Killing butterflies: 8 tips to give your best public presentation ever!

Public speaking regularly outperforms death as people's number one fear.

I have performed public talks about The Cycle Diaries adventures for a range of companies including Innocent Drinks and Just Giving. Each time I have felt the flutter of fear in my belly. I discovered, however, that I enjoy public speaking but would never had found that out if I hadn't taken that first step, don't let fear rob you of an incredibly rewarding experience.

The Telegraph invited to tell my cycling story at The Outdoor and Adventure Outdoor Travel show 2013. I arrived early and was almost not let in due to some ticketing snafu that did little to ease my frayed nerves.

Running to the National Geographic Traveller stage I made it with 2 minutes to get sorted. I quickly set-up my slides, was connected to a mic and...nothing. Exactly zero people sat on the sterile, white benches in front of me. The crowds walked on by, looking at the many travel stalls. Nobody knew who I was, nobody cared!

I began my presentation, regardless. Eventually I attracted a crowd of about 20. Some even managed to stay awake through my faltering patois. None of them laughed about my cautionary tale of defecating in fields, my best gag!

Ten months later I performed a talk in front of 80 ladies, members of The Women's Institute. It went very well with laughter happening in the right places. My only disappointment was the lack of baked goodies for which the WI is famed.

Here are a few tips I developed to crush those butterflies:

• Watch stand-up comedy before your talk. This will release Oxytocin and help relax you. You can learn timing and how to construct jokes from great comedians. Avoid stealing jokes, especially if you're a fan of lewd comedy.

• Know your audience and what you're going to tell them. Know how long you have to speak for and allow enough time for a Q&A at the end. 

• Record yourself rehearsing and fix any noticeable problems. Even better get your other half to listen to it and give you pointers, your jokes might not be that appropriate and they can help erase the precious knob gags that you were sure were going to go down a treat.

• Pick one or two people in the audience to look at during your talk, don't stare but it sometimes helps to treat the presentation as a chat between you and that person. You can picture them naked if it helps, but in my experience, it doesn't!

• Eradicate 'umms' and 'ahhhs.' Silence sounds better, even after a joke (though try and avoid too many of those awkward post knob gag silences). When you're not sure what to say next, pause, take a breath, glimpse at your slides or notes, relax.

• Screw the script. I never script anything! Why add the pressure of trying to remember what you're going to say, besides you're there because you're talking about something you know intimately. while you should have some structure to sow things together nicely, avoid having a script, reading from one sounds fake and very dull.

• Smile, you'll feel better for it.

• Don't have too many slides. between you and the slides and video and text, lighting and pyrotechnics there may be too much going on, so keep it simple and strip it down to just the essentials. A good presentation doesn't reveal all!

Utilise these tips and let me know how you get on, or send me an email if you need feedback on your presentation I'd be happy to help.

Baby steps and rock bottom

My name's Andy Madeley and I'm an opportunity addict. If opportunities were calories I'd be a 12'000 calorie-per-day, obese, opportunity eating bastard.

Fat Bastard

I am great at forging and grabbing opportunities; I wanted to attend this year's Explore event at the Royal Geographical Society so I called them and told them about The Cycle Diaries. Now I'm in the running to sit on the cycling expeditions advice panel. BOOM! I needed some more public speaking gigs so I got in touch with Women's Institute. BOOM! Book deal? I emailed a publisher with my idea and now they want a sample chapter. MUSHROOM CLOUD BOOM!

Yet I have experienced more failures than any of my friends who are not so opportunistic. Most of them are making moves in their careers. Their general trajectory is upwards with promotions, best sellers and amazing new adventures. Meanwhile, mine has had the trajectory of a limp cock; failure at university, the military, my own self-employment (numerous failures) and now a faltering writing career.

As I write this I'm overdrawn at the bank and have no reliable source of income. I'm at rock bottom, paralysed by the weight of my ideas and expectations.

All this failure has got me thinking that perhaps being an opportunist is not key for successful living. But if sniffing out and taking advantage of opportunities is not the key to success, what is?

I realise now that success isn't about finding the right opportunity or even following your passion. Those things might get you going but in this world of constant distractions and stimulation they could also lead to your doom.

Some introspection and a great metaphor later and I've figured out where I'm going wrong: I'm at the great big buffet table of life, chowing down on opportunity after opportunity, my plate is full but I just keep going back to the table to get more, never finishing what I have.

Instead of relentlessly chasing the dream I need to know how to finish what I start. We all know and are repeatedly told that consistency of purpose is a key to success but how can we build it into our lives?

To solve this I turned to The Cycle Diaries bike ride, my one great success to date. Matt and I rode our bikes over frozen mountains and through baking deserts and eventually we got to our destination. We were consistent.

Our ritual was simple; we'd wake and eat, cycle for a few hours, eat, cycle some more, set camp, eat, write then sleep. This was repeated over a 16 month period.

On the days when we missed out on writing our journals during the evening or not making the distance on the bikes we felt unsettled, like something was missing. We had developed certain habits that allowed us to complete the ride.

We would set aside time each evening for writing, not impractical, large blocks of time, just 10 minutes in an evening to focus entirely upon writing.

Sometimes it took us weeks to cross inhospitable landscapes but we got there through constant application of effort, one turn of the pedals at a time. We let go of the vision of conquering the obstacle and only concentrated on the present moment.

The answer revealed itself. If I am ever going to finish the buffet of life then I'll have to forget the sculpted fruit platter and stack of pastries merely focus upon what I have to eat in front of me, right now.

I'll have to learn to let go of the end result and make completing a daily task my goal instead. That is my aim; Not to write a book, instead write for just 10 minutes each morning. That's is all.

Once you have committed to 10 minutes of action per day it is almost easier to do it than it is to feel the guilt and the shame of not doing it.

Another benefit of this baby step approach is it avoids burnout. Committing huge blocks of time or making sweeping gestures about how many thousand words you're going to write per day is just unhealthy, infeasible and will lead to frustration and, possibly, divorce.

Once the habit is in place then I might don my stretchy trousers and return once more unto the buffet.

The use of being a selfish prick

I'm a selfish prick.

I quit work over two years ago, left my girlfriend, friends and family and went on a bike ride. A 16 month, 25'000km bike ride from London to Sydney. I moved back home, taking up space and eating all the food in my parents' house.

I've started this blog for selfish reasons but I think all blogs are started for selfish reasons, to solve the author's problem.

What problem does this blog aim to solve? I'm searching for my voice and building my skills at writing through the stuff I like to do.

This is inherently selfish. 

But what if I become a great writer? Perhaps then the path I walk will be wide enough for the two of us and you can keep me company. Perhaps I can entertain you and I might just be able to help you to become a better writer or whatever. Does that make me a little less of a prick?

I'm not alone in using this oxygen mask approach to writing. Here are some wise words from some more popular selfish pricks:

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself - Jack Kerouac

You write about what you know - Larry David

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self - Cyrill Connolly

I don't know who Cyrill Connolly is but he is God-damned right!

So that's the lesson, start with yourself, do what makes you happy and avoid the bitter resentment of doing the things that you think you should. In the end everyone else will thank you for it.