🎤 Public Speaking: Your Day-of Warm-up routine
How to get yourself into tiptop shape right before your talk
In this month’s post, I’ll wrap up my sharing of the behind-the-scenes look into my preparation process for my first public-facing conference talk at this year’s Women in Product Conference!
In this mini-series, I’ll cover the following topics—as a minimum:
Day-of routine—this is today’s post!
In today’s post, I’ll focus on sharing my routine for getting into an optimal headspace, before giving your fantastic talk.
Let’s get started.
Get ready the day before (or earlier!)
During the week of the Women in Product Conference, I happened to be traveling out-of-country for work purposes.
I scheduled a tech check with the A/V technician from the Women in Product team, so that we could validate how I looked and sounded from my hotel room.
For the day-of, I knew that I would have to take my laptop with me for work, so I left everything else set up the way things were with the A/V technician, which were my:
External webcam,
Tripod,
Physical speaker notes, and
Bluetooth headset.
Weeks ahead of this trip, I had set a reminder in Google Calendar with a pre-talk to-do list. This way, I could add reminders for myself as I thought of them from then until the day-of.
Give yourself ample time
On the day of my talk, I blocked off the 30-minutes before I was supposed to go-live so that I could get comfortable in my quiet space (my hotel room) and do one final tech check for myself.
(I also gave my manager and team a heads-up weeks ahead in advance and a reminder on the day-of my talk, to inform them that I would be unreachable during this time).
Do a short, relaxing activity
I made sure to make my mid-day prayer before I went live, as a means to get myself into a more relaxed mindset.
Alternative activities may include—and are not limited to: deep breathing, meditation, stretching, or listening to a piece of classical music.
Plan your meal time around your talk
Personally, I don’t like speaking for an extended amount of time on a full stomach, so I planned to take a late lunch—after my talk and live Q&A.
If you want to eat beforehand, give yourself ample time to let your stomach settle.
Final tip
Remember to breathe from your diaphragm, smile, and look into your camera! 😄
That’s it for this series—for now, anyways!
Whether you read one or all posts from it, I appreciate you for coming along for this journey.