Are You a Procrastinator or a Perfectionist? The Answer May Explain Your Public Speaking Anxiety.

When I first started coaching public speaking, I emphasised preparation. It felt obvious that if you wanted to perform well, you needed to put in the work. Yet some people still turned up unprepared. They often began their presentation by announcing that they had not prepared at all.

It took me a while to understand what was happening. Telling the room they were unprepared was their “get-out-of-jail-free” card. If things went badly, they could blame the lack of preparation rather than face the possibility that the talk went badly despite preparation. It protected their self-esteem, but it was also self-sabotage.

So I doubled down on the preparation message. In fact, I started suggesting that if they had not prepared, perhaps they should avoid telling us.

But here is the twist. While I always have a few under-prepared clients, the majority sit at the other extreme. They prepare so intensely that they become rigidly attached to every word. They memorise or read from a script. Their delivery becomes careful rather than connected. And in my determination to improve their preparation, I risked  making this worse.

I softened my stance, but something still felt missing. I was aiming for a middle ground that did not serve either extreme. Then I heard a conversation that tied it all together.

The Shared Root of Procrastination and Perfectionism

I was listening to a conversation on Sam Harris’s Waking Up app. If you do not know Sam Harris, he is a neuroscientist and philosopher whose app contains far more than meditation. It includes discussions with teachers, thinkers and mindfulness practitioners.

In this particular conversation, Sam was speaking with Leo Babauta, author of the Zen Habits blog. Leo explained that when people fear something, they tend to do one of three things: avoid, procrastinate, or seek perfection.

That was my light-bulb moment.

Most of my clients fear public speaking. Many have spent years avoiding it. When they finally decide to tackle that fear, they tend to fall into one of two camps. Some respond with procrastination. Others respond with perfectionism. These behaviours look like opposites, but they arise from the same place: fear.

Once I saw this, everything made sense.

I now explain it like this.

Many people who do my courses are either under-preparers or over-preparers.

Under-preparers are procrastinators. They know they have a presentation coming up, but they delay preparing until the last minute. They try to wing it. They ramble, run long, abandon their notes because they do not help, and feel enormous relief when it is over.

Over-preparers are perfectionists. Their preparation becomes a strategy to control their fear. They try to anticipate every possibility and eliminate every risk. Their content might be excellent, but their delivery is often stiff, self-conscious or disconnected.

Both habits reward you in the short term. Both steal your confidence in the long term.

The Short-Term Rewards and Long-Term Costs

For the perfectionist, the reward is obvious. They avoid disaster by relying heavily on their notes or memorised script.

The procrastinator also receives a reward. They do not have to do the hard work, and if it goes badly, they have a built-in explanation.

But neither habit sets you up for a great presentation. Neither helps you build genuine confidence. The perfectionist never trusts themselves without hours of rehearsal. The procrastinator always fears their talk will become a train wreck.

And both habits are surprisingly hard to break.

Why Preparation Behaviours Are Hard to Shift

For procrastinators, the solution sounds simple: start preparing earlier. But of course it is not that easy. Effort requires commitment, and starting earlier opens the door to failure despite trying. That is why many procrastinators cling to their fallback line: “I haven’t practised.”

For perfectionists, the challenge is the opposite. They have to give up some control. They have to accept that less preparation might improve their delivery. This feels risky because losing control is one of their deepest fears. Trusting themselves feels dangerous.

Understanding how preparation actually works can help both groups find a healthier middle ground.

How Much Preparation Do You Really Need?

To shift this mindset, I lean on Tim Urban’s excellent blog Wait But Why, specifically his article Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story.

Tim describes three approaches to planning a presentation:

1. Wing it

2. Talk through a set structure

3. Stick to a script

You can imagine his view on the first option. Winging it is the procrastinator’s comfort zone. It rarely produces great results.

Tim recommends the second approach for most situations. Know your structure well. Know your message. Know the order of your points. But do not memorise the exact words.

And then there is the script. Perfectionists love the idea of a script. But Tim explains that to deliver a fully memorised script naturally, you must memorise it to what he calls Happy Birthday level. In other words, you need to know it as deeply as you know the Happy Birthday song. Anything less gives you two options: read it (which is disengaging) or half-memorise it (which sounds unnatural).

This distinction is crucial.

A moderate amount of preparation gives you most of the benefits. Beyond a certain point, extra practice produces diminishing returns. In fact, it can make you worse, because you end up half-memorising.

For most presentations, practising three or four times out loud is enough to deliver confidently with a set structure. This is a realistic, sustainable sweet spot.

For TED-level talks, hundreds of rehearsals may be appropriate. But for a work presentation, it is usually unnecessary and often counterproductive.

What This Means for You

If you recognise yourself here, you are not alone. These same tendencies show up in other areas of life: job interviews, exams, and difficult conversations. Anywhere where preparation increases your chances of success, but does not guarantee it.

Maybe you delay until the last minute and create unnecessary stress. Or maybe you over-prepare because uncertainty feels unbearable.

My own inclination was to over-prepare. It took me a long time to wean myself off a set script or overloaded slides. But when I got preparation right, I could immediately feel the difference. I knew the essence of what I wanted to say – and I knew it deeply. That freed me up to find the right words on the day.

Recognising procrastination and perfectionism as two sides of the same response to fear was transformative for me. I hope this article gives you the same insight.

If you can shift your behaviour even slightly, you will find your own preparation sweet spot. A bit more preparation if you are a procrastinator. A bit less if you are a perfectionist. Enough to build genuine confidence without feeding your fear.

Although my focus here is public speaking, the same principles can serve you in many other areas of your life.