I'm the same way, I speak super fast pretty much all the time, and it can be hard for people to understand me if they're not used to it (and I don't blame them).

What really helped for me (and I realize that this doesn't scale to everyone) was lecturing for two semesters. I had pretty good motivation to slow down when students' grades and futures depended on understanding what I'm saying.

I didn't realize how much this helped until I presented at a conference after I was finished teaching, and I realized about midway through my talk that I was speaking considerably slower than I usually did at these things, because it turns out that public speaking and lecturing aren't actually that different.

I wonder if speaking fast is a problem in and of itself. Bryan Cantrill's talks are some of the best around, and he talks very fast. For other speakers, I usually put them at 1.5x speed.

It seems to me that the problem isn't speaking fast per se, but almost speaking where you're tripping over yourself unconfidently. Bryan, for example, often does trip over his words, but he's confident in what he has to say and enunciates very clearly (he's basically yelling).

During the pandemic I made a few Youtube videos, basically public speaking without an audience. I was amazed at how hard it was, I spend hours and hours trying to speak with any confidence. Funnily enough though, at tech meetups, I'm pretty comfortable presenting in front of everyone even though I see others struggle so much. Not sure what's the difference.

Mind-body techniques provide a good solution to this.

First exercise. Breathe out. Take a full breath in for a mental count of 2. Hold for a mental count of 4. Breathe out for a mental count of 6. How do you feel?

It sounds ridiculous that this does anything. But it relaxes you because your brain recognizes the rhythm of a contented sigh - then rushes to put you in that state. Do that the moment that you stand on stage. Do it again any time you need it. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference it makes.

Next exercise. Put, commas, in. The act of standing silent is an act of control that leaves you feeling in control. Trying to slow down results in, "I'mRacing,I'mRacing, SlowDown, I've slowed down, I'mRacingAgain!" But putting in a comma makes it easy to slow down.

This has a second benefit as well. If we're feeling nervous silence is hard on us. So we put in those filler "ahs" and "ums". It is very rare for people to be conscious of how much we do that. Instead we process it subconsciously, as an awareness of anxiety. And our awareness of our own anxiety, creates more anxiety, and off we go!

And so I like to say, "Put in a pause, or you'll say your ahs!" Try it. Those commas really work.

The third thing is this. When we stand in front of an audience, most of us get a shot of adrenaline. We frame it as "social anxiety". But it's really not. It's social adrenaline. If you learn to interpret it as "on a rollercoaster" instead of "there's a tiger", it goes from scary to fun.

This takes a bit of practice. But (with the mind-body skills), less than you'd expect. And it is easy to find a place to practice if you join a local Toastmasters club.

One of the things I do to slow things down, is to plan with brutal honesty around how much a human can say, clearly, in a minute. And then assume that I’ll need 150% of that time. Have 20 minutes for a slideshow? Keep it at 4 slides - five minutes each - at 100 wpm, that’s 500 words each - but I’ll need to add more pauses in, so that’s 400 words each.

Do you think one's tendency to speak faster originates from listening to podcasts at 2.x+ speed?