Social Anxiety

Yeah, good idea, I’m on board

I think in general people's attention spans wax and wane. I will say I think there's a series of things you can do that can help put on a presentation, even if you're "bad" at it. I think practice makes perfect. You don't have to be a parrot, but you should be familiar with whatever you want to present. The Sims had it right when the little person talks in front of the mirror to be more charismatic. I mean, you don't have to do that, but a kind person forgives a sea of "umms" and most people are not kind. I got some great advice a hundred years back to basically write your speech, hit it until it sounds natural, and then put it in an outline. Have cheater notes so to speak, where you can lead yourself conversationally. Use that, then when you have a handle of that knock it down to just bullet points. By that point you'll pretty much own your presentation, which gives you an air of authority, which is the entire point of a presenter typically. It's how I cheat the system, and I've given presentations on a large and small scale before (not often, but have done so in the past). I absolutely dreaded it at first and even dropped out of school because I didn't want to take a speech class (no lie). The wonderful human mentioned above helped guide me to the finish line, and I am so terribly thankful for that. Time, talking to every kind of human under the sun made pretty much everything better. That's why I said the last bit on the bottom.

I am not a quick person, I wish I were. Witty people kill me, because they're so quick. It takes time for me to mull things over in my head, to respond. Even medicated, it's just an uphill battle unfortunately. I can't play the crowd, and I wish I could. Pretty much the only way I have learned to "cheat the system" is to approach situations where I need to be authoritative like above. But likewise you've gotta say the "right" things. By that I mean if you're going to ask for audience participation, you've got to do so in a fun and succinct way. People don't tend to like cringey introspective questions unless it's done in a fun and stupid way. Of course this whole damn thing is cause of comic. I just always try to impart this knowledge I've gotten because most people will have to give a presentation at some point and this advice I got saved my life. So I try to keep the spirit alive by passing it on =)