7.a 万事皆可提前准备

我在做教师培训的时候，经常被新教师夸奖说，“李老师，你在台上随机应变的能力太强了！”这样的时候，我不敢谦虚——因为他们完全夸错了，我自己太清楚自己的应变能力有多差。我必须解释。

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20111113130612/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/458.html

Make Time Your Friend 7.a: Everything Can Be Prepared in Advance

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113130612/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/458.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

When I was doing teacher training, new teachers often praised me, saying, "Teacher Li, your ability to adapt on the spot up there on stage is amazing!" At such times I don't dare be modest—because they've praised entirely the wrong thing; I know all too well how poor my ability to adapt is.

I have to explain. The reason I can "appear" to handle things with ease is that I've done too much preparation beforehand. And the reason I do so much preparation is that I once made a fool of myself—imagine how embarrassing it is to suddenly discover on stage that something you said has an ambiguity you never thought of. So when preparing any lecture, I spend a lot of time seriously considering what kind of understanding and reaction each of my points, each example, even each sentence might provoke, and then work out corresponding countermeasures one by one; only then can I go on stage to lecture with an easy mind.

What's more, I have serious "pre-class phobia"—many people don't believe it. Starting about five minutes before every class, all kinds of symptoms break out together: itchy palms, a tingling scalp, twitching eyelids (sometimes the left eye, sometimes the right, sometimes both), my back may start breaking out in a cold sweat (in winter too)…… Usually it's only about five minutes after I start lecturing that I can completely shake off this terrifying state.—It's been nearly fifteen years since I first gave a speech on stage, and there's never been the slightest sign of improvement; it's just that I've become fairly used to it.

I haven't managed to overcome the fear, but fortunately I have managed to get used to it. However, even getting used to fear, the next best thing, takes effort and struggle. The way to make the effort is to do a great deal of preparation before class. Because of this I've even developed, more or less, some symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder—the material I prepare must be enough for more than twice the actual lecture time before I feel at ease. Still, this fear has also become a driving force, because many of my classes or speeches have in the end come to have two or more, even many, versions. Such preparation means that once I get into the zone, I'm sure to be fearless. Knowing the result, I can let the fear keep me company at the start.

Again, it was my father's saying that helped me; he said, "Believe me, you are not alone." The reason I believed I could think of a way to deal with my fear of public speaking is that I knew many people are afraid of speaking in public. Someone once did a survey asking people what they feared most. What do people fear most? That should be death, or illness and pain, or losing loved ones. But unexpectedly, what people feared most was speaking in public. The survey report wrote: "In general, people fear public speaking more than they fear death" [[1](#footnote_0_458 "I can no longer find the source of this survey. Interestingly, while I was organizing this manuscript, I happened to see the just-released film American Gangster, in which "Richie," played by Russell Crowe, mentions this in his dialogue.")]. The reasons for fearing death need no saying, of course; but people who fear speaking in public don't necessarily know the reason for their fear—it's simple: not enough preparation, so they're afraid.

For quite a long time I felt inferior because I thought I lacked "quick wit." Later, it was reading the autobiography of a former Soviet KGB agent that changed my view. I can no longer find that book, and don't remember the protagonist's full name. I vaguely remember that his real name seemed to be something-something-nenko, so let's just call him "Comrade Nenko."

The book mentions that "Comrade Nenko" was once hunted by a group of American agents; the revolver in his hand had run out of bullets, and he could only rely on running to escape his fate. In the course of fleeing, he charged down a long flight of marble steps, and as he ran, he suddenly stopped and made a move ordinary people couldn't imagine. He crouched down. At this moment, the American agents chasing him, because of the height and the angle of view, couldn't shoot at his position. And this move of crouching down won him a precious seven or eight seconds; in that time he was able, unhurriedly, to take bullets out of his pocket and load them into the revolver, then fire several shots back in a row, sending the agents chasing him scrambling for cover to protect themselves, and he finally escaped successfully.

"Comrade Nenko" said in his later recollections that the reason he was able at the time to make such a "shocking" move was actually that he had rehearsed it in his head who knows how many times in advance, and had also imagined who knows how many kinds of situations that might happen while escaping—he knew from the very beginning that sooner or later one day he would meet such a hunt. He said all senior agents understand a simple principle: any move, rehearsed a certain number of times, can be done to the point that it's carried out precisely even without conscious thought. And he had merely applied this principle to the extreme.

So most things need to be prepared for in advance, and all of them can be prepared for in advance. Realizing this is itself almost the starting point of all change.

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Footnotes:

1. I can no longer find the source of this survey. Interestingly, while I was organizing this manuscript, I happened to see the just-released film *American Gangster* (《美国黑帮》) ([American Gangster](http://www.americangangster.net/)), in which "Richie," played by Russell Crowe, mentions this in his dialogue. [[↩](#identifier_0_458)]