Practice, practice: 4 tips for rehearsing your presentation
Simulate the venue, work on sections at a time, include transitions, record and review your talk, and—whatever you do—don’t just wing it.
Some speakers feel they’re best when speaking off the cuff.
They believe rehearsing robs them of their spontaneity and that their instincts will guide them once they get in front of an audience.
That’s almost always a mistake. Practice sessions inevitably reveal soft spots—listless anecdotes, awkward transitions, distracting visuals and myriad other problems. Without practice, those trouble spots often can’t be spotted in advance, and the off-the-cuff speaker ends up committing avoidable errors.
Still, off-the-cuff presenters have a point about striking a balance between practice—which helps them get comfortable and work out any kinks in the presentation—and over-practice, which can make them come across as stilted.
Grammy Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma once offered a simple formula for finding a middle ground: “Practicing is about quality, not quantity.”
These tips will help you optimize your rehearsal process:
1. Start with chunks, not full run-throughs.
Beginning with a full run-through makes it challenging to focus on any single section. It can, after a few takes, make your practice feel redundant and unnecessarily long.
Instead, divide your presentation into chunks, or sections, as in the following example:
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