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My uncle told me to 'trust the prep' on a big presentation. He was half right.
Had a pitch for a $200k contract in Atlanta last month. Spent 4 hours prepping slides and data. But when the client asked a curveball question about timeline compression, I froze because I hadn't practiced improvising. Prep got me in the door, but not ready for the real moment. Has anyone else found that overplanning kills your ability to adapt on the fly?
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the_jesse5d ago
Ain't it wild how prep can set you up but also box you in? I was doing a demo for a software thing once and spent like a week perfecting my slides. Then the customer asked some dumb question about how it handles Wednesdays and I just stared at them like a deer in headlights. Had to ad-lib something about it being flexible, which sounded so fake I almost laughed. That's when I learned to leave like 20% of my presentation open for whatever they throw at me. Prep is good for the skeleton, but you gotta keep the meat loose.
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wyattmitchell5d ago
Yeah "keep the meat loose" really stuck with me @the_jesse, used to think overprep was the only way.
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