Just how much speaking can you do in a single day? We spend a lot of time talking about how to prepare for and give a good speech. However, sometimes life just comes at us like a runaway truck and we find ourselves double or triple (or more) booked to speak in a single day. Oh oh, looks like we’ve got a whole new challenge here…
Things To Do The Day Before
Dr. Caren Neile spends a lot of her time speaking to raise funds. She knows a thing or two about how you’ve got to prepare for a day in which you’ll be giving multiple speeches.
Dr. Neile points out that your whole day is going to go downhill if you don’t get enough sleep the night before. This sounds easy to do, but all too often it’s not. We rush around the day before we’re going to be speaking (writing our speech perhaps?) drinking coffee / tea / soda and then we throw ourselves into our beds, shut our eyes and hope that we’ll fall asleep.
Sorry, life doesn’t seem to work out that way. All too often when we have a big speaking day ahead of us, we will find ourselves laying in bed completely unable to get to sleep. What you need to do is to make sure that you prepare to have a good night’s sleep at the start of the day before you are going to be speaking. This means staying away from stimulants (goodbye coffee), getting some exercise in, and basically making sure that you wind things down before you hit the hay. You may still be dealing with nerves, but at least you’ll have a better chance of getting to sleep.
Can You Say Siesta?
When was the last time that you took a nap? I’m betting that the last planned nap that you had was all too long ago (kindergarten perhaps?). It’s time to rediscover the joys of napping.
On a day that you are giving multiple speeches you need to determine if you are going to be able to fit in naps in between your speeches. This may strike you as silly, I mean you’ve got a lot of things that you have to get done that day; however, it turns out that it’s one of the best things that you can do and it just might save you from slipping up and saying the wrong thing.
If you take a look at the energy that you’ll be expending during a day that you give multiple speeches, you’ll be peaking while you are giving the speeches. After you’ve exerted this much energy, you are going to need to recharge your batteries and a nap is a fantastic way to do this. Just remember to wake up before it’s time for your next speech!
Drink Heavily!
Sorry, I’m just talking about drinking water here. When we speak, the parts of our throat that form the words get dried out. Being hydrated is the key to being able to go the distance in a day in which you’ll be doing a lot of speaking.
It probably goes without saying that keeping a glass / bottle of water by your side while you are speaking is also a good idea. This will become even more important as you go through your day and your body parts start to wear out.
Eat!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen speakers make one of two different mistakes when it comes to eating: either they don’t eat at all or they eat too much. Not eating at all is a no-no because you are going to be exerting yourself while you are speaking and if you do this on an empty stomach, you are going to feel the effects. These can range from being distracted by a rumbling stomach to passing out because of low blood sugar. You don’t want to do either of these.
Eating too much can cause similar issues. One problem is indigestion — who wants to listen to a speaker who keeps burping? The other is that as your body goes to work on all of that food, it’s going to boost your body temperature and that’s going to slow you down and make you sleepy.
What All Of This Means For You
It would be great if we ran the world, but we don’t. This means that sometimes we will find ourselves with commitments to speak multiple times on a single day. It can be challenging enough to do a good job giving just one speech, giving multiple speeches in a single day make life even harder.
The key to doing this well is to make sure that you prepare to succeed. This includes getting enough sleep the night before your speeches and then doing the right things as you go through the day of the speeches. Take your time and take care of your body and just like a marathon runner you’ll eventually reach the finish line — then you can stop talking!
What is the most important thing that you think needs to be done in order to prepare to give back-to-back-to-back speeches?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
We can talk about how to give great speeches until we are blue in the face; however, it ultimately comes down to just how well all of the things that we’ve discussed are put into practice that will determine how effective our talks are…
