{"id":610,"date":"2010-02-24T12:16:38","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T11:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=610"},"modified":"2010-02-24T12:16:38","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T11:16:38","slug":"trains-planes-and-automobiles-traveling-to-presentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/trains-planes-and-automobiles-traveling-to-presentations\/","title":{"rendered":"Trains, planes and automobiles – traveling to presentations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve trained a lot of speakers and I know a lot of people who speak as part of their work (or for fun!). I barely know any who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to travel to get to their presentations – certainly it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not unknown for me to be up at the crack of dawn (or even before the sun) and not see my house until the sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well down again.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows that traveling is tiring – why else would you need a day after your holiday to recover from it!? :) But does it hold special issues for a presenter (or trainer)? I think so, based upon my experiences recently. For me the three big issues are<\/p>\n

  • being tired\n<\/li>\n
  • being cold\n<\/li>\n
  • being dehydrated.\n<\/li>\n

    Being tired isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just about not having had enough sleep. Not just<\/em>. Obviously that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to help but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also about when you sleep, not how much you get. I can go to bed early the day before a big presentation and get the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcrecommended\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 seven or eight hours of sleep, but if I have to get up at, say, five in the morning, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel like it. :) Essentially, my body-clock is messed up and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not until the time I would normally be up and about (an hour and a half later) that I find myself able to wake up fully… no matter how many cups of tea I drink to get me going!<\/p>\n

    I find I need to watch that – tea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a diuretic (like coffee, the other common stimulant drink) and drinking a lot to get you going (or to keep you going at the other end of the day) will dry your throat out, making it harder for you to sound like a confident expert when you get on stage to make your presentation. My advice would be to drink it if you need to but to make sure you take on board as much water. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to drink the five litres a day that was claimed a few years ago (research failed to substantiate that assertion) but you do need to have plenty on board.<\/p>\n

    Drink it in advance of your presentation, not during, because by then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too late. Water can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lubricate your vocal folds; it shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go down that way… and if it does, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re drowning (not recommended, even for the most demonstrative of presentations!). What water does, is give you what you need to produce the lubricants for your throat and vocal folds during your presentation – and it can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do that directly or instantly. Getting the water in in plenty of time for your presentation means drinking as you travel, not as you start presenting.<\/p>\n

    I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve blogged elsewhere about the fact that the water shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be chilled<\/a>, either, particularly if you do drink it close to when your presentation starts.<\/p>\n

    Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t under-estimate the effects of dehydration when you travel! Planes, trains and cars all suck the moisture out of you!<\/p>\n

    Being cold is a tricky one – particularly in the depths of winter. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget that even just a chilly room for your presentations can tighten your shoulders and throat up so that your voice sounds strained… making your presentation sound less credible. Tricks I use are a simple Buff<\/a> for when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m traveling (very flexible and well worth the money!) and although I personally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wear vests, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d know speakers who find them useful. When you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re presenting, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re performing – and you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do that to your best when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re inhibited by even a slight chill.<\/p>\n

    Consider a warm up – not a full marathon, but just a simple something to warm your muscles up before your presentation. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re nervous it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll help with that too, by using up some of your adrenalin, perhaps, and certainly using up some of your time… taking your mind off things.<\/p>\n

    It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s particularly important to keep your lips and neck relaxed and warm, so when you warm up, consider making a point of spending a minute or two to get your lips working properly – there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing worse for an audience than a speaker who mumbles… and if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re coming in from the cold, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do. Of course, you might find it a little bit on the embarrassing side to do your lip warm-up exercises on public transport but hey… it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your job. :) Better to look silly on a bus than on stage!<\/p>\n

    Going back for a moment, to look at the issue of being tired, I remember an athletics coach telling me that performance on the day was less to do with the amount of sleep an individual athlete got the day before the big event but rather more to do with the amount of sleep in the previous four or five nights. Sadly, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reference this at the moment (so if you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, please drop me a line!) but it seems reasonable to me – and if so, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to take it into account as you do you public speaking gigs. A business presentation on Monday might be spoiled by a night on the town on Friday and Saturday. Now there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sobering thought…..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve trained a lot of speakers and I know a lot of people who speak as part of their work (or for fun!). I barely know any who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to travel to get to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-key-posts","category-personal-blog-related","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}