Bull's Eye!

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 Bull's Eye!  When Practice Pays Off

Prepare, Practice, Ritual:  How to Manage Presentation Stress and Nervousness, Part II

Today we continue our presentation stress management series. 
In Part I we looked at Preparation.

Now let's look at Practice. Once you've done your Preparation, 
you are ready to get good and better.

The basic concept is this:  the more you practice, the better you get.

You get better because you get more and more familiar with your message and
 your content.  
This raises your self-confidence.  
It helps you to own it, to make it yours, and to feel good with it.
Perfection is NOT the goal.
Memorising is NOT the goal.
The goal is to get so comfortable with it, that you could do it anywhere, anytime, and ultimately to anybody.  You want to be so comfortable with you presentation that you can have a passionate conversation about it.

Take a good look at the gentlemen above.  His kick is right on target.  It is a combination of timing and precision that basically goes on auto-pilot.  This is only possible because he as prepared and pracitced religiously. 
When it's showtime, he delivers.  
Great presentation is not really different.  You get out of it what you put in to it. 
You practice, you get better.  You don't, you don't.

SO, stop wasting your time doing Bull-Shit tasks (unnecessary e-mails, meetings, and other non-core time-bandits), and use some of your time to practice til you feel good about your presentation.
If you feel good about it, your body language will follow and will be much more convincing to your audience.  Plus it will make your presentation more powerful and more fun.

It's your choice.

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