I’m a perfectionist, with a very short attention span. This unfortunate combination coupled with easy excitement about new ideas/projects can cause a lot of trouble.

When doing any writing or painting I practically fear that first word or the first line. I might have a concept ready, but trying to avoid disappointing myself I tend to ponder a lot before I actually get down to it. With drawings there is often a ready image inside my head, which the perfectionist in me craves to output 1:1. Unfortunately lacking in drawing and painting skills everything after the first line, the very first dot put on paper takes me further and further from that mental ideal of the image…

Does that stop me from doodling and sketching? No. But it does make starting on a piece really hard, as I have to convince myself over and over again, that it is OK to not be perfect. To tell myself that each of those unfortunature caricatures of the mental images actually does improve my overall skills making me that one step closer to the ideal drawing.

Similarly with writing. You have an idea, maybe you have even done some background work for your masterpiece. And yet still getting over that first sentence seems like mission impossible. What if it is not good enough, not enticing enough, not interesting enough. It’s your chance to capture the reader, and you just might blow it.

This is where I need to remind myself that this will just be the first draft, that there is room and time for editing. It might be due to the fact that during school years I always wrote my essays straight away. No drafts, no rewrites. Time start, go, no second chances. I would only go over checking the spelling and punctuation before handing my work over to the teacher.  In many ways this was not some writing heroism. It was a practical solution in the war against total rewrites. I knew myself enough, to be aware that were I to allow myself for more than one or two word corrections I would have never finished.

This leads me to the other part of this post. The finish line - dreaded even more by my inner perfectionist than the beginnings…

Once I start a project and get into it, working on it seems to just roll by itself. Excited by the work and new challenges it provides I plough ahead like a madman. That is until it’s about finished. Around the 80% mark it starts to look like plummeting into a black hole. The closer you get the slower you seem to be progressing towards your goal.

And what actually is this mirage of a finish line? For a long while I had to have projects literally taken away from me by force, as they would never be good enough, and there always was something to tweak or fix. It probably took me about 5 years of work in web development to accept the fact that there is no such thing as a bug free, 100% finished application. There will always be issues, there will always be enhancements and new features requested by the client.

Paradoxically this knowledge combined with the inner need to make things perfect, as well as my hate for testing (I really do suck at it…) means that the closer to the end of the project, I find myself less and less interested in it. This is usually when I get my Next-Great-Idea… At least at worked I have deadlines that push my work forward, but at home it is a whole different story. Suddenly even doing the washing, hovering or cleaning the windows seems more appealing…

So how do you stay motivated up to the last minute?

A colleague at work has decided to try out the Toastmasters club in Windsor. Being the very social person he is the whole office got an invitation as well. Obviously not everybody went, however we still ended up being quite a sizeable group.

Toastmasters International in short is a club for people who want to develop and practice their public speaking skills. The idea is to provide a safe environment for people to train as well as a place where they can obtain relevant and constructive feedback. As we all know we are judged by our audience every time we speak, however rarely in such situations do we get honest evaluation of how we actually came across.

Except for the colleague who has invited us in the first place, I don’t think anyone else had been to Toastmasters before. Thus although we more or less had an idea how the thing might look, we were pretty much virgins in the world of public speaking.

The club seemed highly concentrated on timing the speeches, as well as of the meeting itself. Unfortunately, to start with we have introduced some chaos, not only because of our group size, but also because of being slightly late - the club was way further from  Windsor Castle than we had anticipated.

The meeting itself abides by many rules and is very structured. It is split up into the following main segments:

• Welcome speech and Toastmaster of the evening introduction
• Table Topics
• Prepared Speeches
• Evaluations

Welcoming Speech

Once the meeting has started we have all been greeted by the club’s president who then proceeded with a quick explanation about Toastmasters finished off with the introduction to the Toastmaster for the evening.

I am not sure how much time is usually given to explanations at the beginning, however considering the amount of guests in the club that evening it was possible quite atypical. This is when the meeting’s structure was outlined and all the important people were introduced.

We were also informed about the benefits of joining the club. These include the Toastmaster’s magazine, and the first course book with 10 public speaking assignments and articles explaining the main focus of each of them in-depth. Also when you join you get a chance to take part in the international public speaking Toastmasters competition.

Once the Toastmaster for the evening was up it was her role to introduce this evening’s theme which was “relax”.

Table Topics

This part of the evening consists of impromptu speeches aimed to be 1-2 minutes in length. The Table Topics Master had prepared topics relating to the theme of the evening, and would ask a random member to come up to the front and give a short speech on that subject.

Very important information for anyone willing to try out Toastmasters is that unless a guest volunteers beforehand only full time club members are considered for the speaking exercise. Had we been explicitly told this in the beginning, we might have stressed a bit less.

As it happened one of the guests did actually volunteer, which in turn made us think that we might be called out any minute too!

In all honesty I think I could have dealt with some of the Table Topics questions, others not so much. However the worst part is, that you get to know the question only once you agree to take part or not. It made me think about would I try and do it, or would I say no. It was quite funny to realize, that in some way I found that I might struggle with saying “no”. It kind of implies that you are unable to even try the task at hand, and in that sense, I’d probably bare the horror of public speaking, just not to be labelled as “unable” of doing something…

Prepared Speeches

Prepared speeches are longer and are timed at 5-7 minutes.The topics of these were quite varied: from the Internet, through fish stories, to etymology related to God names.

Contrary to the Table Topics speeches these are fully evaluated, with each having an assigned evaluator. They also have certain areas the speaker should especially focus on, like for example: body language or speech structure. These are taken from one of the Toastmasters manuals depending on the speaker’s level.

The manuals are a sort of course book for public speaking in general to start with, and later once the first one is completed you can choose from different areas of speaking and focus specifically on these, like for example stand up comedy acts, or inspirational speaking, etc.

Evaluations

During the meeting everyone in the room evaluates each of the speakers anonymously on a piece of paper. We also voted for best speaker, best impromptu speaker and best evaluator. On top of that, as mentioned before, each of the prepared speeches gets a commentary from their assigned evaluator.

I found the later to be surprisingly gentle and positive in their opinions. Admittedly there were no first timers in this meeting, but I was expecting to see more criticism. This was quite reassuring to see.

After the evaluators came something I was not expecting at all. The Grammarian! Well, that would be one person I would be definitely scared of… With all my clumsy pronunciation, and all the ahs, and ums I’d probably get shot.

Is Toastmasters For Me?

After the meeting I did feel positively encouraged to join. For now I decided to go again as a guest and experience a bit more before I make a proper decision.

Although it might seem counter-intuitive, I think that the more you are scared of public speaking, the more you should actually be inclined to give Toastmaster a try. In the spirit of overcoming our fears, practising in front of a small group with similar problems and goals can be a great way to train you speaking skills.