Paul Graham consistently says ‘um’ ~7 times per minute

If anyone has a similar habit and wants to stop it I will tell how my high school fixed it for almost all of us.<p>In my (private) high school's health class "like" and "um" and others were referred to as "stop-words" by the teacher because people would say them instead of pausing. It's really obvious once you look for them, for instance here with pg but anywhere really. I remember hearing college tour guides that would literally say "um" after every single sentence, probably unbeknownst to themselves!<p>Almost every class in the school had projects, and the health class project was for us to remove the stop words from our speech by the end of the semester. We did this by all using recording software (had to submit either by cassette tape or wav/mp3) and answering questions such as "Do you want to live forever and why or why not?" by speaking for at least 5 minutes. These were our homework assignments maybe once a month, with the overarching goal considered as the class project.<p>We had to very consciously never use any stop words. We could pause the recorder if we had trouble thinking of what to say, but we could never say those words.<p>I was skeptical of the assignment at first but my class all agreed by the end of the semester that it made us much better speakers, simply learning to consider our pauses instead of filling the silence with "like" and "um".

Believe it or not I wrote the first draft of an essay about this yesterday. (I went on a one-day trip to NYC and wrote the first draft of one in each direction.) So stay tuned.

As someone who's not a great speaker, it's always disconcerted me a bit about the disproportionate weight we (myself included) place on the <i>manner</i> in which a message is presented.<p>PG's a great thinker about the subjects he discusses, and his essays have a very high signal to noise ratio. But when this video was first posted the 'umms' was one of the top comment, and probably detracted quite a bit from the core message he was conveying. Had this been an essay, I suspect the reception would have been more positive.<p>Conversely, if you re-read the TSA blog response which we all ridiculed, it was actually an EXCELLENT response for a TV news journal format (think O'Reilly or Anderson Cooper). He dodged the issue, obfuscated a bit, threw in a few quips, and ended the blog post addressing a completely different issue. If the TSA rep had gave that response on TV, many people would have perceived the TSA to have 'won' the argument. But because it was in written format, we were all free to dissect for the actual content, and we came away underwhelmed.<p>REALLY good speakers have an almost magical ability to enchant audiences even if they're not saying anything of importance. Probably the best public speaker I've ever seen was a preacher who when I parsed for content wasn't saying much. A close second was a Yale undergrad years ago doing a debate competition about some trivial topic I can't even recall. I do remember the impression he left though, and thinking this guy was good enough to temporarily convince me that the sun revolved around the earth.

This is a common habit for PG. I've seen him speak in person 2-3 times and watched a handful of videos of him, and each time I noticed the amount that he said "um". Obviously the content is valuable and worth listening to, but it is naive to say that these sort of distractions by any speaker are worth overlooking.<p>Unfortunately, these are distractions from the content, which is what matters. Simple exercises could could help fix the habit with only a few hours of practice.<p>A trick that helped me in college was to say "uh" or "um" every other word while practicing a speech. This mental trick causes you to be hyper-aware of the habit, thus helping you to subconsciously stop inserting the words into speech. Try it out sometime.

&#62; I wondered if he was a little nervous, but that didn’t seem likely for someone in his position.<p>All sorts of people can get nervous speaking in public, including people that are thought of as being 'natural' public speakers like Steve Jobs (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY</a>) and Sam Harris (<a href="http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-silent-crowd-overcoming-your-fear-of-public-speaking/" rel="nofollow">http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-silent-crowd-overcomi...</a>), as well as billionaires (<a href="http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so-amazingly-brilliant-but-so-ineloquent-in-public-speaking-stituations" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so-amazi...</a>) and CEOs (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hu3iG8B2g" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hu3iG8B2g</a>).

If this research on PG, or other speakers, continues please also record the room temperature so we can see if the um rate varies with temperature.

Am I the only person who found the graph in the article a little weird? Wouldn't it have been more illustrative of the author's point (that the frequency of ums/uhs per minute was pretty consistent) to show a graph of ums/uhs per minute instead of total ums/uhs at any given time? (i.e. the graph should have been almost flat).

It's a very unique 'um', too. You could tell he was pretty nervous. But as someone who has had my 'um's during speeches ruthlessly pointed out to me, I'm basically trained to notice when someone says 'um.' PG's speech was tough to listen to.

I would love a "Tech Jam" -- like a poetry jam, where you get in front of an audiance and can speak on any subject (tech related) for 5 minutes or so to get over the fear of speaking and to get over the propensity to say uhm all the time.<p>In such a jam, it would be great to let everyone follow some simple structure:<p>* My name<p>* My company<p>* My passion<p>* My skills as it related to that passion<p>Or something along these lines. Whatever the structure is - just let it be practice and not tied to anything other than stage time.

I was there for his pycon talk, and it seemed to me (they stood out for me as well) that he was using disfluencies to express disbelief or punctuate something extraordinary or unexpected with humor. I do this too? But instead of uhm, I'll end a statement on a rising tone as in an interrogative?

This is just a minor end-of-thought speaking affectation. I've never really been bothered by it. John Carmack has an even more characteristic "um" which comes out like the word "I'm". That honestly did bother me at first, but you get over it after a while.<p>Not a big deal unless you're really worried about your first impression. Once you're where John Carmack or Paul Graham is, that's not an issue.<p>I recently noticed that Chuck Klosterman's delivery sounds a lot like an excited Paul Graham. He's a good model for what Paul would sound like with more flow between individual thoughts:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yTwbga3lGM#t=39m10s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yTwbga3lGM#t=39m10s</a>

I quit on my own, instantly, within 3 minutes of practice by simply TALKING SLOWER. It's like I gave my brain enough time to send words to my mouth and I stopped saying "um" and pausing immediately. It felt miraculous. lol.

Neat post. Good way to highlight how easy it is to use your app (I'm assuming it's easy).<p>I clicked on your logo on that page, and although it is a clickable element, NOTHING HAPPENED. Please, please, please, please link your logo to your home page. Please.

I have noticed that my annoyance at a speaker's 'um' goes way up when I don't like the speaker, or the subject matter is turning me off.<p>When the new division head announced that we'd been acquired because Sprint loved everything about us, and he was only introducing a few minor, very cosmetic, changes? All I could focus on was his 'um's.<p>That and my resume.<p>pg talking about why Hacker News has it's quirks? Loved it.<p>I guess the same thing happens with spouses. My second wife does things that I -know- should annoy me. They do when other people do them. But with her .. it's cute. Adorable. Another reason why I love her so much.<p>Been almost fifteen years since I got hitched - I guess it's true love.

I first read many PG's essays, and only recently has seen him on video. But, by that time, my attitude was set in such way, that I take his ummms as a sign that he is taking a wee bit of time to translate what is going in his head into more human understandable form. His essays show clearly the depth of thinking. Such thoughts need extra effort/time to translate from human lisp to human language. So, I have no problem that PG takes a second now and then to formulate a thought to be understandable by a wider audience.

I really think my answer here on Quora about Peter Thiel explains the main part of this: <a href="http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so-amazingly-brilliant-but-so-ineloquent-in-public-speaking-stituations/answer/Justin-Meltzer" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so-amazi...</a><p>I don't think it's nerves as much as it's a mismatch between someone's internal intelligence/thinking speed and their ability to translate that into speech on the spot.

This is something that can be curbed with practice. If you give your presentation to someone, they should point this out. To get better at public speaking, you should try to curb any behavior that detracts from the message that you want to deliver.<p>I remember listening to RMS talk at the HOPE conference one year and it was painful to watch him talk. He obviously needed very long breaks when he was speaking, using them to take sips of Pepsi. The pauses were at times in his speaking were almost planned for some sort of applause or at best internal agreement and reflection on the idea. It was all very awkward, if you can't tell.<p>It was RMS, so nobody cared, but I'm sure that he could have gotten his message across better with some effort.

Reading this thread, the masses of 'um's here really feel contagious.. i wouldn't want to be starting a speech right now.<p>I have to say PGs 'UHM's were very noticeable (distracting, even), although that perhaps was a little influenced by the prior mention.<p>Finally- slightly OT but i missed the discussion thread- I was really disappointed by Paul's responses to the questions asked. While I understand it is difficult to come up with a proper response on the spot, i thought the questions particularly about university's peripheral 'roles', and manufacturing-oriented start-ups were really insightful and his mostly side-stepping answers really missed an opportunity.

I am someone who says UM a LOT.<p>I think and speak very fast - but when I speak in front of others, my physical speaking ability doesnt keep up with my thinking and I end up saying UM a lot.<p>I watched others speak and never say UM and I just don't know how they do it.

This post and all the comments seems a little rude. This isn't a 4h or toastmasters feedback forum. Letting someone know they need to work on their public speaking skills is something better done in private. Whatever they were trying to communicate they were doing their best to communicate it at the time, and it's rude to focus on speech difficulties instead of content. Believe it or not some individuals have neurological conditions that prevent super-clear communication, but it's not a nice thing to point out outside of a venue designed to improve public speaking.

I find it's not the frequency of these words, but the volume and inflection that's the problem. There are a series of computer science lectures on youtube, and also some courses I had at university where the lecturer says UMMMMM at a substantially higher volume than the rest of their speech, and drags it out for a second or more.<p>The resultant sound is like a cow mooing, or someone doing an offensive impersonation of a downs syndrome patient at the top of their voice. The effect is totally unbearable and I have no idea how people sit through hours of this stuff.

Vocal pauses are natural, and they happen. Our brains can handle them. Why is it even considered personal betterment to expend energy replacing them with whitespace?

The link to the video[1] (at least at the time of posting) is wrong—it's a talk by Katie Cunningham! The correct link is [2].<p>[1] <a href="http://pyvideo.org/video/628/keynote-paul-graham-ycombinator" rel="nofollow">http://pyvideo.org/video/628/keynote-paul-graham-ycombinator</a> [2] <a href="http://pyvideo.org/video/626/keynote-paul-graham-ycombinator" rel="nofollow">http://pyvideo.org/video/626/keynote-paul-graham-ycombinator</a>

Maybe this one speech was an outlier; I haven't noticed this in previous pg speeches (in front of 300+ people, and some televised things like the NY event).<p>Peter Thiel, on the other hand, has consistently technically-bad speech patterns, but the content is compelling enough to make up for it.<p>Tracking the same speaker in multiple venues/contexts vs. comparing different speakers seems a lot more interesting.

I didn't think he was nervous. That just sounded like his speech pattern. I found it refreshing that he didn't sound like a salesman.

Is there any early videos of him speaking where he exhibits stuttering (or other speech impediment)? It sounds like when people who "self-treat" (intentionally or not) and substitute one impediment for another, ideally one less apparent.<p>Then again maybe it's one of those habitual things, for example when someone says "Knowwhatimean" repeatedly.

Umm, no: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/67469618/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/video/67469618/</a>

The 'um's are not the parts that matter.

Ha - funny, this is the first thing I noticed when watching the video of this presentation, and it drove me so crazy I only made it through the first 3 minutes before I had to stop watching. Wish it wasn't the case, would have loved to watch the whole thing, but it was maddening....

I'd rather listen to an average presenter with great content than a great presenter with average content.

Nonetheless, it's impressive he can even public speak at all given the fact he's a hacker by nature.

I believe its common for great thinkers/writers. If someone is able to speak something valuable faster without the need to feel pauses it means that he either super-fast thinker or he memorized/polished his speech, which is something, i guess, PG dont have time for.

Hmmm. I commented on this in the other hacker news entry (for his talk) and got a -1 for it. I guess this is just a habit formed after many years. The quality of the talk is still great and that what's most important.

I've really enjoyed the presentation but I've noticed the 'um' too. hopefully pg will see this thread as constructive criticism and he'll make an effort to get rid of the 'um'.

Before I watched the talk I read comments complaining about the 'um's, so I was extra focused on it. When I watched the talk I did not find it distracting at all. YMMV

Good way to get attention to your service, and I did check it out, but, uh, pricing? Would have considered service but unknown cost made me head back to HN.

Maybe not entirely on topic but does anyone have any good tips on dealing with stammer or stutter related issues? Maybe exercises or something?

His brain has too much throughput for his mouth to handle! So he uses 'Um' as a kind of verbal buffering device.

pg also ends a lot of sentences with "right?" I used to have the same affectation, and have worked hard to eliminate it. The main one that remains in my own speech is saying "so" (as a transition) a bit too much. I have the video to prove it; you'll see what I mean on Pi Day.

i loved the content, but i think that he could use some coaching on how to give presentations. i did find the 'um's to be distracting.

who cares?

Tough crowd.

Indeed I can only hear the first 3 minutes as those 'um's starts to drive me crazy, hope he watches his own speech and improves his speech skill soon.

Barack Obama does the same thing.

And "like"

The only people this matters to is people who count how many times the speaker says "um". Toastmasters types. The rest of us can see the forest for the trees.

I think that's a sign of greatness. Mark Zuckerberg has, um, the same trait.

'umms', intentional or not, can actually help the speaker in seeming more genuine.<p>For example, I hit on a lot of women and in the process, over some time, end up saying basically the same lines and stories. I risk coming across as too-smooth/scripted which is just as bad as being very nervous.<p>Especially when retelling a story, I intentionally inject plenty of 'umms' and look up as if I am trying to recollect something from my memory.