Monthly Archives: April 2010

“…Stud­ies show that peo­ple that talk too fast tend to be inse­cure and suf­fer from low self-esteem.” Sindy Martin

I think this quote best applies to sev­eral speeches I’ve done, and many other peo­ple I know. We dull down our talks with ums and ahs, dis­tract­ing the audi­ence from hear­ing our thoughts. I worked with a pub­lic speak­ing coach who rec­om­mended speak­ing slower, because when I talk too fast, and run out of things to say, I fill the silence with ums. One way I learned to over­come this is to speak s-l-o-w-l-y and enun­ci­ate clearly.

Also, con­sciously punc­tu­at­ing your sen­tences with ges­tures helps too. Punc­tu­at­ing a spo­ken sen­tence at all is really impor­tant — avoid­ing con­nect­ing thoughts together too much with “and…so…”

Thirdly, if I am pre­pared with some kind of out­line, I know what thought to move to next. Even when I am not pre­pared, ret­ro­spec­tively think­ing about it, I will quickly out­line some­thing to say, to be pre­pared for next time.

Speak­ing slowly exudes con­fi­dence in your­self, and helps oth­ers be more con­fi­dent in you.

Many of us think about the dreams we had as a child, and work incred­i­bly hard to make them come true. Peo­ple who can achieve these dreams tell incred­i­ble sto­ries of ambi­tion, endurance, tri­umph, etc. How­ever, from my expe­ri­ence, the most exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ences of my life have exceeded my dreams and expectations.

I’m not say­ing you shouldn’t dream. But if you seize oppor­tu­ni­ties that come to you — with all your heart — you will expe­ri­ence accom­plish­ments beyond your wildest dreams.

I’m very excited to speak at the 2010 IA Sum­mit next week! Three years ago I attended my first IA Sum­mit in 2007, where I met Kris­ten Johansen, Senior UX Man­ager for Cit­rix Online. Soon after that I started an intern­ship with Cit­rix Online, and became a full time employee in 2007. Work­ing for Cit­rix Online, with Kris­ten Johansen, and her rock star UX Team has been one of the best expe­ri­ences of my life!

At the 2010 IA Sum­mit, I will be shar­ing some break­throughs some col­leagues and I made on a project we con­ducted last year. Eliz­a­beth Thap­liyal helped co-author the pre­sen­ta­tion, and will be there for Q&A as well! I’d love to see you there!

http://2010.iasummit.org/talks/9751