About 4 minutes to read.
A presentation goes badly. You lose your place, rush through the explanation, and leave without answering the question someone asked. By the time you get home, you have reached a much bigger conclusion: you are terrible at explaining things, and you probably always will be.
The presentation gave you evidence of a problem. The prediction about the rest of your life is something you added. If you treat both as equally certain, you can spend the evening condemning yourself without finding out what went wrong.
That is the useful question after a setback: what does this result actually tell you, and what would help you respond to it? You do not have to feel good about the result to answer more carefully.
Give the explanation a fair hearing
On a recent episode of Modern Wisdom, psychologist Martin Seligman described learning to dispute his own catastrophic thoughts. His emphasis was on realistic evidence. Replacing a frightening prediction with a wonderful prediction does not make either one accurate.
He used the example of a boss asking to see you that afternoon. You might immediately imagine being fired. Seligman asks people to consider the worst outcome, the best outcome, and then the most likely one. Perhaps the boss likes the proposal but wants its budget reduced. That possibility gives you something to prepare for, rather than an entire ruined future to rehearse.
The same distinction is useful after something has gone wrong. In the presentation example, you really did lose your place. Perhaps your notes were hard to follow, or you had not practiced explaining the central point aloud. Those possibilities need checking. Calling yourself hopeless does not check them.
It can be easier to see the missing information when the person in trouble is someone else. You might ask a friend what happened in the room before agreeing that one presentation has settled their future. Researchers have tested how people reason about their own problems compared with a friend’s.
In a 2014 experiment, psychologists Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross recruited 120 university students who were in romantic relationships. The students imagined either their own partner or a friend’s partner being unfaithful. Within each group, some considered the situation from a first-person perspective; others used a name and third-person perspective to reflect on the person involved.
Among students considering their own imagined problem, those taking the more distant perspective scored higher on a measure of wise reasoning. The measure included acknowledging missing information, considering other people’s perspectives, and recognizing different possible outcomes. It did not measure whether anyone repaired a real relationship.
The experiment also did not test presentations or careers. Trying an observer’s perspective after an ordinary work setback is a reasonable application to explore, not a proven route to better performance. The useful question is whether that perspective helps you notice something your first judgment left out.
Find something you can change
Once you stop treating the result as a complete description of yourself, you still need to understand the result. This is where reassurance can fall short. A friend saying you are brilliant may be kind, but it does not explain why the audience lost track of your point.
On a recent episode of Mel Robbins’s podcast, Adam Grant recalled the scores his diving coach gave him after a dive. Sometimes the score was encouraging; sometimes it was three and a half out of ten. His next question concerned how to improve it.
Grant now uses a similar approach after speaking or working with someone new. He asks for a rating, then asks what change would move him closer to ten. The number opens a conversation about improvement; it does not have to become a label he carries around.
You can use the underlying question without turning every conversation into a performance review. After a difficult presentation, ask someone who was there where they lost the thread. If the answer is that you introduced the solution before explaining the problem, you have a specific revision to try. Whether that revision helps remains something to check with the next audience.
There is an important objection here: sometimes the discouraging assessment is right. A plan may be poorly chosen, and another attempt may cost more than it is worth. A more generous explanation should not become permission to ignore that evidence.
In his latest Q&A, Tim Ferriss suggested asking trusted people what would most likely cause a project to fail. He was addressing the difficulty of getting honest advice from friends who want to be encouraging. Asking about a possible failure gives them a concrete problem to examine.
That question also makes room for useful criticism. Someone may notice that your deadline assumes time you do not have, or that the people you want to help do not need what you are making. You can investigate those concerns, change the plan, or decide against it. None of those decisions requires a verdict about your worth.
Three ways to use this
Describe one setback as an observer. Use your name and describe what happened, then notice what remains unknown. “Alex lost their place twice” leaves room to investigate. “Alex cannot communicate” claims far more. Keep any facts that are uncomfortable; the exercise is about accuracy.
Ask for one change, not a general verdict. Choose someone who saw the work and ask what they would change to make it clearer or more effective. A useful answer names something you can attempt, such as explaining the problem before presenting the solution.
Invite a specific objection to a plan. Ask someone you trust what is most likely to stop it working. Look for a concern you can investigate before committing more time. This is useful even when you feel confident and nothing has gone wrong yet.
After the next difficult presentation, you may still wish it had gone better. You can also return to someone who was in the room and ask, “Where did you first lose track of what I was saying?” That is a question another person can help you answer.
P.S. By the way, an AI wrote these sentences from the creators’ videos, newsletters, and posts Payton actually consumes week after week. He built the system that makes this letter, and he will keep putting it out once a week. He put his taste and judgment into what good looks like, and into how to avoid bad. He wants to be fully transparent about that.