Ever spend hours scripting every “um” and “ah” in your head, only to feel more anxious than when you started? You are not alone. Over-preparing is a classic trap. We think memorising more data equals more confidence. In reality, it just makes you feel and look uncomfortable leading to stiffness and stage fright.
If you want to truly command a room, it is time to ditch the safety blankets. Here is your step-by-step guide to breaking the over-prep cycle, embracing the power of no-slide speaking, and delivering a presentation that actually connects.
The Cost of Over-Preparation
Over-preparing feels like productive work, but it is usually just anxiety in disguise. When you rely on lots of notes or try to script your way through to the end, you will be making a rod for your own back. This is what happens:
- Too Much Script: Memorising lines makes you sound robotic.
- Panic: If the audience asks an unexpected question, your rigid structure crumbles. For tips on the very best way to deal with questions, read the questions and answers below.
- The Wall Effect: Creating a PowerPoint overload to cover every possible aspect of your topic only to leave the audience dazed, confused and staring at the wall.
- Um and Ah: Don’t worry about any ums and “ah’s”, it is part of speaking naturally, if you begin to focus on them you will end up doing it more often; which then creates a doom loop of “uming” and “ahring”
- Nerves: It is often said, and it is wrong, that nerves are good for you as it makes your speaking more urgent. Nerves are destructive; it is your natural adrenaline which helps you and gives you energy. Tell yourself continually that you are Excited Not Nervous! If you’re looking for more practical ways to manage speaking anxiety, read our guide on How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking.
- Question and Answers: Once you have established yourself on stage, invite the audience to ask you a question as and when they feel the need. This way it is a relevant question based on what you have just said. It will be one that you can answer easily and helps you in two additional ways. Firstly, the audience member will not be composing and rehearsing their questions in their head while you are speaking, they won’t therefore stop listening. Secondly, it means that you can leave the stage uninterrupted and accompanied by a crescendo of applause at the end of your presentation.
How to Make Speaking Easier
1. The Power of Zero Slides
Slides are often a crutch for the speaker, not a benefit for the audience. When you eliminate screens entirely, you force the room to look at you. Your body language, your eye contact, and your voice become the presentation. This instantly increases your authority and hooks the room’s attention.
As Seth Godin writes:
“PowerPoint was invented by socially awkward engineers as a way to create deniability and clarity in boring tech meetings. It’s a persistently misused piece of tech, used as a crutch or an effective way to hide.”
While deliberately provocative, his point is that slides should support the speaker, not replace them.
Slides aren’t the enemy, poor slides are. If a visual genuinely helps your audience understand something they couldn’t easily imagine, use it. Otherwise, let your words do the work.
2. Build a Strong Foundation and Stay Laser Focused
Do not dump your entire brain into your speech. Your audience will forget most of what you say anyway. Instead, pick one core message and three supporting pillars. If a story does not directly support those three pillars, leave it out. A simple structure is easy for them to follow and impossible for you to forget. If you’d like a step-by-step framework, read our guide on How to Structure a Presentation to Engage Your Audience. Lead with and finish with great stories. Oh, and put another story in the middle.
3. Bullet Points, Never Script
Writing out your speech word-for-word is a recipe for presentation anxiety. If you forget one specific word on stage, your brain will freeze. Instead, create a “set-list” much in the same way a stand-up comedian does. Rather than learn your speech or presentation you just learn the running order. Take the set-list on stage with you, either in your pocket or hold it in your hand. Just knowing that you have it available should you need often means that you won’t actually need to refer to it.
4. Practice for Imperfection
When practicing at home, do not restart your speech if you make a mistake. Keep going. When it comes to your speech/presentation, you cannot click on “undo”. Practicing how to recover from a stumble out loud is far more valuable than trying to execute a flawless, artificial performance. Rehearse in your head until you are happy. As soon as you are happy, don’t think about it again until it is time to deliver, this is the best way to deliver a speech. The saying “practice makes perfect” is inaccurate. Only perfect practice makes perfect and as that doesn’t matter in terms of your speaking you can ditch that saying altogether.
5. Trust Your Natural Expertise
You were asked to speak because you already know the topic. You do not need to memorise data to prove your worth. Trust that your knowledge is enough to carry the conversation. Treat the presentation like a fireside chat, not a university exam. Remove any initials, acronym or jargon so that you don’t unwittingly alienate some members of your audience. To have maximum impact and to leave a legacy, tell memorable stories, always speak your own words in your own style and champion your own voice!
6. When Cheating isn’t Cheating
If you are comfortable eye contacting several members of your audience that is great. However, if you find the very thought of continuous rotational eye contact as horrifying, then just cheat it, make it look as if you are looking at everyone. As long as the audience thinks that you are, that will work. The same goes for your body-language, generate an impression of supreme confidence and the audience will believe that to be the situation, regardless of how you feel inside. Within a short period of time your confidence will grow to the level you were portraying.
All in all, the tips above will help sharpen up your presentation skills and grow your confidence. For more practical techniques that you can apply before your next presentation, explore these ten tips to improve public speaking skills.
Shift Your Mindset: Connection Over Perfection
The biggest secret to public speaking? Your audience does not want perfection. They want value. They want to hear from a human, not an encyclopedia. When you stop obsessing over every syllable and drop the visual crutches, you free up the mental bandwidth to actually look at your audience, read the room, and deliver a memorable talk. The whole process is really not as difficult as it is too often portrayed. Enjoy and embrace the moment and you will deliver the message you want, in the way you want and achieve the intended impact.
Next time you catch yourself staying up late trying to memorise a speech, close your notebook. Go to sleep. You know this stuff, now go show them!!
References
- Godin, Seth. Is it okay if I share my screen? Seth’s Blog (2026). https://seths.blog/2026/07/is-it-okay-if-i-share-my-screen/
