A More Tasteful Alternative to Self-promotion: Practice in Public

A More Tasteful Alternative to Self-promotion: Practice in Public

Reader Comments (12)

  1. I can totally relate to what you wrote and especially point no 3, the fact that you learn how to deal with failure. This is still the thing that draws me back most of the times (the fear that I’m going to fail) and I’m working on it but I have a long way to go.

    • Yep. One of the things I love about this concept is that failure is a part of the process. But the more practice we do in public, the more it takes the sting out of failure. Sure, we get better. But we also get used to failing and realize that it doesn’t kill us. Failure is rarely permanent.

  2. A few years ago I got the itch to write a book. I had been studying and performing comedy at Second City in Chicago for a few years at that point and had always wanted to write a dark comedy that had been bouncing around in my head for a long time. I sat down and wrote the first chapter in a night. It felt great. I was on my way. Fast forward a year, and that book still stood at one chapter. I was scared to do the work. I was scared that the next chapter wouldn’t be good. I was scared the book wouldn’t take shape. I overanalyzed the hell out of everything about it. So it sat.

    After a year, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) came around and I saw it as an opportunity to really focus on the book for the month of November. I made a goal of writing 15,000 words per week. I could write anything. So that’s what I did. If I didn’t know exactly where the story was going I still wrote. Once the month was over, I had a 72,000 word novel done. Because I just sat down and did the work without overanalyzing it.

    Then, once you have it, you can decide what to do with it. Share it. Publish it. Promote the hell out of it. It can be any content – a blog post, a novel, a piece of Harry Potter fan-fiction where Hagrid plays all of the characters. It doesn’t matter. Just write.

  3. It was a very nice article. Thank you.
    Perhaps you could mention a little overcome fear in front of the community.
    I developed a rule for myself in this regard. That is how I want to see myself.
    Does a man as trembling with fear? Or head upright, is the smile on his face as a monument to courage?

    This worked well for me.

  4. Hi,
    Please mention something about comparison on public addressing vs virtual public addressing. I mean people feel fear to face public, and thatswhy they go to arrange webinars or other online video chatting type things. What do you say, how they overcome their fear of rejection?
    Waiting for your reply.

  5. I think a lot of people don’t take into account that they will fail at some point. I see a lot of people act like they are superhuman and while that may work, failing teaches us so much. My best gains in life were due to failing! Thanks for sharing Jeff!

  6. What a great article for helping people work through their weakness and build on their strengths.
    The first point: You get better faster
    Push yourself to the limit and keep going, that is not something that comes naturally to me. I have a tendency of hitting a wall and then instead of bouncing back I simply quit.
    The third point: You learn to deal with failure
    I have always thought of an experiment gone wrong as a failure, but what if we were to think of a failed experiment as just an experiment, and we use the outcome to help guide our future decisions.

  7. Thanks for the reminder Jeff. It’s through hours public practice and failure we can better discover our voice. If we are too afraid of failing public, we do not deserve to succeed public either.. One follows the other

  8. This is both inspiring and terrifying, as I try to work harder on my work and feel I’ve barely started. As an introvert and shy person, opening my work out to an audience is terrifying, but what you write makes so much sense.

  9. it is completely truth that it is easy to be confident, have audience in public and i can have share my knowledge and prepare carefully to presentations. Do you have any books for preparing presentation ?

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