So, I lost the Area Contest, not much that I’d like to say other than I’m bitterly disappointed. There’s nothing else I even want to write, seeing as it will just seem like griping. Anyway, I’m proud of my performance, for once, which makes a change, as I’m my harshest critic. I worked very hard for this contest speech, so there’s nothing I need to regret.
All’s well that ends well. There are more important things to worry about.
It’s been a while since my last speech. My A1 speech was my first ever humorous speech. Whilst I’ve always tried to work humour into my speeches before, this speech was different in that I really had to keep the audience laughing. It didn’t really work.
Around the middle of my speech, I began to get a little self conscious. I looked down, and then thought to myself, “Why am I looking down…?” Big mistake. I lost my place in the speech, and my performance was a shambles, even by standards other than my own. Why did this happen? Well, as always, my speech was too long, and I was struggling to stay on time. As a result, I couldn’t implement the pauses that are necessary for a humorous speech. Without the laughter, I lost my confidence.
In terms of what I can learn, I engaged in a ridiculous amount of procrastination whilst preparing the speech, which is something that I’ve been doing since the beginning. I continually beat myself up for doing that, but that is definitely counterproductive.
Still, I have a few more attempts to get it right. I can’t be too hard on myself, because my perfectionism is what is causing much of the procrastination. I’ll just pat myself on the back for having made it this far in Toastmasters so far, and keep pushing on. I have the humorous speech contest coming up soon, so there is a lot of preparation to do.
I completed my C10 speech last Friday, and it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders. Looking at the new title I’ve been given, Competent Communicator, the title given to a Toastmaster who has completed his first manual of ten speeches, I still feel like I’m anything but competent!
I had a lot of fun delivering my C10 speech though! About three or so minutes from the end, I forgot my lines, and so I was winging it completely. I felt some sort of rush the whole time, a knowledge that I was about to be found out at any moment! No-one could tell that I forgot my lines, so I’m pleased with my performance. I don’t for a second condone my lack of preparation, but it was a welcome change from the usual struggle to complete my speech on time.
I think that as a result of forgetting my speech, my execution was more natural this time around. On the whole however, my speech lacked a bit of focus. With the struggle with programming, I didn’t allow myself enough time to program. It was a sort of ‘generic inspirational speech’, but since I was winging my inspiring conclusion, it really lacked the impact I was hoping for.
I’m looking forward to a small break from Toastmasters. I have to wait a while for my new Advanced Manuals, so maybe I’ll be able to take part in some more Table Topics contests (I’ve only done about three and they were all awful).
The thing I’m most pleased with is that I reached my goal of completing my CC certificate by June. There were times when I really didn’t think that this would be possible, so somehow I feel like I’ve excelled myself. It’s sort of a nice inspiration for me because it demonstrates that setting a clear goal brings you 90% of the way to achieving it. The rate at which I attained CC, less than six months, is faster than most other people within Toastmasters, but I’m still hoping that I can get even more experience. I’m having a little trouble coming up with speech topics, however, and as I set such high standards for myself, it’s definitely something that is holding back my progress.
The knowledge that I can go up on stage and deliver an ad libbed speech, is a comfort to me, as it means I’ll be able to take more risks in speech preparation and hence get more vital stage experience. I think my new target will be to finish ten more speeches by the end of the year.
Toastmasters has been a great experience and has been a wonderful place to grow and build confidence that enters into other areas of my life. I feel like I’m building some sort of momentum. Getting to C10 is a huge relief, and a nice milestone for me. As I said in my speech, it’s exciting to see how far I’ve come, but even more exciting to imagine the speaker that I will become in the future.
The C8 and C9 speeches didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped, but at the same time, I’ve stopped taking it all so personally. Even if a speech falters, it’s still a learning experience.
I delivered them in clubs in which I knew barely anyone, so it was a little difficult to build up a good rapport with the audience. I’m still scared to pull out my jokes in this kind of situation, and since both speeches were so packed with content, I had to cut many of the jokes out anyway.
That caused my speeches to suffer I think, as I was lacking a personal connection with the audience.
So the first lesson I learned from these two speeches is that building a relationship with the audience is vital. I think something as simple as a show of hands is very important when I’m in these tough atmospheres. I’ll definitely do this for my C10 speech this Friday.
I learned more from my second speech in which I made the call for vegetarianism, or at least to make more conscious choices over the food we eat. I’ll probably post a lot of my arguments in a blog post regarding my switch to vegetarianism, but the thing I wanted was to stress that I didn’t want people to become vegetarian, rather for them to know the costs to the planet if we keep eating so much meet.
There were too many points I was making, and my message fell kinda flat. There was nothing particularly wrong with my speech, but with the lack of time I had available, I didn’t quite know how I wanted to deliver my message. In this sort of persuasive speech, I should perhaps have taken a more personal and emotional approach, rather than the broad environmental message that I wanted (even though that’s my own reason for making the switch.)
I felt somewhat guilty for trying to persuade people to become vegetarian, as people will defend their meat eating as if their life depended on it. So in the end, I didn’t take the message one tenth as far as I might have.
I’m going to pull out all the stops for my next speech, and deliver it with a lot more confidence. I have a lot more time in this final speech, and I’m going to try to give it without a script, so that I can really build up the crowd. I spent a vast amount of time preparing the previous speeches, and it doesn’t seem worth it when it’s clear that no-one is putting in as much effort as I am. Time spent on stage is the best way to learn, and I’m interested to see how I’ll perform when I haven’t got my rehearsed delivery to fall back on. I’m curious 
Last weekend, I gave my C7 Speech, which has been a little long in coming.
I felt a lot more comfortable on stage than before, and I think that people really enjoyed my speech on the whole. I got a lot of very kind words afterwards, which was lovely, and the nicest part of being in Toastmasters. I think my confidence as a speaker is definitely growing, and there were areas of the speech where I didn’t feel self conscious at all, and I felt ‘in the zone’ so to speak. I didn’t really feel many nerves during the speech. However, I’m not quite sure that’s a good thing, as I have a habit of moving around unconsciously a little while I’m speaking, and I’m not sure if I’ve got that under control.
I still need to work on my eye contact, because it’s very much a loose ‘fire-hose’ sort of eye contact. I haven’t really been going out of my way to work on it, and I haven’t been able to pick out areas of the room like I’ve been advised. It doesn’t help that I’m always struggling to stay on time. Typically during my practices, I run way over time, even after I’ve cut a lot out of my speech, and so there are moments where I’d like to pause and look, but I’m wary of that red flag.
There was a moment during the speech when I realised my slight lack of eye contact, looked across the room, and saw everyone in the entire room have their entire attention transfixed on me. It was quite a surreal feeling, because I noticed that people weren’t always paying attention during the other speeches (shamefully including myself – I have a tendency both to daydream and worry about my speech). It was in that moment that I realised that people really want to listen to me speak! And so I owe it to my audience to improve myself as best I can.
I feel like I choose strong speech topics, and I always try to work a lot of humour into my speeches. I feel those are my strengths, and I feel like I know what makes a good speech. I need to work on my movement, eye contact and vocals if I really want to make good progress. I haven’t had much practice in doing table topics, so I feel like that’s a better opportunity to improve these skills. Still, I’m happy with my progress.
Originally, my goal was to finish my CC in June, but I’m running out of time. I don’t have many speaking opportunities, and one of my speeches will be based around a book I have yet to read, so maybe I’ll try to hit July. Bring it on!
Well, I decided to write out my goals for June! I like to set rules and goals – essentially, the rules are to improve myself, whilst the goals are there to keep me motivated and to have something to work towards. Goal setting is very important after all. This is likely to be a long post. As mentioned in my previous post, I broke many of my rules for last month, which was annoying. Again, these rules and goals pretty much correspond to the five threads in which I’m concentrating my resources. Any more, I believe, is to spread myself too thinly and will lead to a loss of focus.
Rule 1. Wake up before 6.30 am daily, and wake up once a week effortlessly and bursting with energy.
With Dragon Boat finishing next weekend, I’m worried about how my sleep pattern will take it. I have a morning 10am class which should help me to some extent, but I still want to wake up before 6.30, and probably even earlier. Taiwan is getting hellishly hot now, and the mornings are just so much more comfortable. Steve Pavlina made a recent post which spoke about how to create daily habits, which seemed timely. It’s the discipline to sleep early that I’ve been having the most trouble with. It’s hard to make myself sleep early when Taiwan is such a late sleeping culture. As with the programming, I want to create the situation where it’s more appealing to wake up early than to lie in.
Even though I failed last month, there’s no point in changing the goal to something like ‘wake up early just six days a week’ in order to build confidence. I don’t think that really works, especially for sleep, and I did come pretty close to succeeding. So I’ll keep that goal the same, and additionally I want a goal to wake up effortlessly once a week, with a view to increasing the number of days over time. In order to do this, I’ll need to sleep early once a week, and hopefully that day/morning will be so pleasurable in contrast to zombie like, I’ll choose to continue.
I have enjoyed the Dragon Boat practice, so I’m going to run every morning to wake myself up. It will need to be early due to the disgustingly hot weather here.
Rule 2. Surfing the Internet can only be done while standing up
The Internet restriction is something that could warrant a whole article (I’ll probably give a humorous Toastmasters speech about it in the future). Indeed, fairly recently Paul Graham wrote an awesome essay about it. It’s a real problem for many people, so I shouldn’t feel too bad. In addition, I guess I could see it as a good thing that I’m so curious about knowledge (albeit useless knowledge.) Still, it’s something that must be stopped. After last month, I realised that the days I’ve spent without the Internet have been better than the days with it. That’s worth keeping in mind.
A similar restriction to last month is not only slightly inconvenient (since I have to go down to the library), it’s not a realistic option this month. Now I’ve finished the book and will start to write my own programs, I’ll need the Internet as a reference, and so this looks like I’ll be opening a can of worms.
Since I couldn’t think of a clear cut solution, I decided to brainstorm some ideas. Many ideas which sounded good have failed me in the past, so if necessary, I may have to employ as many as I can simultaneously.
To go for an outright ban sort of builds resentment and frustration and isn’t the best route to motivation, as last month proved. The most ingenious plan I’ve thought of thus far is to stand up while I surf. Many people have advocated a chairless office environment, and it builds energy levels, though personally I can’t imagine coding for long periods of time standing up. In order to stop myself falling into that glazed over trance where I browse endlessly, standing up seems like a good way to go.
Graham’s solution (to use a separate computer) seems like it could work, but I only have one computer! In a way, keeping the Internet out of my home, and using the university Internet has been a similar idea, and to be fair, it did work. But as I mentioned earlier, I can’t keep doing that. A similar solution is that I already have a separate user account on my computer for programming, and when I’m switched, I’m pretty reluctant to waste time; in fact, after I switch, I start work pretty much right away. So allowing myself to use that account for Internet and freely too, is another option.
However, since I do manage to work in that account and pretty well too, I don’t want to ‘contaminate’ it with my bad habits.
I think the common idea is to build a different sort of state where you become very aware of your Internet use. Standing up seems the most obvious way to provide this. I want to keep my rule simple, so that’s the final goal I decided on. I feel I’m a grown man, and should be able to use my own self discipline. But if I can’t do it, then treating myself like a child is the way to go. 
The other important factor I discovered was that use of the Internet comes when you’re bored. There’s no excuse for boredom in today’s world, and the solution to this is to plan your day beforehand – also an important exercise.
In summary, I’ll keep it simple, as per the rule above. If my plan doesn’t work (i.e. I follow the rules, but still waste time), there’s no point to adhering to it. I will reassess the situation next Sunday if my plan has failed me. This is an interesting solution. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works!
Rule 3. 25 Words in ProVoc daily
I think that I can continue doing ProVoc every day, and that I’m also going to listen to some audio programs while I do it, so this should be a nice morning ‘mental conditioning’ exercise. I wasn’t going to put this down as a rule, seeing as it was pretty easy to keep up, but I could do with a cheap win.
As for the goals…
Star Goal. Program 40 hours this month, with milestones.
The priority is again the programming, and I had trouble keeping up with it last month (I did only 30 hours.) Still, that’s a nice initial target to improve upon. I’m going to try to do 40 hours this month, as opposed to the previous 50. The idea of this is a sort of reverse psychology – I’m going to set a target that I know I can hit, and continue to improve upon that each month in the future. And of course, I won’t stop myself should I choose to work more than 40! This comes from an idea from The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. The ideal is to create the situation where I can’t wait to get back behind the computer and work on my projects. In other words, I need to be in the state where I want to work, more than anything. If that situation never arrives, I can’t see that I can continue this sort of work for the months (or years) that I’ll need to to make a success of myself.
Furthermore, I’ll set a bunch of light milestones of 10 hours of programming a week to work up to the 40 hours, which should stop what happened last month, where I set myself up to do marathon sessions towards the end of the month! It’s a habit I picked up from school! June starts nicely on the Sunday, which is nice for me. Since I’ve finished the Hillegass book, I’ll often need to do planning on paper, outside of the computer. That’s okay, it still counts. Just as an aside, I don’t feel like I’m all that comfortable in Objective-C yet, despite finishing the book. I might choose to work on some tutorials e.g. those on www.cocoadevcentral.com, but I’m not sure if I can work it into my schedule.
Goal 2. Be ready to deliver C8, C9, C10 speeches
Although my progress has been very quick compared to others here, I procrastinate a lot on my Toastmasters speeches. I’m not sure that I’ll have the speech slots to deliver my speeches this month, which is a disappointment. I’m not setting a particularly ambitious goal here, but as the scouts say, be prepared. I’d like to prepare these speeches this month so that I’m ready to deliver them if someone calls me.
Well, I think this is a better plan than last month. It’s obviously not perfect, but I’ll see how it goes!
Just a quick summary of how things in May went. Basically, I’ve failed on several fronts, but I can’t allow myself to dwell on it all too much. I have to pick myself up for next month after all!
I had three goals this month. The first was to wake up before 6.30am every day. I failed on four days, all on the weekends. This is a disappointing result, because I didn’t pay enough attention to my sleep needs. On the plus side, waking up is definitely a little easier than before this month. My energy levels haven’t been that great. I’ve slept a lot in the morning. So, I’ll try to continue this for next month.
The second was not to use the Internet in the apartment. This went great until one day last week, and then in the last three days I grew frustrated and turned it on again. As soon as I did that, my productivity fell apart, and it was easy to see how much of a time sink the Internet is. Ultimately, being without the Internet is much better for my life than having it, and the obvious decision is to continue with the restrictions, although I will almost certainly revise them.
The Provoc is the only goal that I managed to complete. I’m forgetting words very quickly, but with the system in place, I know very clearly that some of the words are sticking. It might not be the best method for incorporating the words I’ve learned into my everyday conversation, but as I remember the word writing, I’m also remembering the English definitions, that’s for sure. It’s doesn’t take too much effort, but being able to do that tiny little bit of Chinese every day is something positive to take from a month in which I failed many of my goals.
The Big F***g Goal was to complete 50 hours of programming. This was definitely possible, but I left myself a mountain to climb in the last week. As I closed in on 35 hours, I completed the Hillegass book on Cocoa at the same time, and didn’t really have any clear goals after that. In contrast to being able to follow the tutorials for an hour at a time, I procrastinated because I didn’t know what I ought to have been doing. I never managed to set up a clear goal, so I finished only on 35 hours. It’s a lot fewer than I’d hoped, but finishing the book is a decent start and should leave me with a decent foundation for continuing learning Cocoa development. So I’m not as upset as I might have been.
In conclusion, setting the goals for May was definitely a good exercise, even though I didn’t manage to hit them. Just writing out my summary makes me feel less annoyed about not completing them for some reason, but the Provoc alone was something I might not have done at all had I committed it as a goal. I’m not sure if I’ll publish out my goals for June after this public failure, but after I revise my goals, I should still be able to get much benefit from the exercise. I’m tending towards publishing it, because I think it will help me to have to account for my actions. I want to look forward to writing a more positive post in June 
I was less nervous than I was before my previous speeches, but standing in front of the audience, knowing that you have to make your opening count is still a terrifying experience. After the disaster that was my C5 speech, I’m glad that things turned out better this time.
The objective of a C6 speech is Vocal Variety. I’m really happy that I managed to integrate pauses into my speech pretty well, and also changed the tempo throughout. My Individual Evaluator commented that I didn’t really use ‘vocal variety’ in my speech, but I was a little apprehensive about using strange voices in my speech, especially since I did it in my C5 speech to no great success. Even so, I did do a few role plays in my speech, so I do think that I fulfilled the objectives.
I’m glad that my joke came off in the middle of the speech. The audience were great that evening, and when they split into laughter, I found myself saying ‘thank you’ to quieten them down, or maybe it was a mark of gratitude to thank them for laughing. It was a strange instinctive response, one that I feel a little embarrassed about. I think it lacks a bit of class.
I had some criticism about my speech, mainly that I can’t seem to keep that still, a problem I’ve had since I started, and that my eye contact is not quite there yet.
I know what needs to be done on that part, and I hope it will get better as my confidence builds. I tend to look around the entire room, trying to make eye contact with everyone, but the perceived effect is that I can’t really seem to keep my head still..! I’ll take the advice of Rory Vaden and choose a few points around the room to focus on from time to time.
Well, I’m really looking forward to my next speech. I think I need a little break from Toastmasters for a while though. I’m still on course to get my CC done by June, especially if I speak at a couple of upcoming Speech Marathons. I’m not too keen on doing any more speeches at my club though. Being at a new club last night was a world of difference. There was a lot of laughter all through the evening, and that really helped to break the ice before my speech. It’s not that I can’t speak at my own club, but I’d have to change my speech a lot to win the crowd over, not something I’d like to do while I’m still building confidence in my speaking.
Anyway, I’ll be using Keynote for my next couple of speeches. Having some slides makes me feel a lot less nervous during my speech, because I’ll be able to fall back on them, so to speak. I feel it doesn’t develop my speaking skills quite as much to do this, but I know that I’m going to have many chances to speak without slides in the future, so it doesn’t bother me too much.
I’ve been advised by many to join a Chinese Toastmasters club to improve my Mandarin. Going back to Spring Convention, my inability to understand any of the speech at all really seemed to bother me. I asked a friend about it, and she told me that the words used in Mandarin speeches typically use vocabulary out of the reach of normal people in Taiwan.
It’s a very interesting topic area for me, concerning culture. If I were to use English words in my speech that non native speakers would be unfamiliar with, it would be my failure as a speaker to adapt my words to my audience. The same would apply to native speakers for that matter. In any case, English culture generally frowns upon over complication of language and jargon. Indeed, the word jargon has rather negative connotations, if my understanding is correct. Just look at the frequent parodies of workplace jargon in Dilbert, for example.
These same rules don’t seem to apply so much in Mandarin speeches, according to my friend. There’s a sort of language elitism (for want of a better term to describe it), that sort of entails that giving a speech is an opportunity to show your mastery of the language. And furthermore, a speech with more complex language is deemed to be better in some sense – to be artistically superior? Maybe this is also true in English to a degree, but on the whole, the message and the delivery of the speech is more important.
I’m unable to comment first hand due to being unable to understand the speech at the time, but for me, this mirrors the intellectual competitiveness that seems to play a big role in East Asian culture. And the loss of face means that no-one would freely admit to not understanding the speech fully. This is a situation that I can’t ever imagine happening in an English speech contest. And personally, it makes me a little uncomfortable to be in such a culture in which everyone is trying to outdo their peers; especially on such a superficial level.
One of the things about a blog is that it allows you to display some of yourself for others to see. In this case, I’m going to use this to my benefit, and write down some of my commitments for May so that I’m at least accountable for my actions, even though no-one reads this blog (!)
So, I’m going to set myself the following rules for May. I think the most important thing is sleep… and it’s probably going to be the hardest.
1. Wake up before 6.30 am every day. This will be difficult, especially for me. The Dragon Boat will help commit me during the week, but the weekends are a little dangerous. I’ll need to sleep very early on Friday night if I am to achieve this.
2. No Internet at home. I’m a little uncomfortable with this, but I have found that going cold turkey and cutting off the internet helps me focus a lot better. There is the danger that with the extra time, I’ll sleep, so again, I have to be careful. Internet addiction is sucking an awful lot of my free time.
3. Review 25 words in ProVoc every day. This is a modest goal. 25 words takes me around 25 minutes, or so. I think this is really important to maintain my Chinese level.
These three rules account for two of the threads, Sleep and Chinese. I feel my Toastmasters thing is going nicely, although I procrastinate a little too much in writing my speech. So I’ll just keep going there.
My main goal for May? Program for 50 hours. This is a lot for me, and I feel I’ll have made a significant step should I manage this. I’ll write some progress reports at the 10 day and 20 day points in the month, as well as a summary at the end.
