Things to Do Before a Presentation

Okay, so you have a huge presentation coming up and you don’t think you’ll make it through the whole thing without messing up? Well then read on to find out how to stop the tension and how to just relax and keep it cool.

• First, don’t sweat it, it may be a huge presentation but as long as you have good information with you you’ll do great! If you’re still sure that you’ll end up forgetting everything that you were going to say make some flash cards. Put a few cheat notes on it, if you read a sentence you can usually make many things to support it off the top of your head. This allows you to have less to remember but a sentence, and remembering only a couple of sentences won’t cram things in your mind making it easy to forget after a while.
• Next, the day before the huge presentation, take things easy – the last thing you need is to stress out even more. You don’t want your body to be all stressed out so just listen to some of your favourite music, take a nap, or even treat yourself to a movie or a day out with your friends. If you are stressed you will appear to be stiff to everyone and your movements and words will not have that big of an impact on your audience. If you are more relaxed you will appear to know what you’re doing and people will take you more seriously and actually pay attention.
• Let’s say you’re doing a research presentation, and you need to look up a lot of stuff. Don’t take out every bit of information you can find, only take the stuff that’s interesting and what you really need. If you present boring and useless stuff you will not engage your audience. However, if you can only find a few interesting facts you may need to work harder on your topic. Rehearse your voice so that it can actually be heard enthusiastically and between your information put down the few facts to wake your audience up.
• Another important thing is to figure out who is going to be assessing you. If it’s your work buddies/classmates make the presentation lively so that no one will dare look away from you. If it’s your boss or teacher feed them interesting information while being enthusiastic. Depending on who is assessing you, you will act different. Don’t worry about your work mates or classmates not liking your presentation if the teacher is marking it, you’re getting marked – not them.
• One last thing, remember that your audience is only human as well. They’re the same as you and no higher or lower, so don’t stress out on who’s going to be there. Sure, they may have a better haircut or better clothes, but they’re still human. Trust me, if you just relax and have good information, you will do great on your presentation. Luck!