Valuing the Slow, Steady Pace

i recently learned something really useful from having to get hearing aids u my hearing is not terrible but I’m 60 i had a little hearing loss in one ear and and um it it was affecting me in meetings and presentations i learned something about what’s going on when you have hearing issues that actually helped me with something on presenting this is a presentation blog and the whole idea is I’m going to take a moment to advocate for the slow steady pace you don’t hear me talk about that very much and the reason is because I am a huge advocate of a varied dynamic pace modulated in other words when I talk really fast sometimes that energizes a group and when I talk slow things become important you can’t really do that if you don’t change you can’t emphasize without change so I’m still a fan and a deep believer in the modulated uh pacing but I want to take a moment to talk about the underrecognized at least by me slow steady pace so what I learned about dealing with a hearing issue was that the human being processes words as complete sounds so it’s not cat that you have to sound out cat is a singular thing it’s got a C sound at the beginning and a T sound at the end you don’t have to think it through you just grab it all in one sound and it’s kind of like words you learn to read where you grab the whole chunks of words you’re not actually sounding them out what happens when you have a little bit of hearing loss is you might not hear the C you heard the A or you might hear the C but you didn’t hear the T and when that happens you shift your mind into grabbing the concept all at once to actually having to retroactively sound it out was that cat or hat or what was that and so now you’re listening to the context of the the word through the rest of the sentence now I was looking forward you know when you listen to speakers you’re anticipating what they’re saying you’re you’re listening forward suddenly you’re you’re back filling you’re looking backwards i’m holding on to this word listening to this now while you’re going to the next sentence i’m trying to assemble that sentence because I wasn’t able to grab the words all at once now I’ve got a hearing aid and I’m picking up that C and that T and now I’m much more back to where I used to be but there’s a message here for the presenter that speaks to the generally slow steady pace which is when you take the time to communicate and present at a relatively slower pace you’re giving people the chance to backfill in their minds they’re able to process what you’re saying and sometimes hearing loss or not you you’re trying to piece together what people are saying and that slower pace allows you to do the mental processing to digest what someone’s saying that’s why there’s so much speaking emphasis on a steady slow pace now be careful as soon as you only have a steady slow pace you now have a monopace it it puts people to sleep so you do have to have your moments where you speed up you the higher energy moments it’s totally fine to go into these places and you want to be able to really slow down to get to the power but let’s start from a slower than normal base speed and that way people are going to have a chance to process the words that you’re saying and keep looking forward instead of backward as they listen to your presentation