Everyone has to spend at least some time thinking ahead of time what they are going to say, and you probably do too.

Its the perception of yourself and your work from the eyes of the group that is at stake here, it's important and most people usually don't just improvise it.

Many times people have notes of what they want to say, which involves preparation, attention and energy put into it that would better be directed elsewhere.

I don't. Often it's "What was I working on again? Oh yeah, that one issue. And I reviewed some code. The thing I'm working on I hope to finish today, maybe tomorrow. That's it. Oh wait, I also deployed a thing."

It requires very little thought.

I don't know, on a healthy team you should feel very comfortable giving an update on your work without having to prepare.

I've prepared for standup when I was new to a team, but it should pretty quickly get to the point where you don't need that. At least for my experiences, it's not like standup is a major factor in how teammates think of you - that comes from working together with people.

> Its the perception of yourself and your work from the eyes of the group that is at stake here

If your teams have so little trust in each other that you have to do all this preparation for a standup, then there are already much larger issues.

That's what happens when the PM (or other deadline-obsessed entity) is in charge though.