TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

12 Oct 2016 · 3 min

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2:38

Short instructional segment from TJ Walker (YouTube live stream) explaining how to reduce filler words ("ah", "um", "er", "well") in media interviews. He recommends practicing interviews on video to assess frequency, prioritizing strong messages and soundbites over obsessing about occasional ums, and using a visual cue (printed filler-word with a red "no" sign placed on devices) to recondition the brain to pause and use silence as punctuation.

Chapters

How do you avoid saying ah and um and er during a media interview? This is something that causes a lot of stress for executives, political figures and others in the news. I will give you some very specific practical tips in just a moment, but first, let's step back and do an assessment. How big is the problem? You should practice your interviews on video. Listen to it and. And if you have only two, three ums in the course of a three or four minute interview, I wouldn't worry about it. Most human beings say ah and um occasionally. Some of the people I know who say ah and um more than anyone, David Letterman, the former late night talk show host Martha Stewart, they say an um all the time. Guess what? They made tens of millions of dollars a year talking. So maybe there's a bigger problem than the occasional on um. I'm much more interested in you focusing on having an interesting message and great quotes and sound bites rather than the occasional uh. But all things being equal, the fewer uhs and ums, the better. Here's the technique I use. I simply type up the word uh or um or print it out and draw a red circle around it with a slash. Mark the international no sign. Like no left turn, no parking, the no sign on top of that arm. And then I stick it on top of a cell phone, a watch, a computer screen of clients. And after a week, it reconditions your brain so that you simply pause. People say, well, I don't know what to fill the space with. That's why I'm filling the sound with our. Fill it with silence. Silence is your punctuation when you're speaking in a media interview or a speech. By the way, this works with any filler word. I'm pretty good at not saying ah and. But I had a problem myself. I was starting answers to questions in media interviews with well. So I actually typed up the word well and printed it out. Put a red international no sign. I actually have it on. For those of you watching on YouTube or one of the video platforms, I just held up my cell phone and it has well on it with a no sign. So I am reinforcing in my own brain. Don't say well. Use these tips and your uhs and ums will disappear.