Procrastination (But I Digress)

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

A total inability to acheive my stated goal

I do not have a fear of public speaking--I embrace it. If I do say so myself, I'm pretty good at it. I have good body language, good eye contact, a good memory, an easy going style--I think, I'm pretty good at it. My problem is that I either have too much to say or not enough, hence joining Toastmasters to practice this craft. My stated goal--give a speech within the alloted time frame. But did I focus on this goal--no, no, no. I wanted to show up the normal everyday first time speaker at toastmasters and wow the crowd with my incredible speaking abilities. I came up with a creative and lovely title and cute plays on ideas and lots of fun little moments to make people smile. The speech was supposed to be 4 to 6 minutes with 3 or 4 points. I whittled it down to 5 points (1 was really two points, but they were small enough to put together) and straight reading, it took 5 minutes. A whole extra minute for a cushion, I thought. The green light (4 minutes) came on during my second point, but I did not worry. The yellow light (5 minutes) came on while I was starting my third point and I thought fleetingly, it must be a mistake. The red light (6 minutes) came on right before my fourth point and I started to rush. The buzzer (6.5 minutes) went off during my fifth point, but I finished my conclusion anyway cutting out about four sentences and burying the last joke. I didn't close with my best line. A complete failure to achieve my stated goal. 6 minutes and 41 seconds. The girl who won best performance (not me) failed to make eye contact, but she did involve the audience really effectively and so I must bow to her. She also finished within the alloted time.

1 Comments:

  • At June 23, 2005 at 5:01 AM, Blogger EZ Travel said…

    So much to say!! Sorry you didn't win the prize, but this give you room for improvement. One of the problems with the Amazon Van Houten women is that we never leave room for improvement, we just start out doing it right. I know that was your plan all along.

     

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