Waste Less Time Prepping for Speaking Engagements
"I'd love to learn how to become a more effective public speaker, but I just don't have time."
This is a sentiment I hear a lot as a public speaking coach, especially this time of year, as the weather gets nice and the siren song of the beach starts calling.
And look, I get it.
Skill-building sounds hard and time-consuming, and frankly, I'd rather go to a barbecue.
But here's the rub: investing time in honing a skill set is far more efficient than investing in honing a speech.
Paradoxically, I’ve found the people who claim they don’t have time to master the skill of public speaking are also the people who spend the most time preparing for individual presentations.
They'll spend weeks revising a pitch deck to within an inch of its life, only to show up at the big meeting and realize they don't have the right adapter to connect the projector.
They'll spend days memorizing a speech, only to end up sounding so robotic in their recitation that the whole room zones out immediately.
They’ll lose hours of sleep staring at the ceiling, stomach in knots about a presentation that’s still days away.
No wonder these folks don’t want to invest more time thinking about public speaking! It’s already taking up a torturous amount of their time and bandwidth.
But here's the thing that breaks my heart:
All of those activities I just listed—revising the slide deck, memorizing the speech, staring at the ceiling—are solely related to the immediate presentation you have coming up.
None of that time or effort is transferable to your next presentation.
Your time and energy are only transferable when they’re used to build your skill set.
Those incredible speakers who appear to step onto the stage effortlessly? Don’t be fooled. There was effort put in. But the effort was invested early on.
When you have a solid foundation of technique, you can spend far less time preparing for individual presentations (without sacrificing quality).
This summer, I urge you to focus on building transferable skills.
Skills like:
- Storytelling
- Effective body language
- Musicality
- Improvisation
Once you master these skills, you’ll be feeling twice as prepared for each presentation in half the amount of prep time.
And what will you do with all those spare hours? Well, I hear the beach is lovely this time of year. 😉
Sara Glancy is an NYC-based actor and public speaking coach and the founder of Speak Masterfully, a service that helps professionals take the stage with less fear and more fun!
Want to nail your next presentation?!
Apply this basic outline to any speaking engagement to feel twice as prepared in half the time!
