Preparation serves several important purposes:
- It boosts your self-confidence.
- It reduces the chances of something going wrong.
- It creates an impression of you as a competent, diligent person.
- It makes it easier for you to give a polished, professional presentation.
It is often said that those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail. The reason for this is that only by preparing properly will you eliminate the obvious potential errors that can turn what would be an excellent speech into a mess.
By taking the time to prepare, you can look ahead to the presentation and get an impression for how it should and will go. It will also allow you to take into consideration what difficulties may arise, and have a strategy for dealing with each of them.
Some people can walk into a room and hold the attention of their audience by speaking “off the cuff” for half an hour or more. These people are naturally gifted, and quite rare. Usually, they make a living as stand-up comedians, as comedy is one of very few fields where the act of preparing a routine is not hamstrung by the necessity for getting every fact right and every detail nailed down.
This does not mean that delivering a presentation cannot be an enjoyable process. In fact, the right amount and the right kind of preparation can ensure that the presentation is enjoyable, informative, and useful both for you and for your audience.