You do your job; repeat it every day. You do your house chores and other various things every day and repeat them over and over. It would be insane to expect we learn something new in such an environment. Hence there needs to be a challenge once in a while.

In a local public speaking club, I’ve chosen to try a new role. It is called a toastmaster, and it is a pivotal role. There are a couple of responsibilities it carries, time management, speaker introductions, overall orchestration of the gathering. The experience I gained from it is quite significant.

Prepared speeches differ from roles that need you to act at any point in time without any rehearsal. And this was a crucial learning experience for me. Now I understand my blind spots better and can plan some steps to alleviate those. More attentiveness to reduce the uhm’s and so’s (filler words), some practice to make introductions concise yet unambiguous.

The goal is to sprinkle a bit of friction into the daily routine to recognise issues. Without understanding those, it is quite impossible to fix them.