Anxiety about presenting at work ruining my weekend

[birdon]

I’ve only been in my current team since autumn, there are 7 of us including me

On Monday I have to do a presentation on a specialist subject. I suspect I am autistic and have always found social situations to be difficult, for example it can be hard for me to make eye contact, I stumble over my words - a lot - when I get nervous and struggle to find the phrasing for what I’m wanting to say. This is heightened if I am already feeling anxious or unsure. I’ve never presented to a group like this, and I’ve been given 2 and a half hours for it. Done minimal prep but will do more tomorrow.

Does anyone have any tips to calm nerves? Whenever I think about it I feel really sick and go cold :( it sounds silly but I don’t want it to impede on my enjoyment of Sunday or keep me up all night tomorrow night. I would literally rather do any other task, in the world, than this and enjoy my job generally!

I will add the presentation is to the whole team, in person, and two people whom I’ve never met ‘may’ pop in I’ve been told

I'm 100% similar, I faked sickness due to a presentation ( i NEVER act this way EVER!) and actually made myself sick with worry.
The only thing that helps is stacks of prep, practicing in front of a mirror - really does help, and CBD oil/rescue remedy.
Sorry I know exactly how you feel, please try not to worry all night long

For me preparation would be key - especially if it was 2.5 hours that’s a long time. I’d want to know what I was saying, have the slides sorted and know what, if any, activities I was going to do.
For nerves I’ve always used rescue remedy. It might be the placebo affect for me but it seems to work. A few drops in a bottle of water and I feel much calmer.

think about why you’ve been asked to do this. You can tell others about what you know and have something to offer.
Practise as much as possible saying it out loud in front of someone or a mirror. The more you know it the more confident you’ll feel and you’ll be less nervous about the process of speaking and hearing your own voice.
anytime you start to have negative thoughts shut them down. They are not truthful or helpful.
In future if you really really struggle you can get propanolol for short term calm- my friend uses it for her nerves in practical exams to stop her shakes. It stops the physical symptoms.

Look at the top of people’s heads rather than making eye contact. Just glance from one to another as you look round the room.

Remember that you are the expert and they are there to learn from you. They’re interested to hear what you have to say.

Practise breathing in and out slowly. Slow down your speech.

Allow people time to discuss what you’ve told them and to ask questions. Gives you a break from speaking!

I get this way too OP, I worry about presenting all the time to the point I dont sleep. Try and remember nobody knows the subject matter as well as you do. Think ahead about what kind of questions you might be likely to get and jot some notes down. Remember it's ok not to have the answer there and then, just say that's a great question, let me mull it over properly and come back to you later today. If you have a PowerPoint presentation and worried you will forget what you want to say use the notes section at the bottom to put some extra info in to help you.
Good luck!

2.5 hours of presentation WTF! I totally get stressed by this kind of thing, worry about it for days, and do the prep at the last minute. However I know that actually it generally goes ok - I am a bit incoherent for the first 5 minutes but then it’s automatic to relax a bit and it becomes much easier.

Just go to your GP and ask for beta blockers. 100% success rate. Changed my life.

Eye catching PowerPoint so everyone’s attention is on the screen not you.

The advice I have been given for presentations is as follows:

1. If you're nervous, practice grounding yourself - feet planted firmly on the floor, about shoulder width apart, chest open, shoulders down.

1. It can be worth writing and learning to the point of fluidity the first and last 90s of your talk.

1. For the rest of it, you'll want enough pointers that you can keep track of where you are, but probably not exact wording.

1. For a 2.5 hour talk you may as well accept now that you're very unlikely to get through that time period without stumbling, missing something you meant to say etc. So ease yourself into that now, and come up with a plan for if you realise you've missed a bit. i.e. "ah, having got to this slide, I realise I skipped a key point earlier, I'm just going to take you back a few steps and talk you through it, then we'll dive back in here".

1. Say what you're going to say, say it, say what you've said. If there are key points you want to get across they need to be included multiple times in a presentation.

1. With something that long, I would assume you'll need to get some audience participation in? Worth thinking about the best ways you can facilitate that? People often get going once one or two people have joined in or asked questions. At the last conference I went to, I realised the organisers planted a couple of "stooges" in the audience who they had teed up to ask questions so others had time to get warmed up.and start asking. Could you do this?

I'd also say that these things get better the more you do them. I used to hate public speaking but I accepted every opportunity I got and it's fine now.

My final tuppence is that for a two and a half hour talk I'd probably be resigning myself to needing to spend the entire day tomorrow preparing.

2.5 hours? Just your presentation?

I work in a role / industry where I have to present on a regular basis.

The key is preparation. This is really important if you're inexperienced and/or a nervous presenter. It concerns me that you've done "minimal prep". Hopefully you'll get your head down tomorrow and prep thoroughly. Practice on someone (family member /friend) if you can as long as it's someone who will be honest with you.

Despite what some posters are saying, DON'T assume you know more than your audience unless you're 100% certain that you really do. No-one likes being patronised.

Some people get more anxious than others. I think there is something to accepting yourself being that way and just shrugging your shoulders in a way.

Others have given good suggestions.

It is a cliche but I find it helpful to say, ‘will worrying and ruining my Sunday night help the presentation?’ The answer is of course no.

Good luck.

Oh and the other thing is, most people only care about themselves. However good or bad your presentation is, people will move on within minutes of it ending and just think about their own day/lives etc and not give you a second thought. You are not important to them! That helps me anyway.

Thank you! Reading this in particular really seems to help

I find the first minute is dreadful, but after that I'm concentrating on whether people are understanding the point I've just made, and I don't have time to think about myself.

I write the first sentence or two verbatim on a card, just to get me started. Then the rest of my notes are prompts or odd phrases, to remind me all the points I need to make at each stage. I don't write it out in full, but just writing prompts means I say it in my own words and it sounds more spontaneous and less like I'm just reading it. You might need to write down some of those phrases that elude you when you're nervous.

If you're using Powerpoint, you can get all your prompts on that, if you do need to write things down separately, use card not paper, so people can't see if your hands are shaking.

Smile at the audience with your first sentence - gives a good impression. Don't apologise for your lack of speaking skill, that gears up your audience to look for mistakes. Don't be afraid of a silence, it'll seem longer to you than to them. And slow down your speech.

For what it's worth, you're not alone. A friend had to introduce a national household name who was speaking to some Association. The seats were those link-together chairs you get in big halls, and before the proceedings began, both she and the household name were sitting in the front row. She wondered why her seat seemed to be shaking ... and then she realised the household name was trembling in his seat and thus making the whole row shake!

I think you possibly need to accept that your Sunday will be impacted as you must properly prepare. Feeling prepared will go a long way to helping your nerves. Why have you done only minimal prep so far? I used to absolutely dread presenting. My breathing would go funny, my legs would shake. But I made sure I had good slides, good notes, and during the presentation made myself speak more slowly than I wanted to. That helped the breathing and apparently made me sound more confident than I was.

Can you have your laptop / pc with your own notes on it (assuming it's something like PowerPoint)? That would help greatly, if not, make cue cards and use them if you need to, or print off the slides that you are using so you can have a look if you get too nervy (I print off 6 slides to a page - one sided - so I can lay them out somewhere I can look at them without being too obvious).
If you can, run through it with someone else. It will give you the feeling of presenting but in a less threatening way.
Either way, practice! If you have to, put as big a mirror up as you can, pretending it's the audience. Don't be afraid to build in pauses for people to think about what you've said and make sure you give time for reading, thinking and also asking questions at the end.
I'm a teacher and am quite happy to present to a class, but I also have to run assemblies and every time I do I get stage fright. It's usually fine, if not better! Remember no-one can feel how nervous you are on the inside.
Good luck to you

2.5 hours!!!!

You poor thing. Totally sympathise, I hate presenting, I've faked illness to get doctors notes for it, it's basically halted my career.

All I would say is, most people who don't usually present and then have to do a poor job because they have built it up to this big formal scary thing.

99% of the time a presentation goes better if you're conversational, chilled out and act like you're talking to a friend or family member.

Genuinely try not to build it up in your head, really think about what you're going to say, know your subject then just talk about it. It will flow much better.

I regularly present, and whether its to directors of FTSE 100 companies or to my peers, my aim is always to keep it conversational and trust that I'm presenting because I know enough about the subject to be the right person in that position

Preparation is key. I don't think you can prepare a 2.5 hour presentation adequately in just one day, if you've never done it before! I'd be starting right now and spending all day tomorrow on it too. (Surely it isn't really 2.5 hours??)

It takes 6 hours to prepare for a 1 hour talk, as a rule of thumb. Then you would want to practise the whole thing at least once on your own and at least once in front of a trusted friend who can give feedback. Or just a bit of it in front of a friend as they won't want to sit through 2.5 hours. I'd find a few people who could each listen to a 15 minute bit.

I'd then go back, edit my slides based on feedback, practise bits again on my own until happy with the way it was coming out. Also you need to time it to make sure it takes the right amount of time

General advice is:
Good preparation is key, allow plenty of time!
Put prompts on the slides for everything you want to say so you don't forget anything
Speak slowly
Don't worry about your voice shaking or about going red etc. The truth is that most people get nervous, many people get extremely nervous. However, if the talk is well prepared and delivered clearly then it really doesn't matter if you look nervous. Once you realise that, the whole thing is a lot less scary.
If you stumble over your words don't worry, just take a breath and carry on. No one will care.
The worst bit is standing at the front waiting to start, once you get going it's generally fine.

Propanalol. Game changer.

2 and a half hours!??

That’s ridiculous. Human attention flags after around 40 minutes for even the most compelling content.

Do 20 minutes at the beginning, 20 minutes at the end. Think of three 20 minutes exercises for them to do in between and programme in lots of toilet breaks.

I hate to break it to you, but that should take you at least a day to prepare properly.

YANBU. I was given a presentation to do on the day after my birthday one year, first thing Monday morning. It did taint the birthday for me. I'm the world's most socially awkward person and I can't speak properly when nervous 😅
Preparation was key, rehearsing and also slowing down how fast I was speaking. Keep a glass of water nearby, if you are unsure how to proceed take a sip using it as a moment to think. As others have said, in 2.5 hours it would be near enough impossible to memorise everything you want to say, so take some cue cards to jog your memory.

I've attended many presentations in my job, no one in the audience scrutinizes the presenter. You are the expert. If someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to, thank them for their question and say that's a good question, I need a minute to think I'll get back to you later. Once you are in the swing of things you may start to enjoy it...this happened to me and if I felt that way trust me, you can too! Wishing you the best of luck x

I've attended many presentations in my job, no one in the audience scrutinizes the presenter.

I guess it depends what industry you're in. In my field EVERYONE scrutinises the presenter and the audience is usually asked to give detailed feedback.