Slow Down

You’ve got your slides, you’re prepared, you’ve got your demos and your gadgets. You stand up in front of the audience. What are you going to do?

You’re going to slow down.

Everyone who does talks that I’ve ever seen gets nervous. It’s completely natural, you rush the opening because you want to get “to the good bit”

The best way to combat this is, when you start and have your first slide up take a deep breath and comically slow down. And then, if you like, slow down even more. It helps you get the first message out, talk to the audience, and get settled.

I can be fairly sure that if you ever watch a video of yourself speaking you’ll never think “I was talking too slowly” but you might often think “ohh I rushed that bit”

So just slow down. Tell yourself you’re going to talk really, really slowly for the first bit. If you speed up a little later, that’s fine, you come back up to roughly par.