“Nobody remembers a pause.”

– Precise author unknown

In my job, I give webinar presentations, do podcasts, and regularly teach courses online and in person. Today, I regularly get feedback that people enjoy my pace, my voice (like I can control that), and it just seems really relaxed and I seem casual. That definitely wasn’t always the case.

Sometimes people are surprised to hear me say that I used to be a nervous presenter, but I very much was.

Don’t ever conflate “nervous presenter” with “bad presenter”. Lots of people (many? most?) could easily be classified as nervous presenters. But most people can also say, “Presenting to a group isn’t my favorite thing in the world, and I get nervous when I do it.” That’s not a bad presenter.

How Did I Get Here?

There are four critical events that lead to who I am today as a presenter.

1. My 8th grade English class, in late 1986
2. My first paid writing gig, in mid-2006
3. Starting my current job, in August of 2010
4. Starting to teach in our licensing boot camps at work, in early 2012.

Let’s dig into each one of these individually, so I can tell you how I got here.

8th grade English

In 1985, I was in the 8th grade in my middle school in Montana. My teacher was Mrs. Arlee Castle, a woman who scared me ever so slightly because she came across initially as stern. But she was just serious… and kind, it would turn out.

By this time I absolutely loved written book reports, and hated oral book reports or other presentations. In the first half of the school year, we had done written book reports. Mine was on The Mosquito Coast, by Paul Theroux.

During the second half of the school year we had to deliver an oral book report. I think the fact that I knew this early in the school year made it worse, frankly. I had a copy of Yeager: An Autobiography that was to be my book report. I can still remember how much I loved this book. I looked up to Gen. Yeager for his courage, and had wanted to read the book as soon as I heard about it. The stage was set.

Our oral book reports were presented in order of our last name – so I knew I’d be in the middle of the pack on average. At the beginning of the second day of presentations, I had figured out that I would be right towards the end of the period, based on the day before. The class period rolled on and I tried to enjoy other people’s book reports, while being absolutely hung up in my head with nerves for my turn.

As the period nearly came to an end, there was not much time left, and still one more presenter. Unfortunately as best as I can recall, they did theirs fast and furious… and likely nervously.

It was my turn. I got up and nervously headed towards the lectern – but rapidly ran out of the room. I sat down in the hall just outside the door, curled up in a ball, and started tearing up.

One of the other teachers came out (it was a pretty open floor-plan school so surely many heard me) and started to talk with me/calm me. But within a couple of minutes, Mrs. Castle came out and leaned over to talk with me. She reminded me that nobody in the room wanted me to fail, and that most of them were easily as nervous as I was.

She told me to gather myself, and then come back into the room. Even today it’s calming to think about her actions. She did, however, also tell me that my presentation was happening that day, it would not be postponed. This was a gift, not a curse, it turns out.

We went back into the room, and amidst the quiet suspense of my classmates, it was still a bit foreboding; but oddly comforting. I gathered my sweaty copy of Yeager, and introduced it to the class. I rolled through my presentation, and when I was done, headed back to my desk. As I left, there was some applause from some of my classmates. Mrs. Castle talked for a few minutes to wrap up the period, and the bell rang. It was over. All over.

I’ll never know what Mrs. Castle said to my peers, but I like to think that it was the reminder that I could have been any one of them, and that we all needed to be gentle with each other.

Regardless of what her words were, her actions led to a course of events that were transformative for me. And today, thinking of Yeager’s autobiography actually has a calming effect, versus how that day initially started out.

This is where the confidence that “I can do this” first came from.

TechNet Magazine

In the spring of 2006, I was asked if I wanted to write a paid column for Microsoft’s magazine for IT professionals, TechNet Magazine. In reality, my famous colleague had been asked, but he already had a regular writing gig for a competitive magazine. So he asked them, and me, if it could work. I was ecstatic.

This first column was, as most I wrote for the magazine were, just raw stream of consciousness about security, loosely derived from Microsoft’s famous original “10 immutable laws of security” post, but was “10 Security Rules To Live By”. This column proved pretty popular, and as I recall I was asked to do a handful more months’ worth of articles, then another, then a year’s worth, then another… and then my contract with Microsoft was cancelled along with a bunch of others due to changing winds within Microsoft, and I wrote my last article in 2009.

Although I don’t look back on many of these articles as “my best work”, they do reflect two things.

1. They proved to me that I could write something, some people might even enjoy it, and that I could be compensated for it
2. They gave me the confidence to believe I could be a writer, and the confidence to really begin developing how I organize and present information.

This is where the confidence that “I can make a job of this” first came from.

Directions on Microsoft

In August of 2010, not long after I’d stopped writing for TechNet (and not long before it would cease to exist, unfortunately), I joined Directions on Microsoft as a Research Analyst. I’d known one of the analysts since we worked near each other in Windows, and then when he, as a Directions analyst when he came to campus to discuss a technology I “owned” within Windows in 2001 or so. In 2010, exhausted from working at Austin tech startups, I began a conversation about working at Directions and after the lengthy interview process, I joined.

The fundamental thing about how we work is that there’s a very simple formula that we use to arrive at how you help a Microsoft customer understand something, what we refer to as the “so what?”

It starts with a rough pitch/sketch, then an outline, then multiple drafts, copy editing, and publishing.

What I discovered is that while the formula was simple, executing it was far from it.

When I joined the company, I had naively thought I could apply my “stream of consciousness” writing style from TechNet to our content. Nope. Not at all. In fact it’s detrimental.

My first three years at the company were hard – mostly because I resisted this “one weird old trick” that had its roots in one highly technical founder of the company being able to distill something down into a simple reduction that the other non-technical, business-side founder could understand. If that worked, the report worked.

After almost exactly three years, I resigned myself to following the process – after all, if it wouldn’t make me cry, then it’s better than what I’d been trying and failing at.

Then it all started to click. Because I’d been willing to start over at the beginning, and focus in on reducing the complexity upfront, my writing became better. My ability to describe things in a more efficient way became better. In the end, I just learned how to carefully structure, and then build content, rather than vomiting out the structure and having to edit and edit and edit… or worse, shipping content with almost no editing as I had done at TechNet.

In the end there, the time you take to prepare passes along to the user. I like to say that an outline isn’t ever created for the writer. Outlines are created for the reader; to address things in a thoughtful way, and to minimize the complexity of the words as a whole.

My writing became better, faster, more efficient, and so much easier to do.

This is where I (someone with managed ADHD) learned the importance of patience in how we approach something.

Boot Camps

Nearing two years later, one of the founders asked me to build up a presentation on a specific licensing topic, and then asked if I could present it. I started presenting about SQL Server licensing then, and I’ve been doing it for 13 years as of February 2025.

When I started this task, I was not terrified, but I was nervous. It was a new topic, a new way of presenting, and me actively teaching rather than just addressing colleagues.

At the end of every day of the boot camp, we would gather paper surveys. The initial surveys weren’t mean, but sometimes weren’t nice. My topic is a horribly technical topic, and no matter where you put it (morning, just after lunch, at the end of the day…) it sucks. There’s no friendly way to put that. It’s difficult and stupidly complex.

Especially if my colleague ran over his time, or I started running short in mine, or I got my tongue twisted trying to describe something, I got nervous, and it showed in my scores. The more I jumbled my words, the less my students were able to follow and retain.

I tried to remember the phrase that starts this post, “Nobody remembers a pause.”

If you’ve never heard that before or don’t get it, let me explain.

Just kidding. But I made you stop, without screwing up the thought process. The quote means, if you can throttle back on the intensity of your presentation, and give yourself room to literally and figuratively breathe, you can actually become a more effective presenter.

Let people ask questions. Ask them if they have questions. Take a breath.

Patiently grab a sip of water. (It’s not only okay, you should absolutely do this!) Take a breath.

Stumble over your words, or chuck out an errant “um” or “uh”? Stop for a second. Take a breath. Resume slower than you were going, because you were going too fast. It’s like you were running down an escalator, and tripped over your own feet. Get up, dust off, go on.

But sweet jeebus, don’t draw attention to it. When you add color commentary to your presentations like “oops” or “sorry about that”, or if you repeatedly try to address a verbal gaffe, it’s worse than nothing at all. Stop for a second, take a breath. Resume slower.

Nobody wants you to fail at this. You can do it just as well. It’s just patience and listening to yourself, internally, as you speak, to see how you feel. NOT A RECORDING, but just gently pacing yourself so you are not rushing. And so that you are breathing.

So much like writing in this job, I had a couple of years of on the job training where I didn’t know how to fix this. But the more I centered it on centering myself, the more I was able to get to a calmer space and present more effectively.

I know I’m making it sound easier than it really is in practice. But if you don’t start, you can’t change. And the best way to become a good presenter and be comfortable with presenting is… practice over time, and gently coach yourself out of “the bad habits” like calling out your gaffes, or talking too fast, or even how you start your day that can screw things up.

Thus you can hopefully see where I combined all of the lessons from the three events above, and added this new scenario where I could apply what I had learned to become a more organized and efficient presenter.

Key Steps to Present Effectively

So there are a handful of things that I always do that have helped me become better at this over time. Many of them have also helped improve the level of anxiety I have to deal with day to day.

Key steps to start the day.

1. Start your day right. Choose a decent breakfast. Something not too carby, not too much fat, and good grief, nothing that will set your intestines aflutter.
2. Be gentle with yourself. Believe you can do this, because there is no reason you can’t.
3. Relax, even if you can’t imagine relaxing. Try to find ways to get your head out of the mental swirly of overthinking how hard this will be. Game, music, reading, whatever.

Key steps to clear your mindset

Remember:

1. Nobody in the room dislikes you. Really.
2. Nobody in the room wants you to fail. I promise.
3. If anyone in the room actually dislikes you, fuck them, you’re awesome.
4. If anyone in the room actually wants you to fail, they’re an asshole.
5. If they have to present, others are likely as nervous as you are. So be supportive of them as you would want.

I also find that starting the day listening to a sequence of The Muppet Show Theme followed by “where is my mind” is a good neural palate cleanser as I head over to start up our licensing boot camp every time.

Key steps for successful presenting

1. Be confident. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be up in front of that lectern. Let yourself believe it, and be gentle with yourself as you approach the day, hour, and event itself.
2. Nobody remembers a pause. Be graceful with yourself, go slow, and when you fumble, get up, breathe in, and move on, but don’t point it out and do not literally repeat the error, or try to re-present the whole thing again. This is one of the most important steps you can take, out of anything.
3. Breathe consciously. We all gotta breathe or we die. Your audience knows this too. If you can feel the tension or feel shortness of breath, it means your ratio of breathing to speaking is off. Slow your roll, take 2-3 deep breaths (let your audience hear them) and move on. Just stay aware of your breathing, your breaths, and how your mind feels as a result.
4. Hydrate, with water. Drink before, but not too much so you feel like you’ve got to go while you’re presenting. Drink during, and use it as a breathing initiator. Drink after to recover. But only water! No bubbles. No caffeine. No artificial sweeteners. Caffeine and sweeteners can both be astringent and make you more thirsty, not less. And bubbles? Do you like belching when you present? Me either.
5. Stay loose. Literally consider how you’re holding your body. Don’t cross your arms, it makes breathing harder and you look like a jerk. Let your hands fall by your side, unclenched, when not in use with gestures. Let your fingers spread. Don’t hold your body tight, and shake it out before you go up to present. Just be conscious of tightness in your body and try to let it fall out.
6. Don’t clench anything. Anything.
7. Avoid a script. If you must, then keep it high-level. Until humans have four or more eyes, you can’t be looking at your audience and your written words. One or the other… but typically the audience should win. At best, take up a loose outline, so you’re not over focused on the script at any time.

Practice, and be gentle with yourself. There’s no reason you can’t do this.

By the way, Mrs. Castle unfortunately passed in 2021, having retired after over 31 years of teaching. But for years before Mrs. Castle passed, my mother—also a teacher in the same city—would regularly tell her what was going on with me, and thank her for the help and hope that she had given me. My mom and I still often talk about the impact she had on my life.