Preparation is Personal: Feeling prepared without over-preparing

Do you over-prepare, overthink, or overly focus on content? Check out my tips for preparing, practicing, and presenting without overworking.

How do you prepare for important communication moments? Do you put it off, procrastinate, and then fly by the seat of your pants? Or do you overthink, ruminate, and try to memorize to perfection? Somewhere in between?

Most of us are not preparing efficiently or effectively. We are preparing how we think we should prepare. But preparation is deeply personal.

The goal of preparation cannot be to “know what we will say”. That’s setting us up to fail, unless we’re committed to the arduous task of committing a script to memory.

Our underlying goal is perfection, but that is not possible with communication. Communication is dynamic, raw, messy, personal, and relative. It needs to be all of these to accommodate and allow space for our audience, our partners, our teammates, and our friends and loved ones.

We cannot prepare for perfection. We can only prepare for presence.

We need to focus much less on what we’re going to say (”What if I don’t remember the word? What if my mind goes blank? What if I don’t know something?”). We need to focus instead on making the moment our own.

My real specialty is in helping people prepare for the unpredictable, so they can feel prepared even when they think they cannot prepare. Most communication requires our immediacy and responsiveness. Your preparation process has to facilitate this freedom.

But for those of us who struggle with anxiety (speaking anxiety, breath-based anxiety, social anxiety, trauma, and overwhelm), we need structure to feel safe. We find ourselves clinging to outdated ideas of preparation or academic ideas that aren’t put to practice. We read articles to find out how others do it instead of asking ourselves what we need to feel safe and comfortable. We’re denying our own creativity in the process, a creative process that we need to access to make this process our own.

Our preparation has to create such a solid structure and framework that we and our personalities, passions, and presence can shine right through.

Preparation is not about memorization. Preparation is not about knowing what you want to say. Preparation is about getting it in your bones, so you can live it and breathe it, access and articulate it, on-your-feet. Preparation is making your ideas speakable and conversational.

This is why your preparation has to be your own. It has to come out of your creative process (for many of us, it is your creative process). The more you can get to know it and get curious about it, the more generative and effective it becomes.

Our preparation can be motivated by fear (”If I don’t... then...”) or comparison (”they prepare this way so I should too”). But this negates our ability to listen deeply to ourselves, to discover what will help us feel more confident and comfortable, in order to make ourselves feel successful in the moment.

Preparation is personal. And listening is key.

But while preparation is personal, I still need a framework to create some structure for myself. Left to my own devices, I’ll ruminate the opportunity away and get lost in anticipatory anxiety.

If you've worked with me, you know that I have a preparation template that can be adapted to any moment of spontaneous speaking (download that template here so you can make it your own).

But today, I want to create a list of options, a preparation goody-bag of sorts, so you can pick and choose ideas that resonate for you.

I recommend creating this solid structure to support your preparation and then trying things to see what feels good.

Preparation Process Inspiration

• Start with Mindset, not Content: Most people start at the beginning, needing to know where to start, and coming up short. Most of us start with slides, but this is like building a house with no plan. I suggest you zoom out instead. Don’t start with content or knowing what you want to say. Start by articulating the bigger purpose of the event. What is your goal for this opportunity, conversation, or presentation? If you are putting pressure on yourself, the underlying goal will likely reflect that (”I want them to be confident in me”. “I want to prove that I know what I’m doing”.) Recognize your natural default (it’s societal, after all) and then choose something that takes the pressure off instead (hint: make it about your audience and the impact it will have on them or the action you want them to take). Reframing the goal of the interaction and then refocusing your attention towards it when your mind races is key. Here’s an example from my workshop last week: “My goal today is to create a space where people feel comfortable communicating with more presence, power, and personality.”

• Separate Content from Delivery: This is huge. You do need to designate time to get the content down, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus. You also do not need to “rehearse” it or “memorize it”. Content needs to be a distinct part of the process, where you can think creatively, without the pressure of being watched. Content can mean many things. It can be slides. It can be an outline of talking points. It can be a big idea that drives your ability to articulate off-the-cuff. It can be a script—the virtual world creates endless possibilities (but I don’t recommend scripting because it robs you of a very special, unique opportunity to practice accessing your ideas on your feet). It is essential to separate the process of building your content from the delivery of how it will be presented. Once you know what you want to say, put it in an outline of bulleted talking points. Your outline can be as high-level or detailed as you like, but be sure to avoid writing in sentences. Opt for phrases or words instead. If we have to read a sentence, we cannot be present. If we have to read we cannot be listening. (And if your audience has to read a sentence on a slide, they also cannot be present or listening to you).

• Get it in Your Bones: Once you have your content in a bulleted format, do not rehearse it. No matter what you do, do not sit or stand in a natural way and go through it time and time again. You will get sick of it. You will begin comparing yourself to yourself. It is not helpful and it is not effective. It's a waste of time and energy, both of which are far too precious resources. Instead, get on your feet in some sort of physical activity and practice speaking through the ideas as quickly as you can. This is how we start to understand what we know and what we don't know, what is in our head and what is in our bones, and where we have more work to do. The physical activity helps to ingrain the ideas more deeply, helps show us what we do not yet understand (how to transition from A to B), and, importantly, provides a distraction to make the moment more challenging. It’s designed to simulate the distraction that anxiety can then produce in the moment itself.

  Some ideas for physical activity to do while speaking it through includes washing dishes, showering, yoga, walking, or any automatic physical behavior that can distract the brain away from judgment or over-thinking and help you make it yours. I even recommend going for a run to simulate the sensations of adrenaline that are framed as panic, and practice accessing and articulating these ideas through breathlessness, palpitations, heat, and vocal shakiness.

• Contained Rumination: Most of us have a tendency to have anticipatory anxiety and racing thoughts in the lead up to an opportunity. Our mind is flooded with thoughts of what could possibly go wrong, and it almost feels productive and necessary to have this level of rumination. I say, if we're going to do it anyway, we may as well make it intentional and on purpose so we don't beat ourselves up for doing the understandable. Choose a time to sit down and write out all of your fears, the unknowns, the question-marks. What can be answered? What can be prepared for? What can’t? It's likely that you know more than you don't know, that you can prepare for more than you think, and that you are far closer to “I’ve got this” than “I’m gonna blow it.”

• Spatial Set-Up: Setting up your space so that it enables confident and clear communication is key. If you are prone to bandwidth issues, get a 100-foot ethernet cord and run it from your modem to wherever you are. Do an Internet speed test while running Zoom to check your connection. Arrange your desktop to be distraction-free and ready-to-screenshare (click here to download all of virtual communication tips!). Make your notes accessible by putting them right under the camera and arrange any slides below. Choose a chair that helps you feel comfortable and powerful, or if you’re standing, be sure to plant your feet and focus on stillness.

• Physical Focus: Especially in the lead up to an event, it can be necessary to either burn off some physical energy or to work on harnessing it. This is an extremely personal process that requires you to listen deeply to yourself and to know what your body needs. Before a big presentation, I will build in physical activity to my day to make sure that I am able to channel some of that butterfly jitteriness. In the immediate lead up to the event, I will use breath work to harness that energy and focus it towards more presence and feeling more powerful. During the event, I choose a physical anchor to return to anytime I lose my center. This can be taking a breath, leaning back in my chair, being intentional with eye contact, or holding a physical prop that grounds me in my own spatial awareness.

What parts of your creative process aren’t listed here? What parts of your preparation do you want to do away with? I’d love to hear your thoughts!