Evaluation of my presentation

Time to reflect on yesterday's presentation....

Something interesting happened during my presentation, which tells me a lot about myself. Even though I was well prepared and put a lot of effort into making drawings for my presentation as well as stating clear goals and a clear key message of my presentation, even though I was not nervous three days ahead, I still felt extremely uncomfortable.

And the reason was very simple. One person (one of my colleagues, actually), sitting right in front of me, was talking to the people next to him, and making fun of me and my gestures during my presentation. This made me feel so uncomfortable, insecure, nervous, distracted and during the questions, I was doubting myself. Just because I felt the negative attitude of one person making me very clear that my work is not good.

I've been having this problem before, as a musician. Last year, I sang at a concert in our department during the lunch break. The negative attitude of some of my coworkers (music is not science therefore irrelevant and ridiculous) made me feel very nervous, and I performed very badly. I couldn't even have my breathing correctly supporting my singing.

Another example is almost 10 years ago, but I never forgot it because it was a very negative experience for me. I was playing cello then as a soloist on the concert of the winners of the city medal for music. Right in front of the stage, our mayor fell asleep while I was putting my heart into my Bach cello suite. It disturbed me so much, I ended up playing not well at all.

The lesson I learn from this is that I am very vulnerable to the atmosphere in which I perform or present. If one person can make the atmosphere turn hostile against me, I am lost.

Up to now, I don't know how to shield myself against these influences. I should just ignore it, but I'm an HSP, so sensing my environment is my natural behavior.

How can you ignore someone's hostile attitude while you are presenting?

The possible cause for concentration problems

Yesterday afternoon I had difficulties concentrating. Instead of being mad at myself and disappointed, I've decided to try to look for the possible causes of yesterday's reading failure (while my back-up is running and Scopus seems to be down).

So I've been sitting here and staring at the screen and contemplating all possible reasons why yesterday turned out the way it did, and, more importantly, what I could do about that.

1. I wasn't really reading exciting new material.
In fact, I was reading a PhD thesis. The material of this thesis was published in journal papers in the subsequent years, and I've had already read all these papers. All I had to do is to go and search for some more details in the thesis, which was heavy on concentration-intensity.

2. Reading an entire day is hard on me
I know this, but somehow I fail to plan accordingly. Reading an entire day gives me the vast amount of time of "an entire day" and somehow puts me off. I work much better when I divide the morning into reading and the afternoon into lab preparation.

3. Lack of breaks
Yesterday, after lunch, I didn't see any person nor talked to anyone nor had a break with the others. Bad idea, as simple as that.

4. My body
I was feeling painful and unfit yesterday. I did go to the gym in the evening, but my muscles (if any) were not collaborating at all.

The lesson I've learned from this is that I mainly should plan better and divide my time into smaller chunks so I can get a little more variation in my day.