Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

Re:Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lac... by bluGill on Wednesday February 28, 2024 @12:35PM (#39541161)

Politicians do mock interviews all the time to prepare. Everyone else expecting to be interviewed should as well. If you put some effort into it you can think up 98% of the questions you might be asked - the only question is what order they will ask and how much detail they want. So you practice someone asking those questions and you responding - sometimes they will ask clarifying questions, sometimes not, but again you know the topic and you have rehearsed everything you want to say. In the end for a 10 minute interview you should have 2 hours worth of answers rehearsed. Not memorized, but rehearsed. You should change the exact words you use, but the ideas you are trying to say are already in your mind and so easy to do.

Remember too that you can redirect questions. They might never ask about your best friend as a kid, but you have rehearsed the story of something you did and that story can be used as an example for 20 different questions. While telling that story you don't really need to think about it so instead you get that entire time to figure out the conclusion where you tie the story back to the question.

Being interviewed is a skill. You can practice it.

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Re:Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lac... by mips_r4300i on Thursday February 29, 2024 @01:50PM (#39553358)

You've got it exactly right, and the same technique works well for giving presentations.

Run through your slides in front of your rubber duck, as if they're the audience.

You want to program your brain to work like a soundboard - for topic X, say "Y". I find it helps me greatly to have these prebaked responses ready to go, and I get to choose when I'm talking whether I adlib entirely or just repeat the same script i trained.

Often even during the talk there would be times I'd feel out of it, distracted, or something else. Then you just do rote script until your brain recovers and you can be fully "on" again.

Finally, people LOVE hearing stories. So the more stories you can work into your answers or your presentation, people will stay engaged. This is a common thread from watching many very competent presenters at cons

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