Stepping Back from Speaking
martinfowler.com
martinfowler.com
Then one poster I submitted got upgraded to a talk, which brought me over the tipping point, and I quit.
I keep wondering if I could have done more to desensitise myself to it, but the anxiety was never decreasing, if anything, it was getting worse each time. I tried therapy, medication, Toastmasters, martial arts classes and dance lessons (which became my hobby, incidentally), and even vocal lessons (since I was particularly self-conscious about my voice), all to no avail.
So now I have a co-founder to do all and any public speaking, and I do not plan to put myself in front of a crowd ever again. But I feel I'm missing a part of life by it.
"Musicians, public speakers, actors, and professional dancers have been known to use beta-blockers to avoid performance anxiety, stage fright, and tremor during both auditions and public performances."
That was exactly me. Fortunately, my PhD advisor noticed the trend and solved it in a severe but functional way. Starting from my second year, I was assigned to teach calculus to first-year computer science undergrads (three groups of about 80 students each). It was absolutely terrifying. At the beginning I vomited, had diarrhea, anxiety, the whole pack. But since the schedule was so intense, somehow my body got used to it. After a couple of months, I had become desensitized to it, and actually started enjoying it.
It may be unusual, but my advisor coached me quite well on how to teach, and that helped me a lot. A couple of days before my first class, he asked me how was it going, and I told him that it was quite bad... then he asked me casually if I had already prepared my first class (of course, I had spent the entire summer preparing for it!), and to remind him what was it about, since it had been a few years since he last taught it. Then I told him the whole contents of the first session in about 20 minutes, even reaching for the blackboard to write a couple of formulas. After that, I said "the way I'm going to explain all that is...", and he cut me: "no! forget about your preparation. The informal explanation you just gave is actually a good first class, just repeat it a bit slowly and call it a day". I knew he was fucking with me just to calm me down, but this actually gave me a confidence boost.
When I had to speak at my first somewhat major conference venue, I had similar concerns, and he told me "remember the first course you taught? do exactly the same thing: explain your stuff to fellow scientists as you would do if you found them by the coffee machine".
> But I feel I'm missing a part of life by it.
Surely not! If you really don't like speaking in public, it's alright. There's plenty of other things that you are not doing, and that are not either "a part of life". Nobody can do everything.
I don't understand why that's 'fucking with you'. Isn't that good, sincere advice?
So one is better off to interact with people who are decent at that activity and seeking to build us.
Had my boss just yesterday close the office door and gently chide me about interrupting other people on the call. Best rebuke I've had in years.
Full disclosure: I also quit my PhD, for different reasons.
However, giving presentation is an important part of an academic career. As a grad student and postdoc, conferences expand your network beyond people in your lab and department. You might hope that your published work "speaks for itself", but people are people, and putting a face to a name seems to have value above and beyond the intellectual content. Later on, seminars and campus visits are important not only for disseminating your own work and building up a case for tenure, but also establishing collaborations and recruiting future grad students and postdocs to your group.
People certainly make do without giving many talks, but it usually makes things slightly harder and you might need to "hustle" in some other way to compensate: write exceptionally well, lean on colleagues to refer strong students, etc.
(Yes, presumably, they'd have to understand the subject just as well as you do for the inevitable question period. But maybe you're not bad at private mentoring, just public speaking...)
We came up with an abstract intended to attract computer scientists. I was a bit naive about complexity analysis. The computer scientists came, were quite generous and kind to me as a graduate student who didn't know, but they were out for blood when it came to protecting basic concepts.
I was asked to explain algebraic geometry to complete beginners, to set the stage for my talk. At the same time, an algebraic geometry seminar was to meet down the hall. The speaker was from the university that had just hired me. Two attendees drew this ridiculous conclusion that my efforts to computerize algebraic geometry might be the future. They convinced the organizers to postpone the algebraic geometry seminar so that they could attend my talk.
80 or so of the world's 300 experts in algebraic geometry showed up with nothing to do for an hour. Guess what they did? We had to move my room, so they could hear me explain algebraic geometry to complete beginners.
Yes I felt ill afterwards.
Don't beat yourself up. You were in a no-win scenario. Honestly, the best option might have been to go COMPLETELY off script. Admit to your audience that they know more than you about the core subject. Just give that to them. Then talk about why you find the subject interesting, and how it relates to your work. Maybe even open it up to a Q&A with the expectation that you'll look kinda dumb but learn a lot.
Of course, I've stayed far away from academia, so what do I know.
After that trial by fire, I've been comfortable before audiences of a thousand multiple times. Once, asked how I became the math consultant for "A Beautiful Mind", I looked out and managed to sell "Every audience is an audience of one".
For anxiety, it helps to remember that public speaking is a cultural ritual. It's not about you, you're playing a role.
When one gives academic job talks, most professors in the room don't understand your subject. What they can tell is whether you listen to questions. How well you answer questions is everyone's best gauge as to how smart you are. If the people who know you are already on your side, the talk itself is a Macguffin. Be truly present at each question, consider it honestly.
Wait, are you Dave Bayer?
I ask because it seems like many of us still need to give presentations even outside of academia.
Hopefully, you're in a position where it's no longer affecting your health.
Also, was it the size of the audience? For example, are you comfortable presenting to a smallish group (e.g., < 10 people)?
In grad school, I used to memorize my talks (complete with pauses, "ums...", "uhhs...", etc.). I did this because I was paranoid that I would forget specific details. It took a while, but eventually I got comfortable with making presentation errors. I think my presentations got better as a result, too.
My anxiety scales with the audience size like it does for most people, but in a manageable way. For me, the overwhelming anxiety depends on how much the audience (or the venue!) reminds my brain of my middle & high school.
It's much less of a problem for me when the audience is older. I had no problem presenting/interviewing in front of a panel of PIs, for example, even got some praise for it, nor do I find job interviews particularly stressful. Presenting in front of other students was particularly difficult. It was really difficult if in addition the room resembled my old school classrooms (low ceiling, bright, particular chair design). It didn't help that absent venue information, I would always imagine the setting to be exactly that.
My opinion is uninformed here, but it seems like some kind of therapy (e.g., cbt) might be helpful.
Thank you for the conversation.
Usages of this sense of "plastic" appear all across the English language: brain plasticity; plastic surgery; a cancerous neoplasm.
I was always worrying myself sick even before classes with simple content that perfectly fit the time frame.
A point in life comes where you have spend enough time being a generalist, trying to brush up on your weaknesses. Time to enjoy and sharpen your strong points. The only negative here are your feelings towards yourself. Why not embrace yourself as you are, and role with it. If anything, your life will be more enjoyable and who knows you may once realize you worried for nothing when you drop the worrying about the worrying.
Easier said than done of course ;)
His work introduced me to eXtreme Programming, UML, Refactoring and more. Much of the agile tooling used nowadays are a consequence of effort he and the groups he was a part of put forth. The book Analysis Patterns is very underrated IMO and was a breath of fresh air after futzing around with the SAMS Teach Yourself series books that were undeservingly popular back then.
I think of Fowler as a virtuoso when it comes to explaining practical software matters. I haven't watched much of his talks, but I've read most of his books and PLoP papers.
I'm glad he's going to focus more on writing and helping others with theirs.
Usually the stressor is obvious, but sometimes it's not and it's something you've left unresolved that your subconscious gets caught up on from time to time.
It might not be the talks themselves. It could be anything.
If you've never had a panic attack before and start getting these, it literally feels like you're going to die the first time you get one. Then you get used to them and start adjusting.
I went through a period of panic attacks after acquisition talks with a giant corp fell through. I was messed up for years after that, with random panic attacks at all times of day.
I worked on returning myself to my previously chill demeanor and haven't had one for many years now.
I also stopped answering any VC/BizDev/CorpDev emails though. lol. But mostly out of a desire to optimize my time use for things that actually matter.
Good luck Martin. Covid has certainly put the value of living the life you truly want for yourself into perspective and I hope you achieve that.
They're very different to performance anxiety, for me. With "performance anxiety" basically I sweat and shake, but it's like I'm 'overdosing' on adrenaline. I don't feel bad, per se, but am very conscious of my body because I'm dripping with sweat and my voice starts to break as I restrain the tremors. Public talks, job interviews, that sort of thing sets that off.
Anxiety attacks, for me, are like I'm going to die but it's all in my head no physical aspects at all.
About a third of the time, it feels like you are dying and there is no rational thought that can save you from that feeling. The rest of the time, it is merely discomfort in comparison.
I also have talked to many people have suffered from panic disorder. There are many different feelings that people experience, some from sweating and palpitations to somatic sensations that are indescribable.
I personally have sensory processing disorder, and for me, having a panic attack is sometimes like taking a hallucinogenic in some regard. There are sensations that I have never felt before that suddenly exist and feel very real. It is nearly impossible to calm down or rationalize the experience.
Overall, I assume there is no calming yourself down when your sympathetic nervous system is in full meltdown. You can't think yourself out of a flood of neurotransmitter release, no more than you could think yourself out of being poisoned.
In my opinion, the advice that people give to each other around panic attacks as being mind over matter is lacking perspective.
The trouble with panic attack advice is that most of the advice online is from chronic sufferers who often don't seem to want to be cured.
It is mind over matter for panic attacks. You can say 'this is just a panic attack' and the symptoms go away. Exercise actually works. Eating right works. Cutting out alcohol/caffeine works. Meditation works.
Mine are gone. I occasionally have mild anxiety attacks when stressed, but recognise them for what they are now. But the things that I thought were heart attacks, the massive overwhelming, dread-inducing panic attacks? Gone.
I feel similarly before technical interviews and it’s really unpleasant, the fear holds you back from doing things you’d otherwise want to do.
It’s hard to evaluate sometimes or be honest with yourself if you’re making a decision based on what you want or if it’s a rationalization to avoid the fear.
I often suspect a lot of the dismissals of technical interviews are more about rationalizing responses to the fear.
It makes me wonder though, does he dislike giving talks or is it mostly the anxiety that he dislikes? They’re hard to separate. I can understand giving up on one to avoid the other.
I think most people don’t face the anxiety directly, they tend to avoid the task and stay in their comfortable zone - I can definitely understand why. It’s cool he faced it for the amount of time he did.
I don't think we really have a good understanding of how all this stuff is connected.
Yeah... "count to ten" is probably insufficient for that! Her body needed more help managing her chemical response to stress. Same thing for her -- beta blockers (propranolol too, actually) were a complete life change.
Just to hit it on the head for anyone reading: everyone has anxiety, it's a normal part of life. If you find yourself physically incapacitated by anxiety on a regular basis, that's not something everyone deals with, and you can absolutely seek the help of a psychologist or psychiatrist!
We are all nervous in job interviews. The best ones flow once they start.
Bobby Fischer was also terrified before chess matches, Elon Musk says he's terrified of things failing all the time. I think bravery/courage it's not so much not being afraid, but being afraid and coming up with strategies to push through anyway.
For sports two tennis players come to mind too, Naomi Osaka recently but there was another earlier (I think Mardy Fish?).
I think different people feel the level of fear at different intensities though - probably a mixture of genetics and parenting. The physical symptoms are the worst part (waking up hyperventilating, etc.)
Oh, and by the way, I'm not a sociopath :)
In precision shooting, any anxiety absolutely destroys your scores. When your heartbeat alone is enough to drop points directly, anxiety is brutal.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of top precision shooters were on beta blockers.
I've found I'm least anxious in interviews where I don't feel like I need to get the job, e.g. at an org that's not at the top of my list, or when the desire to switch employers is not urgent or desperate[1].
If you have the time, and the experience is not traumatic, I'd encourage everyone to interview once a year (or once every 2 years) even if you're happy with your current position. At worst, you bomb out of an interview for a job you never really wanted; at best, you can a find out that the job is actually interesting (or pays more, or both). You may even get a raise and keep your old job. In any of the cases, you likely come out a little better at interviewing.
1. Which means you shouldn't wait until it's too late to switch jobs. If you see any warning signs, start sending out feelers, if you wait until you can't stand the sight of your manager (or cubicle/corporate logo), then your job search might feel urgent, which is not good if you're not a natural interviewee.
How do you gain employment in the event you decide you need to leave your current place of employment?
That said, I do occasionally get contract gigs through people I've worked with in the past where there are no interviews required, it's more like "Hey, we need someone to do this project and we know you can do it because you've done similar in the past - can you help us out?"
Well now that's just cheating.
I'm a big fan of his writing, including the "Refactoring" book [1], which has changed my life. So it's a bit sad to read this admission. But I appreciate his honesty. Wondering if this "detached" feeling is attributed to the anxiety he has felt on the speaking side.
Anyway, I hope he keeps writing. It doesn't have to be a great hit like, say "Microsevices" [2]. I believe it can be more personal. I'd like to learn what experienced people like him think about things happening in the software development world.
(Probably I'll even enjoy reading about what he does on his "indulge" time. That's what the fandom is like.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Existing-Addiso...
Meanwhile, I wonder: are talks even worth it? A blog post can reach orders of magnitude more people, can be edited to perfection in advance, and is much easier for most people to consume (supports searching, skimming, quoting, out-of-order reading etc.). Even the Q&A part is much better conducted on a site like HN than live.
It seems to me that a good blog post is strictly better than a talk. Yet we're willing to spend way more money and effort on talks, for some reason?
But take what Fowler did, namely talking about refactoring, organizing and structuring your code - the broad strokes stuff. I think it's a lot more enjoyable and effective to listen to a talk (esp in person) for that, than it is to read about it.
Humans are social creatures, and I do enjoy the human aspect of learning from another human. Teaching is performative. I don't get that from a text as much as from a talk.
Of course, everyone's different, and that's why it's good it doesn't have to be either or.
I'm there. I've reached a point in my evolution as a programmer that I have ways I like to do things. Ways that work for me. Unfortunately they are not popular. But I'm tired of working on stuff the way others want it done. I'm teetering on the brink of either early retirement or contract work with a strict "my way or the highway" approach. We'll see what happens.
Almost 5 months in, I will never go back to a daily job. The pleasure of doing things my way, expanding my network, meeting other people who share the same passion and finally seeing the impact of what I am doing is priceless. I work longer hours than I used to but I've never been that happy for years.
I've not gotten particularly good at it. As I often say: "I'm quite comfortable, speaking in public, but I'm not very good at it. That's a really bad combination."
But the preparation, I hate it so much. Sitting in front of that empty window and trying to come up with something that makes sense, then refactoring it multiple times. Practicing, identifying stumbling points, fixing them... I put it off as long as I can, but not how I put off some programming work if it's boring, instead I put it off because of how dreadful it feels. This is somewhat of a vicious cycle, because there's only so much on-stage adrenaline and maybe resulting improvisation power can do: To have a good talk, you have to have a good preparation, but if you put it off because it is so anxiety-inducing, the fear that you are not prepared enough as a result is even more anxiety-inducing.
I always assume that the people doing talks are eager to do so, or at the very least find the adrenaline etc of the "performance" worth it when compared to the nerves and work involved.
I wonder if there are a lot of people in the "don't want to do this but feel I have to" category.
(I have no interest in public speaking, and don't make any effort to be put in such a position)
He does a good job describing the experience in this interview: https://youtu.be/GbS-7jUBJGY
Fowler has powered through it, and although unpleasant he was able to deliver. He says he felt no right to complain because he understood that many people do much more objectively risky and painful things and he was too proud a professional to quit.
I think the above is a good insight into what success looks like. It's not that all the right things are easy, it's that the idea of not doing them scares you more than the pain of doing them.
Then it seems like he finally got to a place where he knows he's accomplished and impactful and no longer needs to do the thing he doesn't like, which is awesome as well. The important thing is that this happens after success, not before.
The important thing is "to do." I think in many cases, anxiety evaporates once you prove to yourself through experience that you can handle the situation (it's hard to fear something you survived a thousand times). In his case, the anxiety continued to be painful but at least he had the intellectual strength to say "I know this sucks but I know it's not real" and power through. Which again, powering through - grit - is really important.
I never had it that hard but I did have massive social anxiety. If I had to be in a social situation, much less public speaking, I'd dread and overthink it. And probably if I stayed an IC engineer i would be able to continue to have this problem forever. What happened instead is I started to do management and recruiting and sales - all of which forced me to talk to people one on one and in groups constantly. I didn't notice when it happened but one day I realized that my anxiety was gone because I had disproved its thesis.
It was funny a few years ago at our wedding, my wife and I forgot to prepare a speech. We realized this with a few mins to go and my wife (who is actually very social) went into "oh shit, can you do this cuz I can't?" mode. I quickly drafted a few points in my head and delivered a speech I was proud of. It was amazing to reflect on this as something I could just do, which would have paralyzed me a few years earlier.
The point is, do things that genuinely scare you. There's a good chance you'll realize they are not scary. Or at least like in Fowlers case you'll recognize that you are able to power through and get success.
He can explain the overall concepts very well. You can then go into details. (Refactoring book, UML distilled, NoSQL distilled, etc. I even learned LMAX first from his bliki.)
Going by blogs on his site and his signature series books, I certainly look forward to things he will write/ contribute to.
Personally I loved the opportunity I got to pre-record a talk and then allow the conference organisers to premiere it on YouTube[1]. It works incredibly well and enables speakers to answer questions live while the talk is played. I hope more conferences adopt this.
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxLL3km21Aw&list=PLxLdEZg8DR...
* "growth slides": challenge yourself to deliver a slide that scares you, but which is actually a great idea! Examples: a fun, refreshing introductory story to break the ice, including your SO in the "about me" section and sneaking in the fact that you love them, a clever joke-slide at a random point that is SURELY a good idea, etc.
* writing down the difficult parts of the talk: a bit time-consuming, but writing down the exact content of the more challenging segments of the talk will help cool you off. Especially important if English is not your first language, as in my case.
* "box breathing": a US Navy breathing technique that I would perform for 10 minutes leading into the presentation, stabilizing my breathing, brain and emotions.
I am very curious about this dynamic, and why it changed.
Of course the stress level was much higher when I knew there would be a crowd listening to me. During my short career I had to give talks in English which to make it worse is not my mother tongue (I am French and bbtw I apologize my written English is also far from perfect). I felt somehow "jealous" of some people I was working with. They seemingly felt no stress at all when we had to give these conferences.
Now I am still not 100% comfortable talking to other people but I believe I made huge progress. I believe one important thing is to accept yourself as you are. Don't try to be someone else. Don't be so egocentric. Other people are no so different than you. I am really nice person and these people in front of you are also very nice why shouldn't they be ?
Yes I know it sound like some stupid Facebook post that some teenager would copy/paste. But at some point this realization somehow helped me.
Here is an other more concrete advice. I have been taking theater class for about 7 months now and I will have my first performance before an audience at the end of July. I believe theater really helped my confidence.
Jokes aside, kudos to Mr Fowler for the decision. I'm sure we are all going to benefit even more from his focus to writing and things that don't make him miserable.
The ultimate way to do this though is go out and try new things. Feel vulnerable and interact with the world, and others, with a sort of whimsy. And have fun with it. Remember that the audience is being held hostage in the situation too!
"Sarah Bernhardt, one of the most famous French actresses in the late XIXth Century, used to suffer from stage fright. Once, a young actress told her she didn’t experience it. Bernhardt answered: “don’t worry, it will come with talent”.
Speaking is inevitable part of life. Even if you’re not giving large presentations you are speaking every day to smaller groups. If you want to improve how you feel, I highly recommend checking out toastmasters. It helped me get much more comfortable with public speaking. I still get nervous, but it’s manageable.
There are many different approaches, like CBT and lately third wave of behavioral therapies.
It's important to distinguish the fear you may have of speaking in front of people from the fear you may have of presenting incorrect material. If you're giving an instructional speech about a practice/process that's well known with zero controversy, and which you are very familiar with, do you still have anxiety?
That's a different breed of anxiety than when you are postulating in front of a crowd of peers about fringe techniques that you may harbor doubts about yourself (a new way to do a process, or a change to the accepted standard, or a new interpretation of history, etc).
It's important to distinguish what's causing the anxiety because the fix is different for these two issues. For the latter, it's building confidence in your own preparation and learning. Do you know what you're talking about? Could you put it on paper and publish it and not look like a jackass? If so, carry on.
For the former - like you just get anxiety from talking in front of people even about material that is uncontroversial - the key is kind of a mind trick on yourself. For me, I try to find some aspect of the topic that I really love and enjoy, and am fascinated by. If I can do that, my mind is focused on giving and sharing that fascination, and all anxiety goes away.
That said, I started speaking publicly in high school as part of Academic Decathlon - speech competitions and the like. I remember being anxious about doing that in the same way I would be anxious about a school musical. As a kid, overcoming that and just doing it is the first step to learning how to enjoy it.
I highly recommend that parents expose their kids to this early - school plays, speech competitions - if they have the opportunity to do so. With most skills in life, exposure to it as a kid helps greatly.
As an adult, I look back on those younger days about stressing over a two-minute speech with some amusement. Now I have zero problem talking for 40+ minutes. It's not something I every worked up to like reps of an exercise, it's just the relatively simple trick of falling in love with subject matter and having confidence that you know the material and have seen a thing or two that gives you some authority (road mileage) on the topic. Probably also advantageous as an adult to recognize that EVERYBODY out there in the world is fundamentally a hack in life, just trying to get by day-by-day, the same as you, wanting to understand things and for people to treat them with dignity.
Speaking is serving - think of it that way and (for me at least) anxiety goes away.
Public speaking was always difficult for me. For me the anxiety never truly goes away. That is why I really likes Martin’s post.
It sounds like you're just experiencing stage fright. Many professional performers get this way, and beta blockers have been shown to help reduce the physical symptoms of stage fright(tachycardia, sweating, etc): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6129674/
I had zero problem public speaking in school, or in casual public speaking (ie addressing participants in a sports league I help run), but I learned when I was 25 that I actually do have public speaking anxiety from a professional perspective. Perhaps it is because school/sports were low-stake activities in my mind, whereas I know that my professional performance is directly tied to my ability to support my family. So now I occasionally take a beta blocker before a big presentation, and they go as smoothly as my public speaking did back in college.
My doctor, who treated a lot of Microsoft folks, told me that he prescribed a lot of Inderal for those who did a lot of public speaking.
I understand why people do it if their job relies on it...but the point of taking medication is so you can expose yourself to the fear, and then don't need the medication at all at some point...not using it as a coping strategy.
I have gone through something similar, unfortunately something significantly more disruptive. And I have succeeded and failed more than anyone over ten plus years...medication isn't anything. Your choices are: expose yourself to the situation and hope it goes away, or avoid it totally (and btw, both are fine choices...I think people assume that the latter is failure but life is complicated, sometimes it isn't possible to get over it...choosing not to do public speaking and talk openly about why, imo, takes some guts).
Not all of us have that luxury, but he seems to.
That teammate tapping you on the shoulder to ask you "a quick question"? An unnecessary distraction. A daily standup where you take turns passing a ball around and making up a 30-second summary of what you did yesterday? A stressful and useless waste of time.
Outside of companies heavy on the office politics, it should quickly become obvious that full-remote, full-async teams are far more effective, and sanity will finally prevail.
If you're wondering why you're getting downvoted, might be one of those.
I don't like any of that latter group of things. I still work much better in on a team that I see every day and my productivity suffers immensely when working remotely and not talking to other people.
"This works for me, it should work for everyone." is an antipattern.