30 minutes a week, for 6 months
I originally published this on my medium blog. Creating an archive here
Photo by Kristina Paparo on Unsplash
Public Speaking is an essential skill that we all need. Even if we have no plans to appear in public to give a speech, it is still a necessary social skill to have for work. Having the ability to talk to a group with coherent thoughts and uninterrupted flow is something I was never good at and even now, though I am writing this article I won’t say I am really good at it. But I have improved a lot in the past years and now I am no more completely terrified of speaking up. There’s lots of self-help content online that has you do some insane exercises and whatnot to help get better at presenting. I have a simple solution.
Practice speaking to yourself 30 minutes a week, for 6 months.
It is that simple. It can be 5 minutes a day, 10 minutes every other day or 15 minutes twice a week. It is really up to you how you want to schedule it depending on your life. Just find yourself alone, in front of a mirror or camera, or nothing if that is your choice, and start practicing putting your thoughts into words. It can be any topic, we have so much going on in the world and we have our own thoughts on so many things. So just start rambling. Starting and staying consistent is the key. As long as you stick to a schedule, pick random topics and practice speaking your thoughts, you will see vast improvement in your speaking skills in 6 months. 6 months is not a written in stone timeline, you can see vast improvement far quicker or you may develop slowly. It doesn’t matter as we all have own pace.
Read a lot.
This is kind of obvious but you cannot have legit conversations without having knowledge. Otherwise your thoughts and opinions and ill-informed. It is obvious you should try to learn as much as possible. Read as much as you can. About different topics.
Eventually, you will develop your own speaking style as you critique yourself. There is no one right way or one way to go about it as some courses or whatever may have you believe. It is that simple.
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