I dropped out of my PhD because I could not stand the pressure of having to do talks regularly. Even though I was pretty decent at it (I was told my delivery was fine and clarity was superb), and sometimes felt good ("powerful" for lack of a better word) while on stage, I would worry for months before every presentation, then basically get physically sick for weeks before, and take some weeks more to recover.

Then one poster I submitted got upgraded to a talk, which brought me over the tipping point, and I quit.

I keep wondering if I could have done more to desensitise myself to it, but the anxiety was never decreasing, if anything, it was getting worse each time. I tried therapy, medication, Toastmasters, martial arts classes and dance lessons (which became my hobby, incidentally), and even vocal lessons (since I was particularly self-conscious about my voice), all to no avail.

So now I have a co-founder to do all and any public speaking, and I do not plan to put myself in front of a crowd ever again. But I feel I'm missing a part of life by it.

For me, it's somewhat ironic then that during my early software career (20+ years ago), Fowler's lucid writing helped me through a lot of the anxiety, insecurity and impostor syndrome I experienced.

His work introduced me to eXtreme Programming, UML, Refactoring and more. Much of the agile tooling used nowadays are a consequence of effort he and the groups he was a part of put forth. The book Analysis Patterns is very underrated IMO and was a breath of fresh air after futzing around with the SAMS Teach Yourself series books that were undeservingly popular back then.

I think of Fowler as a virtuoso when it comes to explaining practical software matters. I haven't watched much of his talks, but I've read most of his books and PLoP papers.

I'm glad he's going to focus more on writing and helping others with theirs.

FWIW, these are classic panic attacks.

Usually the stressor is obvious, but sometimes it's not and it's something you've left unresolved that your subconscious gets caught up on from time to time.

It might not be the talks themselves. It could be anything.

If you've never had a panic attack before and start getting these, it literally feels like you're going to die the first time you get one. Then you get used to them and start adjusting.

I went through a period of panic attacks after acquisition talks with a giant corp fell through. I was messed up for years after that, with random panic attacks at all times of day.

I worked on returning myself to my previously chill demeanor and haven't had one for many years now.

I also stopped answering any VC/BizDev/CorpDev emails though. lol. But mostly out of a desire to optimize my time use for things that actually matter.

Good luck Martin. Covid has certainly put the value of living the life you truly want for yourself into perspective and I hope you achieve that.

I can relate to the anxiety before something like that which often then disappears when you start.

I feel similarly before technical interviews and it’s really unpleasant, the fear holds you back from doing things you’d otherwise want to do.

It’s hard to evaluate sometimes or be honest with yourself if you’re making a decision based on what you want or if it’s a rationalization to avoid the fear.

I often suspect a lot of the dismissals of technical interviews are more about rationalizing responses to the fear.

It makes me wonder though, does he dislike giving talks or is it mostly the anxiety that he dislikes? They’re hard to separate. I can understand giving up on one to avoid the other.

I think most people don’t face the anxiety directly, they tend to avoid the task and stay in their comfortable zone - I can definitely understand why. It’s cool he faced it for the amount of time he did.

Good for him. As someone who struggles with serious anxiety issues I decided not to do interviewing anymore as it just became too debilitating - days of worrying before the interview, the feeling of dread and doom. That point in the interview when the interviewer says "Ok, now I'm going to ask you a few technical questions..." my heart rate would skyrocket and I'd start sweating perfusely. It's just really difficult to shine in an interview when you're also fighting to stay lucid, let alone calm. It's like there are all these processes that suddenly spin up and swamp your mental CPU. I'm retired from interviewing.

Good on him for coming out and saying it straight. So many people go through such discomfort and are constantly pressured by their environment to put up with it. You're not encouraged to say no. It is seen as unnatural. It is career limiting. I do believe the tech industry puts an unhealthy obsession on public speaking, to the extent that you aren't considered fit for leadership if you can't give public talks.

"As I steadily get more disconnected from the day-to-day of software development, I feel I provide my greatest value by helping improve communication from those who have that connection."

I'm a big fan of his writing, including the "Refactoring" book [1], which has changed my life. So it's a bit sad to read this admission. But I appreciate his honesty. Wondering if this "detached" feeling is attributed to the anxiety he has felt on the speaking side.

Anyway, I hope he keeps writing. It doesn't have to be a great hit like, say "Microsevices" [2]. I believe it can be more personal. I'd like to learn what experienced people like him think about things happening in the software development world.

(Probably I'll even enjoy reading about what he does on his "indulge" time. That's what the fandom is like.)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Existing-Addiso...

[2] https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html

I get this too.

Meanwhile, I wonder: are talks even worth it? A blog post can reach orders of magnitude more people, can be edited to perfection in advance, and is much easier for most people to consume (supports searching, skimming, quoting, out-of-order reading etc.). Even the Q&A part is much better conducted on a site like HN than live.

It seems to me that a good blog post is strictly better than a talk. Yet we're willing to spend way more money and effort on talks, for some reason?

"I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m lucky enough to be able to avoid things that make me miserable"

I'm there. I've reached a point in my evolution as a programmer that I have ways I like to do things. Ways that work for me. Unfortunately they are not popular. But I'm tired of working on stuff the way others want it done. I'm teetering on the brink of either early retirement or contract work with a strict "my way or the highway" approach. We'll see what happens.

I wanted to only comment that I admire the bravery of the author being so open about such personal fears like this. Many times it's safer to not open up because there maybe little to gain and potentially a lot to lose.

I've done a lot of public speaking. Not really keynote stuff, and probably not to audiences more than a couple hundred, and I've never been paid for it.

I've not gotten particularly good at it. As I often say: "I'm quite comfortable, speaking in public, but I'm not very good at it. That's a really bad combination."

Appreciate the vulnerability. "Powering through" mental health problems is so common, maybe even expected in some cultures. Your courage to talk publicly about your personal struggles with anxiety will surely help others to set boundaries and manage their own struggles in healthy ways.

How wonderfully liberating when people dare to be honest with themselves and others. It's a good thing.

For me, the dread is in the preparation. Once I'm on the proverbial stage, everything is usually good if I have prepared a good presentation. There is definitely some pre-stage anxiety, but I know it will go away when I actually present.

But the preparation, I hate it so much. Sitting in front of that empty window and trying to come up with something that makes sense, then refactoring it multiple times. Practicing, identifying stumbling points, fixing them... I put it off as long as I can, but not how I put off some programming work if it's boring, instead I put it off because of how dreadful it feels. This is somewhat of a vicious cycle, because there's only so much on-stage adrenaline and maybe resulting improvisation power can do: To have a good talk, you have to have a good preparation, but if you put it off because it is so anxiety-inducing, the fear that you are not prepared enough as a result is even more anxiety-inducing.

Fair play to him for coming forward and good luck, I say.

I always assume that the people doing talks are eager to do so, or at the very least find the adrenaline etc of the "performance" worth it when compared to the nerves and work involved.

I wonder if there are a lot of people in the "don't want to do this but feel I have to" category.

(I have no interest in public speaking, and don't make any effort to be put in such a position)

An interesting difference between the original post and a few comments here is what people did about their anxiety.

Fowler has powered through it, and although unpleasant he was able to deliver. He says he felt no right to complain because he understood that many people do much more objectively risky and painful things and he was too proud a professional to quit.

I think the above is a good insight into what success looks like. It's not that all the right things are easy, it's that the idea of not doing them scares you more than the pain of doing them.

Then it seems like he finally got to a place where he knows he's accomplished and impactful and no longer needs to do the thing he doesn't like, which is awesome as well. The important thing is that this happens after success, not before.

The important thing is "to do." I think in many cases, anxiety evaporates once you prove to yourself through experience that you can handle the situation (it's hard to fear something you survived a thousand times). In his case, the anxiety continued to be painful but at least he had the intellectual strength to say "I know this sucks but I know it's not real" and power through. Which again, powering through - grit - is really important.

I never had it that hard but I did have massive social anxiety. If I had to be in a social situation, much less public speaking, I'd dread and overthink it. And probably if I stayed an IC engineer i would be able to continue to have this problem forever. What happened instead is I started to do management and recruiting and sales - all of which forced me to talk to people one on one and in groups constantly. I didn't notice when it happened but one day I realized that my anxiety was gone because I had disproved its thesis.

It was funny a few years ago at our wedding, my wife and I forgot to prepare a speech. We realized this with a few mins to go and my wife (who is actually very social) went into "oh shit, can you do this cuz I can't?" mode. I quickly drafted a few points in my head and delivered a speech I was proud of. It was amazing to reflect on this as something I could just do, which would have paralyzed me a few years earlier.

The point is, do things that genuinely scare you. There's a good chance you'll realize they are not scary. Or at least like in Fowlers case you'll recognize that you are able to power through and get success.

I think this goes hand-in-hand with recent research about psychological safety at work. If you are forced to give the talks, you don't feel psychologically safe because your livelihood is being used as leverage to make you give talks. If, on the other hand, they encourage you to give talks but don't force it it's much easier to cope with and less stressful.

Very good communicator. And one of the most 'balanced' speakers. I have seen a few people get so stuck in topics that they forget about the bigger contexts (for example, craftsmanship, microservices). He always looked pragmatic in his approach (for example, tech debt). Possibly because he is not only a consultant but works for a company that delivers things into production- and comes up with radar).

He can explain the overall concepts very well. You can then go into details. (Refactoring book, UML distilled, NoSQL distilled, etc. I even learned LMAX first from his bliki.)

Going by blogs on his site and his signature series books, I certainly look forward to things he will write/ contribute to.

Martin mentions online talks explicitly as something that he found even harder, but the reference is to talks that are still done live. I wonder if pre-recorded talks would alleviate some of the stress/anxiety.

Personally I loved the opportunity I got to pre-record a talk and then allow the conference organisers to premiere it on YouTube[1]. It works incredibly well and enables speakers to answer questions live while the talk is played. I hope more conferences adopt this.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxLL3km21Aw&list=PLxLdEZg8DR...

I completely understand this. Being an open-source software developer, I've constantly had to deliver technical talks in front of crowds of experienced, seasoned professionals at various conferences, of up to 300 people in size. And although I went through the same panicky experience in the first years of doing this, I developed several techniques that have helped me grow into actually embracing and longing for these talks:

* "growth slides": challenge yourself to deliver a slide that scares you, but which is actually a great idea! Examples: a fun, refreshing introductory story to break the ice, including your SO in the "about me" section and sneaking in the fact that you love them, a clever joke-slide at a random point that is SURELY a good idea, etc.

* writing down the difficult parts of the talk: a bit time-consuming, but writing down the exact content of the more challenging segments of the talk will help cool you off. Especially important if English is not your first language, as in my case.

* "box breathing": a US Navy breathing technique that I would perform for 10 minutes leading into the presentation, stabilizing my breathing, brain and emotions.

> It’s not always been this way. When I was a kid at school I felt none of the fear of public speaking that others talked about. I enjoyed being on stage, and with my loud voice and plenty of confidence, I felt good about being there. That continued to be true once I entered the world of work, and my comfort on-stage did much to boost my career. But over time, this changed.

I am very curious about this dynamic, and why it changed.

Talking to people I did not know was very problematic for me too. It was really crippling, sickening. Whether I had to speak to a single person or a hundred it was the same problem to me. On the other hand I had absolutely no problem talking to a friend or a person I know very well, but in a "formal setting" (like giving a talk or talking to my boss) I felt paralyzed and sick days before I had to speak. I remember spending hours trying to plan my future conversation with somebody like a program. I was literally trying to write every words that should come to my mouth and make different plans for every possible sentences my interlocutor would say.

Of course the stress level was much higher when I knew there would be a crowd listening to me. During my short career I had to give talks in English which to make it worse is not my mother tongue (I am French and bbtw I apologize my written English is also far from perfect). I felt somehow "jealous" of some people I was working with. They seemingly felt no stress at all when we had to give these conferences.

Now I am still not 100% comfortable talking to other people but I believe I made huge progress. I believe one important thing is to accept yourself as you are. Don't try to be someone else. Don't be so egocentric. Other people are no so different than you. I am really nice person and these people in front of you are also very nice why shouldn't they be ?

Yes I know it sound like some stupid Facebook post that some teenager would copy/paste. But at some point this realization somehow helped me.

Here is an other more concrete advice. I have been taking theater class for about 7 months now and I will have my first performance before an audience at the end of July. I believe theater really helped my confidence.

What a relief. I thought he was going to announce a new architecture/methodology and we'd have to start bracing ourselves to convince our developers they don't need to shift to it right away.

Jokes aside, kudos to Mr Fowler for the decision. I'm sure we are all going to benefit even more from his focus to writing and things that don't make him miserable.

The key to anxiety issues related to speaking is not to worry about making a mistake or a faux pas. I don't know but my whole life, anytime anybody asked me to do something in front of others it was never an issue. The odd thing was, the more impromptu the easier. That's because there is absolutely no expectations by the audience then at that point. Prepared stuff nobody cares if you come reading off of a paper, so long as you aren't staring at it but glance at it from time to time.

The ultimate way to do this though is go out and try new things. Feel vulnerable and interact with the world, and others, with a sort of whimsy. And have fun with it. Remember that the audience is being held hostage in the situation too!

Unexpectedly personal, but I'm happy he's sharing this with us. We're all human, eh?

This story is often told in France:

"Sarah Bernhardt, one of the most famous French actresses in the late XIXth Century, used to suffer from stage fright. Once, a young actress told her she didn’t experience it. Bernhardt answered: “don’t worry, it will come with talent”.

If you fear public speaking, you are in good company, it’s very common.

Speaking is inevitable part of life. Even if you’re not giving large presentations you are speaking every day to smaller groups. If you want to improve how you feel, I highly recommend checking out toastmasters. It helped me get much more comfortable with public speaking. I still get nervous, but it’s manageable.

Wow, he really hid it well. I remember thinking how composed he was and how clearly he communicated whilst watching videos of him speak

Do more of what makes you happy. All the best!

I am so glad to hear it’s not just me. I have recently been doing some meditation to help me with this.

I’m surprised that nobody mentioned therapy as a way to cope with anxiety and public speaking phobias. I’ve been there and is awful.

There are many different approaches, like CBT and lately third wave of behavioral therapies.

I am a person while like to more work and less talk and it sucks me when people who only speak and don't do work as much as I do get more attention.

It's normal to have anxiety about public speaking. It's also within reach of most to overcome it. I think taking meds for it is not a good practice at all.

It's important to distinguish the fear you may have of speaking in front of people from the fear you may have of presenting incorrect material. If you're giving an instructional speech about a practice/process that's well known with zero controversy, and which you are very familiar with, do you still have anxiety?

That's a different breed of anxiety than when you are postulating in front of a crowd of peers about fringe techniques that you may harbor doubts about yourself (a new way to do a process, or a change to the accepted standard, or a new interpretation of history, etc).

It's important to distinguish what's causing the anxiety because the fix is different for these two issues. For the latter, it's building confidence in your own preparation and learning. Do you know what you're talking about? Could you put it on paper and publish it and not look like a jackass? If so, carry on.

For the former - like you just get anxiety from talking in front of people even about material that is uncontroversial - the key is kind of a mind trick on yourself. For me, I try to find some aspect of the topic that I really love and enjoy, and am fascinated by. If I can do that, my mind is focused on giving and sharing that fascination, and all anxiety goes away.

That said, I started speaking publicly in high school as part of Academic Decathlon - speech competitions and the like. I remember being anxious about doing that in the same way I would be anxious about a school musical. As a kid, overcoming that and just doing it is the first step to learning how to enjoy it.

I highly recommend that parents expose their kids to this early - school plays, speech competitions - if they have the opportunity to do so. With most skills in life, exposure to it as a kid helps greatly.

As an adult, I look back on those younger days about stressing over a two-minute speech with some amusement. Now I have zero problem talking for 40+ minutes. It's not something I every worked up to like reps of an exercise, it's just the relatively simple trick of falling in love with subject matter and having confidence that you know the material and have seen a thing or two that gives you some authority (road mileage) on the topic. Probably also advantageous as an adult to recognize that EVERYBODY out there in the world is fundamentally a hack in life, just trying to get by day-by-day, the same as you, wanting to understand things and for people to treat them with dignity.

Speaking is serving - think of it that way and (for me at least) anxiety goes away.

Thanks for all the talks Martin

https://youtu.be/qI_g07C_Q5I

Whats the worst thing that happens if a talk goes poorly? Some loss of approval from peers? Why is this valued at all. It's not like any of those peers would have done it better.

There have been a lot of character assassination's on prominent white men in the conference space by far left extremists. I wonder how much of his anxiety can be attributed to seeing colleagues go through that?

I really like Clean Code and agreed with a lot of the points it makes. I would be lying if I said Bob Martin hasn't made me a better programmer. And I can can empathize with what he's saying about not liking public speaking anymore.

Despite this, part of me wonders if the reason to pick now as to time to stop doesn't have something to do with the criticism- valid or otherwise- he's now receiving. Some of his Clean Code videos have some pretty offensive stereotypes which have been pointed out. Some of his loud political views have been criticized. People are saying they won't share a stage with him.

People always have reasons to quit but the precise moment they choose to quit often tells the story of why they're really quitting.

Martin - if you're here, and would want to continue speaking were it not for the physical problems you face - perhaps you should give beta blockers a shot? Side effects are uncommon, risks are low, addictive potential is low, so doctors are generally willing to prescribe them if the patient requests it.

It sounds like you're just experiencing stage fright. Many professional performers get this way, and beta blockers have been shown to help reduce the physical symptoms of stage fright(tachycardia, sweating, etc): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6129674/

I had zero problem public speaking in school, or in casual public speaking (ie addressing participants in a sports league I help run), but I learned when I was 25 that I actually do have public speaking anxiety from a professional perspective. Perhaps it is because school/sports were low-stake activities in my mind, whereas I know that my professional performance is directly tied to my ability to support my family. So now I occasionally take a beta blocker before a big presentation, and they go as smoothly as my public speaking did back in college.

Thank you, Uncle Bob, for stating the obvious. As we enter an era where remote, distributed work is common, normalized, and, nay, even the default, we will quickly realize that human contact at work is unnecessary.

That teammate tapping you on the shoulder to ask you "a quick question"? An unnecessary distraction. A daily standup where you take turns passing a ball around and making up a 30-second summary of what you did yesterday? A stressful and useless waste of time.

Outside of companies heavy on the office politics, it should quickly become obvious that full-remote, full-async teams are far more effective, and sanity will finally prevail.