A recent Zogby poll commissioned by Sliderocket, a PowerPoint rival, found that “respondents would rather do the following miserable activities than sit through a PowerPoint presentation:

o    24 percent would forego sex tonight
o    21 percent would rather do their taxes
o    20 percent would rather go to the dentist
o    18 percent would rather work on Saturday”

Of course, Sliderocket is pushing its software, but the question is a clever one, and the company and its marketers deserve high marks for creativity and a bit of summer fun.  It caught my attention. 
And here’s the serious point lurking behind – way behind – the poll.  

When I taught public speaking at Princeton, I developed a variety of ways to help nervous students combat speaking anxiety.  One of the most useful in the long run is cognitive retraining.  That’s a fancy phrase for a simple process. 

You take the symptoms that are making you feel bad and ask yourself, “What’s really going on here?”  My heart is racing.  My palms are clammy.  My face is flushed.  My knees are a little wobbly.  My thoughts are going a mile a minute.  What’s about to happen to me?

When I asked students that very question, one cheeky guy in the back of the room would always shout out, “Have sex!”  And that would make the point exactly:  the same symptoms get defined as bad when you’re about to speak and great when you’re about to have some fun. 

So if you tell yourself, “the symptoms themselves won’t kill me.  In fact, I rather like them under other circumstances.  So instead of thinking about how awful the symptoms are, and then thinking about all the things that could go wrong, thus starting a vicious feedback circle, I’m going to think positive thoughts about how these symptoms are helping me to show up at the top of my game, and do a great job.” 

You retrain yourself to treat the symptoms as useful rather than pointing to a train wreck.  This technique takes a little time to master, but once you do you will find it very helpful.  You will learn to recognize the symptoms in a variety of settings and realize that they are in fact beneficial because they take you to the top of your game. 

The next time you offer to forego sex instead of watching a PowerPoint presentation, understand that you will be denying the speaker a chance to experience sex-like symptoms.  So at least one of you would be having fun.