Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Swordsman technique:If you Just do it, you won't suck

You feel so confident before the day of your presentation or your senior seminar project or a job interview. When the moment starts your stamina and level of confidence starts to decrease (most of the time). And then you suck.

You know why? Our brain is a very complex element. It responds to what you think in less than a millisecond, and start triggering events in your body. Those events send neural signals to all over your body and call the hormones up!

Your tongue gets unexpected signals so you mumble the words. Your hand get those signals too so GOD knows how it will react but sure unexpectedly. Your legs, your eyes. You start to sweat. And then you suck!

When you are doing one thing. Do that thing only. Focus your whole brain on that idea or action. A Presentation? Just do the presentation, don't think of losing or winning, don't think if they like you or not. Because the moment you do you have lost.

That's called the Swordsman technique. When the swordsman start his attack he focuses on how to do his technique only. He doesn't think "if I win people will cheer me, and if I lose people will laugh at me". NO. He attacks. He just attacks. The moment his brain collapses between winning and losing he had already lost.

Before I wrote this I was playing ping-pong, I don't know Jack about that game but when I use the Swordsman technique, I really amazes myself.

Read PresentationZen its an engaging book.

Bon Weekend

5 comments:

  1. I used this technique without knowing it's the Sword's man technique.

    All the preparations for my projects presentations where made in the last few minutes even the material "slides", because I get overloaded with working on the project it self.

    Anyway, My partners and I agree on the idea that we're gonna go out there and give it our best shot, it's like we enforce this idea in our brains that we don't care what the results would be after the presentation, we just want to represent our work and forget all about.

    And yeah Al7medllah it worked.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mohd, You are giving a very good example that could summarize my whole post.

    Usually "sprinting" (doing the work quick and assembling everything together at the last minute) works with us (males) because we simply don't care. I was so busy, I didn't have time to prepare so I am just going to do what I know at that time. I trust myself. I don't care if I lost or win.

    "we just want to represent our work and forget all about."

    That's it.

    Good luck and thanks for sharing that experience :)

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  3. Yes, it works with the us (males).

    Because we are hunters. :D

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  4. I've used this also without knowing it called that name.

    A verse from Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do comes to mind:

    "No thinking, no reflecting,
    Perfect emptiness;
    Yet therein something moves,
    Following its own course"

    I is said that samurai warriors engage in mortal combat not unlike performing a tea ceremony--instinctive and without thought of victory or defeat, of living or dying, of pride or pain.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pragma,
    Yes I used it also I didn't knew its name until I read PresentationZen

    I recommend it :)

    ReplyDelete

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