PACE

How to talk slower, even when you're nervous

Nobody decides to talk fast. Some people have always talked that way. Others speed up only when it counts, in an interview, a toast or a meeting where everyone is watching.

Rushing can make your point harder to follow, and it's easy to miss while you're the one talking. A recording lets you check it afterward.

The good news: you can practice pace directly, because a recording shows it on every take. You need a number to check and a brake you can use live.

How fast is too fast?

There's no single right speed, and the number depends on how you count. Linguists at the University of Pennsylvania measured the speaking rate in 2,438 recorded phone calls, nearly all between strangers. Counting every word both people said over the length of the call, the average was 196 words a minute. Single calls ran from 111 to 291. Divided instead by the summed length of each person's turns, which overlapped a lot, the average fell to 164 (Yuan, Liberman and Cieri, 2006).

So judge your speed by your listeners. If people often ask you to repeat yourself, try slowing down and ask whether that makes you easier to follow. On a recording, listen for two signs of rushing: your best line gets no pause after it, or your pace jumps the moment you get nervous.

The record-and-compare drill

Do this once today. It takes about ten minutes.

Record yourself explaining something you know well. Two minutes, no notes, phone on the table. Keep it low-stakes, like what you do at work or how your weekend went.
Listen back and count. Pick a ten-second stretch where you felt calm and one where you felt rushed, then count the words in each. Multiply each count by six to estimate words a minute. The gap between the two shows how much you speed up.
Find the moment you speed up. Check the middle of long sentences, the spot right after you lose the thread and anywhere near a number or a name.
Record a second take with a comfortable breath at the end of every sentence. Count comparable stretches again.

Listening back gives you specific stretches to work on in your next take.

The one-breath-per-sentence rule

This is the brake for real situations, and it's one rule: finish each sentence, then take a comfortable breath before the next one starts. Speech therapists use pauses to slow speech down too: ASHA's guide for clinicians calls pausing "an effective method of rate control" (ASHA).

Keep your sentences short enough to say on one breath. Then compare recordings to see whether the pauses stop you rushing. Each pause also gives you a moment to plan the next sentence.

Practice it as a drill before you trust it live. Read any paragraph out loud with one breath per sentence, for two minutes a day. It may feel too slow at first. Check the recording and trust it over the feeling.

What to do when you catch yourself speeding up

Fixes in the middle of a talk should be quiet. Two are easy to use.

Breathe at the slide change. Take your beat of silence while the next slide comes up.

Drop the filler and let the pause replace it. The um you were about to say was a stall while you searched for the next word. A quiet half-second gives you the same time to think.

If you've always talked fast

If fast is simply how you talk, the same tools apply: measure your pace, then build in pauses. But if people often can't follow you, your words run together and slowing down never seems to stick, ask a speech-language pathologist about cluttering.

ASHA is the professional body for speech-language pathologists in the US. It describes cluttering as a fluency disorder: speech that sounds abnormally fast or irregular, with pauses in odd places and syllables that blur together or drop out. Listeners hear it as rapid even when the measured rate is no faster than average. ASHA also notes that slowing down typically helps reduce the symptoms (ASHA).

Practice it in Charisma Lab

Charisma Lab is a speaking coach on your iPhone. Open Voice Cam on its home screen to record yourself for up to a minute, with the camera or audio only. As you talk, it shows an estimate of your pace in words per minute, along with your pitch, volume and pauses. Record the same minute twice, once the way you'd normally say it and once with a breath after every sentence. Then compare the numbers.

In Train, Commanding Pace hands you a line like "Let me walk you through my thinking." and shows your words per minute after every take, with a target of 100 to 130. It's in the Presence track and opens once you reach 50% on Grounded Volume, which opens at 50% on The Declarative.

Setup is free and includes a short live session with the coach. After that, the app needs Pro, which is $14.99 a month in the US. See pricing.

Get the app

FAQ

How do I talk slower in an interview?

Use the same brake: finish each sentence, then breathe. When a question catches you off guard, take a moment before you answer. Rehearse your main answers out loud and record them, since the interview is a bad place to find out you rush. See how to practice for an interview by yourself.

How do I talk slower and clearer?

Slowing down gives you time to finish each word. If your words still blur at a slower pace, work on your word endings and your volume. See how to be more articulate and speak clearly.

How do I talk slower during a presentation?

Put a breath at each slide change and after each point you want people to remember. Rehearse the whole talk out loud and record it, so you hear where you rush before your audience does.

Does slowing down make you sound boring?

It doesn't have to. Slower speech can still sound lively when your pitch and volume keep moving. Listen back for stretches that drag, and if your voice stays on one note, see how to fix a monotone voice.

How long does it take to fix fast speech?

It varies. Practice the one-breath rule for two minutes a day and compare your recordings over a week or two. Speeding up under live nerves can take longer to settle, so rehearse the actual talk out loud and timed before any high-stakes moment.

More practice guides

Updated November 2, 2026.