For the best chance of success, start preparing your talk NOW.
I often claim that the tip I’m giving you in one of these videos is the best one or one of the best ones, but this is absolutely the best one, so strap in. It’s simply that you should start preparing immediately for your talk.
So, providing you haven’t been dropped in it last minute and you’ve only got a few days or a few hours to give your talk. Let’s say you’ve been given a decent amount of notice. You’ve got a week or a month or so to prepare for your talk. Start now.
Do your future self a massive favour and start gathering resources, start jotting down ideas, even better, start saying the words out loud to help your writing process. Start now.
Your future self will be so pleased that you bothered to put in the work when you had time. Maybe you even jotted down a rough structure for the whole talk. Doing it when you haven’t got the stress and the pressure of the time, makes that process far easier, far more enjoyable, but also far more productive.
So, as soon as you know that you have to give a talk, start preparing immediately.