Alrighty! Filler words are going away at a steady pace, conjunctive overuse is dwindling, and no longer does everybody, “you know”.
It’s time for me to start addressing a few more areas of speech that need improvement. Let’s start with pausing. I don’t always have to be speaking! Introducing pausing into my speech will provide me with a strong tool to emphasize a point or allow my listener to internalize my message.
Looking forward to not being a rambling story-teller. Hit ’em with the pause!
Back at it again with another Record and Review. Some new things I’ve noticed is posture and how often I clap lol. Like, wtf am I clapping for haha.
I will see about those in the future. Still working on filler words and the runon sentences randomly joined with ands or buts.
Was focusing on filler words and the excessive use of segue words. Think I’ve done fairly well, very few uses in recent memory. Let’s do one more week to really solidify.
Was a bit late on this week’s iteration of Record and Review. The days are getting longer and I’ve found myself staying out late driving the sunset road when I should probably be settling in for the night. I’ll get it sorted. Anyway, for this week we were still working on filler words. I have noticed a slight improvement, but still catch myself saying, “you know”, “like”, “um”, and “but um” enough for me to feel the need to continue addressing them. One thing I’ve also started noticing is that I will segue from one sentence or topic to another really fast. Like, without a space between my sentences. Either that, or I’ll splice them together with an “and” where totally unnecessary. So for the upcoming week I’d like to watch out for those as well.
I also subconsciously have been working on eye contact with people and the camera, so let’s add that to the list of needs improvement. Working on it! There are a list of other things I’d like to address in the future, like my swaying, or odd hand motions. But let’s cross that bridge when we get there.
Alrighty, we’re back with another Record and Review. This past week I’ve been focusing on minimizing my filler words, specifically, “you know” and “but, um”. It’s funny because I’ve been so much more cognizant of the instances when I say either of those, and others, it’s been almost annoying. I’m kinda glad I’m getting so annoyed by it, because it gives me more fuel to rid them from my speech. After recording this week’s I still said that a few times, so we are going to run it back this next week and focus on filler word removal once again.
I do also want to recognize that I am doing a fairly decent job with hand motions. But need to also think about my eye contact. This is of course a camera recording me, but I really want to start looking at the camera and pretending it is a person. Over the past week I’ve spoken with a number of strangers and the hardest park was actually looking at them. Talking to them was coming fairly easy, but looking at them, for some reason, is harder. I know why, but we gotta get over that.
Here is Record and Review 2: Procrastinating
P.S. I fricken better get those todos done by next week.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about how I communicate. Am I an effective communicator? One thing I’ve noticed is that when I speak, others listen. That is something I’ve notice for a while, but never taken great advantage of. Something tells me that I have a talent that I’ve not fully embraced. An untrained muscle that has perhaps atrophied. Or even worse, been trained incorrectly. Today, and with this post, I start the process of training that muscle better. More consciously addressing my inefficiencies and opportunities to improve. A few days back I listened to a podcast with a vocal coach recommending that if others wanted to improve their speech patterns they should record and review themselves to identify those antipatterns. Here is my first edition of what will become a weekly video log of myself discussing small topics of importance to me. It will count not only as a post on my psyche, but I will be using it to analyze and conquer some of the vocal patterns I wish to grow out of, and even a few to grow in to. (Think filler words removal, introduction of pausing, voice inflection, volume modification, hand gestures, that tight type of ish). I will document what I focused on improving in each weekly post, you can tell me how I’ve done.
In this video I discuss a song that was recommended to me.
And of course, here is the link to my first Record and Review
Also, here’s my rendition of Being Alive if you want to bleed out of your ears. Caution, bad, terribly bad, singing. I do not intend on getting better at that, just thought fuck it, why not post this too.