Doing Economics

3.8 Whether and How to Practice Your Talk
Should you practice giving a talk? On the one hand, it is always better to
give a polished rather than an unpolished talk. On the other hand, there are
only 24 hours in a day, and early-career researchers tend to both keep
themselves busy in view of getting tenured or promoted and be kept busy,
as early-career researchers also tend to start their careers around the time
most people move in with a partner, get married, or have children.
The broad answer to whether you should practice your talk is “maybe,”
and the answer depends on several factors which you should weigh
carefully. These factors include whether English is your first language, how
effective a public speaker you are at baseline, how much time you have, and
how important it is to you that you give a talk that is polished. If you were a
member of the debate team in college or are a member of Toastmasters
International, your baseline level of public speaking is probably pretty
good, and so you likely need less practice than others. If your first language
is not English, you will almost surely need more practice than a native
speaker of English. Similarly, if English is not your first language, but you
are asked to give a talk about your research in your native language, odds
are you will need to make slides in your native language, or at the very least
look up the English-to-your-native-language translations of words you may
have learned only in English. For shorter talks (i.e., 20 minutes or fewer),
one way to make sure not to go over is to practice your talk with a view to
staying within the time limit. And finally, although I sincerely believe that
if a job is worth doing, it should be done right, some talks are simply more
important than others—at least in the short run. This means that job talks

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should probably be practiced more than other kinds of talks, given that a job
offer may depend on your performance.
Practicing talks, however, can be a double-edged sword. For one, it is a
good thing for a talk to be polished, but not to be too polished. One quirk of
the economics profession is the sort of countersignaling wherein we tend to
put a bit too much stock in appearances, to the point where between a
speaker wearing a suit and tie and one wearing jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-
shirt, ceteris paribus, the former will tend to be viewed with suspicion
(“What is he compensating for by wearing a suit and tie?”) and the latter
with an endearing attitude reserved for eccentric geniuses. Similarly with
over-polished talks, which can give people the impression that you do not
value your time. This is admittedly a small concern, and one that is not
first-order, but it is nevertheless a concern in highly competitive
environments.
Should you choose to practice your talk, the best way to do that is in
front of other researchers, perhaps in the context of a brown-bag with other
graduate students or of a seminar at your own institution. Failing to do that,
practicing in front of an imaginary audience (or an online audience
consisting of colleagues who owe you a favor) will have to do. Time
yourself, either by using your phone’s timer, or maybe even going so far as
setting alarms at specific points (for instance by giving yourself five- and
three-minute warnings). If you can record yourself practicing your talk, that
can help you fix some of the things that might be annoying (most of us rely
on verbal quirks and tics that we fail to notice in everyday conversation,
and which can be really distracting).