hi there guys,

As far as the issue of making and breaking habits is conserned,i'de like to say that,in order for you to acquire a habit,you should practice it 21 days without stopping,because this is the minemum amount of time that our sub-conscious mind needs in order to familiarize itself with the new habit,and believe me , i say this according to a successful experience.
thanks

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This is turning into an interesting discussion - from the reading I've done since I last posted it seems that three weeks (approximately) is a reasonable starting point but (and it's a big but!) that doesn't allow for situations where the habit would only manifest every few days.

I'm thinking of, for example, a habit which was responsive to an external stimulus: if the stimulus only occurred every month or so the learning process would be very protracted and the engrams wouldn't get over-written so easily (or perhaps at all!).

Typically this messy situation happens to most presenters - very few people speak every day.

S

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On those notes...would I be understating or simplifying if I used an old adage "Practice makes perfect" and added to it my own "when practiced regularly"?

Yeah - I kind of like that addition!

Taking the conversation in a slightly different direction, I often tell my clients that they might want to consider not so much practicing as "rehearsing". I'm using the words in particular ways, to make a point - I think of rehearsing as 'smart practice'.

Basically, I've seen quite a lot of 'dumn practice' which is just going things over and over and over... mindlessly. Rehearsing includes simple (repetative) practice, for sure, but it also includes some other things. Things like sitting down and looking at the presentation to see where the hard bits are and so knowing which bits to practice more than others... that kind of thing.

Think of it as what actors do for a play: they don't spend all their time just running through the play. They look at it, change it, rehearse it, change earlier bits as a result, skip the easy bits, practice a hard bit, go back for a bit... you get the idea!

S

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Presentation skills training for groups: presentation skills training for individuals.

Simon,

You said:
Certainly, if a person is a professional speaker and has to "wow" the audience then this level of detailed practice is important. But if a person is new to public speaking, asking them to redo their speech over and over again can become off-putting...and they may simply give up on practice altogether rather than handle the pressure.

Instead, for those who are simply trying to do an OK presentation, go over the presentation or your notes every day for 5 minutes a day (if you have a long presentation or a lot of notes, review as much as you can for 5 minutes, then the next day go to the next section and review that, etc.), so you really know the information and have some idea about how you want to present it. After a few weeks, you will be ready to give your presentation in front of your audience.

Amateurishly,

Tim

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