I’ve lost count of the number of times when I’ve read fora online – about public speaking – when the advice has been the mantra “practice, practice, pracatice”. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t practice! Of course you should.<\/p>\n
I’m continually bugged by people saying “I have an presentation to make next week: help!” who look slightly surprised when I say “How much time do you have to practice between now and then?”. They seem to think there’s a silver bullet which will solve their problems. Practice helps for sure!<\/p>\n
I’d like to differentiate between what I’m going to call ‘strategic practice’ and ‘tactical practice’. Tactical practice is what you do when you go over and over and over something, again and again and again. A pianist doing their scales would be a classic example or a tennis player receiving balls from a serving machine….<\/p>\n
There’s certainly something to be gained from this: mind you, less than you think – I’ve talked a bit more about differentiating practice and rehearsing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Strategic practice is when you have a go at something, as before over and over, but this time with a gap between so that you can get feedback. In the context of public speaking, this would be something like giving a presentation at Toastmasters, thinking about what you did right and wrong over a couple of weeks and having another go. Obviously there’s a lot to be gained here, too.<\/p>\n There are times, however, when you can over do it – particularly the tactical stuff.<\/p>\n