Some brief public speaking advice
I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of questions about public speaking recently.
Someone asked me, about two weeks ago, whether I have formal training in public speaking. The answer to that question is no; honestly, I’m not sure what that even means or would entail.
Anyway, here’s my public speaking “advice”:
- Get good at writing – being able to clearly articulate your ideas in text helps with being able to express yourself in general.
- I have a policy of not turning down opportunities to talk in front of people unless I have to. You get good at doing it by doing it more. The more terrifying the opportunity, the better, and the more variety in the experiences, the better. Speaking in front of 3 people and speaking in front of 700 people can be very different types of scary when it matters. I’ve done both.
- You kinda have to believe in the moment that what you are saying is actually worth listening to and that people should care. Another term for this is “confidence”. I think this is the actual hard part, but it’s also the most valuable.
Tl;dr convince yourself that your ideas are important enough that you should be convincing other people to listen. I guess there is a certain level of arrogance involved in this… lol.
Anyway, this reminds me of an article I read at one point that said that the key to having a successful art career is being delusional enough to continue believing that your work is important.
Plenty of people get up on stages and have the confidence to say complete nonsense, so if you’re not saying complete garbage, you’re already doing great.