Talk Slower Than Feels Natural
Alright. New module. We've spent all this time getting your outline tight and your timing honest. Now we're going to work on how it actually comes out of your mouth.
Everybody's heard the standard advice. Make eye contact. Smile. Stand up straight. Fine, whatever, that stuff's not wrong. But if I had to pick the one thing that fixes the most problems in a room, it's this: talk slower than feels natural.
Nervous people rush. Every single time. You get up there, your heart's going, and your brain says "get through this as fast as possible so the discomfort ends." So you speed up. Words start running together. You skip the pause where the pause should be. The room can't keep up, and now they're not listening to your point, they're just trying to catch what you said three sentences ago.
Here's the thing though. Slowing down doesn't just help them follow you. It makes you sound like you know what you're doing, even on nights when you don't feel like you do. A slow, steady pace reads as confidence whether you're confident or not. That's just how it works. I didn't invent that, I just noticed it works every time I try it.
Why this is hard to do on purpose
You can't just decide "I'll talk slow" and have it happen, because in the moment your body is working against you. Adrenaline wants speed. So you have to build the slow pace into your practice before you ever stand up, the same way you'd build a habit into a machine setup so you don't have to think about it live.
I'll tell you when this really landed for me. A while back I was up the canyon hiking with Darrel and Adam, and somewhere around the second switchback I started explaining a problem we'd been having with a CNC setup at the shop. No notes, no outline, just talking it through out loud because Adam asked a question and I answered it. By the time we got to the top I'd explained the whole thing start to finish, clean, in order, without rushing a single part of it.
It wasn't because I'm a natural talker. It's because I understood that problem cold. I wasn't racing to get through it because there was nothing to be nervous about, I already knew every piece of it. Know your thing, and the pace takes care of itself. That's the real trick here. Slowing down on purpose is a stand-in for confidence you don't have yet. Knowing your material is confidence you actually have.
So both things matter. Slow down on purpose while you're building the skill. And know your material well enough that slowing down feels less like acting.
How to practice this at home
Break it into steps, same as always.
- Read your outline out loud at your normal pace. Just to hear where you naturally rush. It's usually the parts you're least sure about, which is worth noticing.
- Read it again and cut your speed by about a third. It will feel painfully slow to you. It will not sound slow to anyone else. This gap between how it feels and how it sounds is the whole lesson, so don't skip this step thinking you already get it.
- Record yourself on your phone. I know, nobody likes hearing their own voice. Do it anyway. Listen back and see if "painfully slow" actually sounds normal. It almost always does.
- Practice the transitions slow especially. The spot between point one and point two is where people speed up the most, because it feels like dead air. Slow down right there on purpose.
- Say it back to somebody. Have your spouse or a kid or whoever's around listen and tell you honestly if it sounded slow or just sounded calm. Trust their answer over your own gut, because your gut is lying to you about this one.
A note on nerves versus prep
I keep coming back to this because I believe it: most of what feels like nerves is really just not knowing your material well enough yet. If you're rushing, ask yourself if you're actually unsure of the next part. A lot of the time, yes. Fix the prep, the speed problem gets smaller on its own.
One honest caution. If you're speaking about something technical, or something where a mistake actually matters, don't let "slow down" turn into "wing it, but slowly." Slow and unprepared is still unprepared. Slow works because it's paired with knowing your thing, not instead of it.
Before next time: pick one section of your outline, the part where you know you rush, and practice it slow, out loud, five times before you do anything else this week.