearly (he's basically yelling).
During the pandemic I made a few Youtube videos, basically public speaking without an audience. I was amazed at how hard it was, I spend hours and hours trying to speak with any confidence. Funnily enough though, at tech meetups, I'm pretty comfortable presenting in front of everyone even though I see others struggle so much. Not sure what's the difference.
Ha ha -- thanks, I think? For whatever it's worth, the most important advice I have for a speaker is: speak from the heart, not from the book. That is, don't tell people what you think they want; be true to yourself and speak your own truth, in a manner that is true to who you are.
To that end: different styles work for different people. Yes, I speak quickly (or can!), but there's a method to the madness: when I am speaking fastest (and... tripping over my words, I guess?), it is likely something that -- while interesting/weird -- is in fact only tangentially related to my main point. For me, it's really important to have my actual points written on my slide: my actual decks[0] are really important to me, and serve to make my main points -- albeit devoid of the visceral metaphors for which I've become (in)famous.
:-)
I think one of the problems with speaking for video is that you're self-conscious and feel you need to be perfect. When I started doing a lot of recorded presentations during COVID, I just felt uncomfortable in a way that I didn't with an in-person audience.
Audio only is a lot easier IMO. For one thing, you're not also dealing with waving your hands around so much and thinking about where your eyes are focused. And you can't as easily refer to at least a semi-script. I learned to create videos but podcasts were definitely easier.
(I'm fine being on video but recording yourself feels a lot harder for me.)
Mind-body techniques provide a good solution to this.
First exercise. Breathe out. Take a full breath in for a mental count of 2. Hold for a mental count of 4. Breathe out for a mental count of 6. How do you feel?
It sounds ridiculous that this does anything. But it relaxes you because your brain recognizes the rhythm of a contented sigh - then rushes to put you in that state. Do that the moment that you stand on stage. Do it again any time you need it. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference it makes.
Next exercise. Put, commas, in. The act of standing silent is an act of control that leaves you feeling in control. Trying to slow down results in, "I'mRacing,I'mRacing, SlowDown, I've slowed down, I'mRacingAgain!" But putting in a comma makes it easy to slow down.
This has a second benefit as well. If we're feeling nervous silence is hard on us. So we put in those filler "ahs" and "ums". It is very rare for people to be conscious of how much we do that. Instead we process it subconsciously, as an awareness of anxiety. And our awareness of our own anxiety, creates more anxiety, and off we go!
And so I like to say, "Put in a pause, or you'll say your ahs!" Try it. Those commas really work.
The third thing is this. When we stand in front of an audience, most of us get a shot of adrenaline. We frame it as "social anxiety". But it's really not. It's social adrenaline. If you learn to interpret it as "on a rollercoaster" instead of "there's a tiger", it goes from scary to fun.
This takes a bit of practice. But (with the mind-body skills), less than you'd expect. And it is easy to find a place to practice if you join a local Toastmasters club.
One of the things I do to slow things down, is to plan with brutal honesty around how much a human can say, clearly, in a minute. And then assume that I’ll need 150% of that time. Have 20 minutes for a slideshow? Keep it at 4 slides - five minutes each - at 100 wpm, that’s 500 words each - but I’ll need to add more pauses in, so that’s 400 words each.
The problem with speaking fast predates 2x speed by decades. From what I've seen it's usually the result of not rehearsing beforehand - beginners tend to panic and speak fast as a result while experienced speakers overestimate how much information an audience can retain and/or how short a minute is. Experienced speakers can tune it in real time, though, and rehearsal time is expensive so they simply don't.
People have been speaking too fast in public since the beginning of public speaking. It's just nerves making us press forward too quickly, and sometimes people are worried it will be too boring if they speak slowly. I was taught to speak far slower than is comfortable - and it will come out just right.
I've taken a few public speaking classes and I remember one made a point of remembering to pause.
I also remember a senior IBM exec who, during Q&A at analyst conferences, would make notes (or seemed to) which served a few purposes including just taking a few seconds to collect his thoughts.
That might be the case for some people, but I've been speaking super fast since I was at least nine years old, well before I had ever listened to a podcast (and I'm not sure that the term even existed in ~2000). Not just public speaking, but in general.
I'm kind of unique in my family, the rest of my family speaks at a more or less normal rate, so it could be some neuroligical or spectrum thing specific to me.
You know, I think that might certainly have something to do with it, but I've also noticed that anytime I'm using tech (video call/voice call) the conversation is at a much faster pace.
It's as though the natural state of the machines and tech is so fast, that we're trying to keep the information transmission as dense as possible so we can end the call.
Side note, I was watching an interview with Cory Doctorow and because of the tv segment style, both he and the interviewer were BLASTING through their talking points.
I wonder how much of our speech is being affected by the "say as much as you can before commercial break" model.
Which is something I have zero interest in doing. If it's a good/interesting podcast, it's not about getting fed information "efficiently" for me.
That said, I have recorded some podcasts with people where I felt I really needed to go into Audacity and have it automatically cut out a bunch of pauses because there were just too many of them.
I've also found that having both video and audio of yourself is a great way to uncover both visual and audio quirks.
I'm the same way, I speak super fast pretty much all the time, and it can be hard for people to understand me if they're not used to it (and I don't blame them).
What really helped for me (and I realize that this doesn't scale to everyone) was lecturing for two semesters. I had pretty good motivation to slow down when students' grades and futures depended on understanding what I'm saying.
I didn't realize how much this helped until I presented at a conference after I was finished teaching, and I realized about midway through my talk that I was speaking considerably slower than I usually did at these things, because it turns out that public speaking and lecturing aren't actually that different.