Short excerpt from a TJ Walker live-stream (May 30, 2018) in which Walker rejects the idea of "winging it" for speeches, calling it lazy reasoning, and urges speakers to prepare and practice (including practicing on video) to ensure their message and stories land rather than relying on vague audience approval.
Chapters
Am I better off just winging it? This is a common question asked by really lazy people. If you're an incredibly lazy person, it's great to have this motivated reasoning to say, wow, I'm really a good person for being lazy. It's a good thing that I'm lazy because now I'll give a better speech because I didn't rehearse. No, that's just you being lazy. You're not going to be better by just winging it. Maybe you get through it, maybe no one laughs at you, maybe you don't lose your job, but it's not going to be better to wing it. When you're giving a speech, it's better to prepare. Practice on video until you're great. The thing about the people who like to wing it, they say they're fine. I always ask them, how do you know you were fine? Oh, people said it was fine. Really? Maybe they just wanted a job. Maybe they felt sorry for you. You don't know how you did. Just because someone told you you did a fine job with your presentation, you know, if they can throw back in your face the messages you care about, the stories you care about. So no, don't wing it.