Comment by david_shaw

In my experience, getting over the fear of public speaking is really just an exercise in exposure therapy. There are no silver bullets.

But my advice to current and future public speakers is this: never, ever add fluff to fill the engagement time. Every audience everywhere would rather you take 33 minutes instead of 50 if those 17 minutes would have been filled with, basically, garbage information designed to fill time.

It's awful how often people think giving a talk is some kind of speech class homework. It's not. You're not graded on filling the time.