Hacking Together a Speech

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got to make a speech?

Hack, definition: At the beginning of last week’s essay I explained the term hack, meaning “crazy, inelegant, but it works.” Like duct tape.

What if you had to do a speech? For a bald white haired person like me, for example, what if you had to speak to a group about the good old days? How can you organize and choose what to put into your talk? Within your allotted time? Especially if you want to speak without being tied to reading your notes word for word, without being tied behind a lectern like a human telephone pole. 

You might chew your pencil in agony as you try to write out your speech from beginning to end, and then rehearse in agony too. Or, you can just stick with me, and I’ll tell you a hack.

The road to my good hack is quite the journey, and, as travellers know, you would be wise to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Today my road takes us past teenage boys and young college graduates

Forget public speaking for now, just enjoy teenage boys wanting to learn more about basketball. At home they would have a hoop at their garage driveway to practise with. Thump-thump-thump. Abruptly, with fanfare, their school puts on a “basketball clinic,” running each night of the week. On Monday night, a coach from a winning provincial team advises them to forget their ego-glory. Instead, take joy in guarding their man very well, even if no one else ever notices the fine job they are doing. 

In truth, back at their garage, the boys are unlikely to practise the boxer shuffle with their arms outstretched: Boys prefer the glory of visibly sinking baskets, but OK, at least Monday night is educational.

On Tuesday night their social studies teacher, who once won a Most Valuable Player award for the whole province, teaches them to do dribbling drills around chairs and orange cones. Back at home the boys are unlikely to drag chairs out to their garage driveway, but OK, at least Tuesday night is educational.

For now, forget those boys, and enjoy college graduates on the road to “excellence”: the Greek word is “arete,” and believe me, Arete Physical Comedy troupe, “based in Calgary and known around the world,” put the E in excellence. Arete was three men. 

The government of the day had a program to give theatre graduates a summer job: They would be trained by Arete, and put on a play at the end of summer. 

On Monday the kids would come up with a comedy sketch such as meeting a dog—shake a paw? 

On Tuesday a sketch such as meeting a duck—shake a web foot? Yes, I am making up these examples. And then they would excellently develop and practise these sketches. 

I can say “kids,” as did the Arete fellow talking with me one day, because, besides being older and having my own excellence ethic, I had a previous history with Arete. We talked near the end of summer, and he chuckled to tell me the kids were beginning to panic. “What about the play? Oh my God! Shouldn’t we have a script all written, and be practising by now?” …What the kids didn’t realize was that they had been practising; it wouldn’t be hard to put together their various sketches. Like snapping together lego blocks. And they did. How educational. 

Their summer performance was good, world class in fact, so good it came back for the olympic arts festival for the winter games of Calgary 1988.

Now, forget about boys and college graduates. Think of your own private “clinic” for public speaking. 

On Monday you could look up sane, sensible advice in the library. 

On Tuesday you could get prim, proper advice from Toastmasters International. 

But today is Wednesday, time for a hack that sounds as crazy as putting chairs in your driveway—but educational.

 It’s time to write your speech, maybe a speech on dog training, because nobody trains a duck. Take an 11 by 81/2 inch paper, maybe write your speech title and goal. Maybe. Then fold the paper into four squares—and put it in your pocket. 

Then walk out to a big pasture. 

Or traipse along the river path. Or sidewalk. Or find space in your kitchen. Or sit in a chair. 

My bar tender used to know when I was preparing another presentation: I would sitting there talking to myself, like any self-respecting drunk, then go pace along the floor-to-wall windows. I would do so in a very brightly lit private club for graduate students. Ah, the club was heaven for nerds! Not like some dim, brown bar-cave meant for mundane people. You will probably prefer your kitchen.

Develop your various “talking points” through telling your stories again and again, enjoying the telling. Now, just as you can imagine how, in the good old days, you would “fight and never lose” you may freely imagine your audience smiling and happily benefitting from whatever you have to say. For dog training, besides explaining how would you teach a dog to “shake a paw,” and sit and stay, you might relish telling the story of how your dog was trained to be a ninja! With a mask like the ninja turtles!

At last, before you get bored, it’s time to sit down at table, unfold your paper, and start writing out all your one-word story titles, such as “sit,” “stay” and “ninja.” Number the words in order of importance. Set your clock on the table and start timing. You might only have time for explaining sit and stay, but not ninja. Oh well. Take what you do have time for, and snap it together like lego blocks.

Flip the page over. Write out a beginning and an ending. Or not. Then, when you finally plunk in your speech word-bites, there is almost no time needed to practise. Because you had already practised. Suddenly you look up from your page, with no need to chew your pencil—You’re done.

Concept: You had practised, with slightly different wording each time, as you worked things out, as all the while you were smiling to imagine it going well. No need, then, to worry about word-for-word perfection. Which means, when you deliver the speech in real life, you have less stage fright, and fewer recriminations after unfortunately, just like happened sometimes while practising in the pasture, you would forget your best line. Oops! It happens.

I admit that, in theory, I could practise out my whole speech precisely, perfectly, with primly planned punctuation, word for exact word. (That way the best line would surely be included) The problem? The audience might not be bored, but I sure would be!

Hence my hack.

… In conclusion, to restate my opening in slightly different words… —wait a minute, this isn’t a speech: You can always scroll up to re-read the opening for yourself. But why would you bother?… 

Sean Crawford

In the exciting land of the 1988 olympics,

In a sensible land where people decided against re-hosting the games for 2026,

November

2018

Footnote:

You might ask: What about the Zen practise of doing the exact same speech a score of times without ever getting bored? Yes, I could do that, because I’m a calm Zen journeyman, but today’s essay is a hack for people who chew pencils.

Citizenship thought: 

Zen? It’s nice to like your cult. 

Yes, it’s fine to like your Zen, or your communism—OK, not communism—but don’t expect everybody else to join your cult. 

Last week at the “Chinese Oscars” (link) a lady who had lived all her life in Taiwan did not want her country to join China. The communists were shocked, shocked I say, to hear that. 

You might ask: Yes, but what if the mainland Chinese ever converted to democracy, then would she want Taiwan to merge? 

Easily answered: NO. Because then she would still feel love for her own beloved country. 

Hacks for Being On Time

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Dear Reader,

Got being on time?

I knew I had to write this essay when a friend told me she was having trouble lately getting to places on time. “Lately,” because just lately her life has become rough. “I had to write,” because textbooks and society are innocent about these things—and this offends me.

The physical skills are straightforward, and you know them: Use a calendar, a day-timer, plan the route, plan what time to leave, et cetera, et cetera. But my friend’s struggle is not physical, and not covered in Business Management 101. I know this about her because I too once struggled, and then found success, but only because the “hacks” I used were “from the street,” not from society’s wisdom.

Hack: such a useful concept. It comes from the computer world. A programmer might write you a letter that begins, “Forgive me for writing you such a long letter, I did not have time to write a short one.” The long letter, un-polished, un-concise, would be a “hack.” Computer code is supposed to be as short, clean and elegant as possible, but a long ugly passage of code, just to get the job done, would be a hack. 

If a computer printer cover breaks in half, and instead of waiting for a spare part you use duct tape, then that is a hack. When your polished pretty coat hook falls off the wall, and you merely hammer in a spike—that’s a hack. A hack, then, is something crude, even ugly, which has a virtue: It works. At the same time, if your mother-in-law comes over, you might want to stand in front of the duct taped thingy to hide it. 

My favorite hack for getting up in the morning, which I have never tried myself, was told to me by a guy who put a mechanical alarm clock in a tin basin… and then put the basin in front of his brother’s door.

In my own rough family, growing up, being on time was elusive for all of us. My dad had a 15-minute commute to work: I’m not saying he charged out the door every morning like Dagwood Bumstead, but… I once heard family members say that the folks at work must have had no-money bets each day on whether he would be on time. 

Years later, when Dad was a senior citizen, I went to see him, intending to later drive him somewhere. I realized: he hadn’t changed a bit! He still couldn’t pick a time to leave, announce it, and commit to it. Therefore other people could not synchronize their preparations to all leave at the same time. Sounds spineless, I know.

When I was in eleventh grade, I had a little backbone: I was practising the bagpipes daily for one hour, plus a further half hour. Not something I ever did in earlier grades, and not something that anybody else in my family ever did—not ever. In contrast, I know a man who beat an African drum for just five minutes every day, right when he came home from work. At the end of a year, he could play the drum. Only now, as an adult, do I look back and realize something about my family: No one ever spent five minutes a day regularly on any art or craft or hobby or textbook. (At least, not that I can recall) Weird: This means I grew up in a family of drifting, spineless jellyfish.

As I have blogged before, it was not until my mid-thirties that someone clued me in that I had “abuse issues.” I didn’t realize this when I first moved away, I only knew I had “low self esteem or something,” and that I was “stupid or something.” How rough. Hence my big problem with getting to places on time, with catching busses on time, and with leaving my house on time. What I needed? A hack!

Here’s what I promised myself: I would walk out my door, walk along the sidewalk, and not run to catch the bus, not even if I was nearly close enough to touch it as it rolled away. I walked right to the bus door as if I was merely out for fresh air. So I missed several busses, until my subconscious learned I was not bluffing.

From the bus line I would then walk down to my destination or activity, such a community centre show, even if I had missed my earlier intended bus. I’d walk to the destination… and if I was even a minute late, then, you guessed it: Turn on my heel, and walk back up to the bus stop. I missed out on a few things, until my subconscious got the message to shape up—for I surely wasn’t going to run. The hack worked. 

I am the only one in my eight-person family to finish a university degree. I guess I succeeded because I didn’t register to start classes until I had all my hacks lined up in a row. 

I know Canadian universities are all tough because nobody up there needs to put the adjective “good” in front of “university.” All of them are good. 

Meanwhile, it’s been documented: Canadian immigrant and visionary Jane Jacobs, author of Death and Life of American Cities, said that society was organized, with student loans and so forth, so that Human Resources departments, for job applicants, would use “having a degree” as an initial screening device. Not to show an applicant’s knowledge, (Unless for a specialty career degree) but to show they could handle the demands of a degree.

Have you heard of “writer’s block?” I think, unknown to society, there must be such a thing as “term paper block.” This would be when you fearfully look at blank paper and cry “I can’t do this! My other term papers must have been a fluke! I can’t do university! I’ll just have to quit in shame and despair, and then, as Pooh’s embarrassed friend Piglet would say, “run away to sea and be a sailor.”” 

So guess what I did about my term papers? Not what normal students did, when their nerve failed them. The student newspaper once did an “advice to freshmen” article about how nearly every professor would grant an extension, which nearly every normal student would ask for, at one time or another. But not me. I didn’t dare.

If I came from a pond of spineless jellyfish, then asking for an extension was asking for trouble. Not just because an extension would be merely punting my problem down the road, but because a lifestyle choice to be a jellyfish was just too despairing. My hack: To look at my blank term paper and promise: “On the day it is due, I am handing it in, no matter what.” Even if I only had two paragraphs written. Or even just the title and my name. Seriously? Yes. You can’t bluff yourself with these things, you have to mean it. That’s the only way this hack works. The subconscious gets the message. 

You are probably wondering if I ever handed in a two-paragraph term paper… No, I may have gotten a C minus-minus, but I always passed. (In fact, I was in the top half of my classes)

Too crazy? Too rough? You might be suspecting I had low self esteem, self hatred, self sabotage or something like that. If so, then… of-course-I-could incorporate these negative qualities into my hack, right? My friend, hearing my examples of how to be on time, liked the idea of incorporating qualities that society doesn’t like to talk about. I mean, unless for a textbook on managing salesmen, I haven’t seen any business books that talk about self esteem, have you?… 

Lastly, unlike my dad, it helped me when I dared to have clarity to face up to announcing to myself, even unto writing it down, what normal people call “a time to leave.” For me? Make that a “go no-go” time. 

Dear reader, I sure hope you won’t need the same hacks as I did, but if you do try to improvise hacks (besides mine) then you would have to come up with some on your own: You just can’t count on society for these things.

Sean Crawford,

November

Calgary,

2018

More thoughts:

~A mental reason for being late to a community centre: You subconsciously fear the judgement of yourself or others that might arise when you there, so you somehow fritter around at home, without knowing why. 

~If you say, “I really ought to jog” then your problem is apt to be mental, not physical.

~A hack for getting up early on weekends to join the crowd at the jogging club: Don’t, in despair, start setting your alarm early, earlier and still earlier. Instead, set the alarm for only 59 seconds before you absolutely have to get up. Make that your launch window for “go no-go.” Then you can’t kid yourself. And if you choose to sleep in, then you have at most 59 seconds of indecisive recrimination. Enjoy your life.

~Any businessman who tries to tell you “self esteem” cannot be raised, doesn’t exist, or that it’s a ‘woo woo Southern California thing,’ shouldn’t be allowed to manage the sales department. Maybe he could be a marketing manager—No, that wouldn’t work either, for a lot of advertising begins with a smack to people’s “self esteem” (Parrot: “Squawk!-You’ve got ring around the collar.” Deep voiced announcer: “But don’t be afraid! You need new exciting Brand X, now in a new improved zip top box…”