A short YouTube monologue by TJ Walker explaining that appearing to 'think on your feet' in public speaking is usually the result of prior preparation. Walker advises doing most thinking while seated—brainstorming, outlining, rehearsing examples and stories—so that during live presentations speakers can respond confidently and coherently to questions. Regular practice internalizes material and builds confidence, enabling spontaneous-seeming, structured responses.
Chapters
You've seen that person totally poised, confident. They are thinking on their feet. They're speaking to people clearly, thinking on their feet. And you're thinking, wow, I wish I could do that. Well, let me tell you a secret. The people who are best at appearing to think on their feet don't do it that much. They think on their seat before they stand up to speak to people. They're seated maybe on a couch, maybe in their office chair, maybe a home chair, maybe at a coffee shop, and they're thinking, what ideas do I have that are important to me, that are also going to be interesting to the audience I'm speaking to? And they'll take notes, they'll do outlines, they'll scribble, maybe do a little drawing. They'll brainstorm, they'll think, they'll contemplate on what will make their ideas interesting. Then quite often, they will do an outline. Maybe they'll write the whole speech out, maybe it's an outline. But the point is, they're doing real thought when no one's looking at them, when they're not standing up, when they don't have that adrenaline going through their body, thinking, oh, people are judging me. The thinking is done in advance. If you do that long enough and you give presentations to people and you can see you're connecting, you see that they're looking at you and nodding, you can see their understanding. Perhaps you're getting feedback afterwards where an audience member tells you what you said to them that helped them, either professionally or personally. It gives you confidence. It makes it easier to say similar things for your next presentation. You start to build grooves in your brain. You're not having to look at your notes or look at PowerPoints or bullet points or slides or scripts. It starts to become internalized. After a while, you get more confidence, more insights come to you as you get deeper and deeper, immersed in the subject matter. At that point, you get to the point where any question that comes up, you can appear to think on your feet, someone can ask you a question, and, you know, I could speak for 10 seconds on that, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, five minutes. And I'm really going to give them a great understanding of that issue. And it's going to have a start, a middle, and an ending. And it's going to come across as cogent, interesting to that person. And it's not because you've said it exactly that way before. It's because you've given deep thought to the subject matter. You've contemplated. You've experimented with different examples case study stories. You've talked about it, perhaps in an hour speech, Perhaps in a 30 second short form video. You played with this enough that now it just comes to you. And you appear to be completely confident, authoritative, relaxed. And you appear to be to be thinking on your feet. Yeah, you're standing. But remember, the greatest speakers, the most authoritative speakers, the people who seem like they're thinking on their feet, did most of their thinking on their seat.
