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FILLER WORDS

How to stop saying um, like and other filler words

In your head you're fluent. Then you open your mouth in the meeting and out comes "so, um, basically, um." You hear it land, and it throws you more than the sentence did.

Here's what's going on. "Um" holds your place. When your mouth is open and your brain hasn't found the next chunk yet, silence feels dangerous, so your mouth fills the gap with a sound. Everyone does it. You just can't hear yourself doing it, and nobody mentioned it.

That points at the real fix. The um comes from fear of the pause. Lose the fear and the um has nothing to fill.

What filler words are

Filler words are the sounds and stock phrases you say while your brain finds the next words. Cut one and the sentence means the same thing. The common ones in English:

Most of these are real words too. "It looks like rain" uses like as a word. "We need to, like, fix the onboarding" uses it as filler. The test is whether the sentence loses anything when you cut it.

Why you say um, and why "just pause" doesn't stick

Two things run at once when you present: what you're about to say, and how you feel about the gap before you say it. Under pressure your working memory gets noisy and your planning slows down, so the gaps get longer. A long gap with a microphone on is where um lives.

Most advice says to pause instead. That's correct and useless on its own. To a nervous speaker, a silent pause feels like a five-second power cut with everyone watching. The pause has to start feeling like a choice, and that only happens with reps where you hear the difference.

One more detail: fillers come in different kinds. Some show up when you switch topics. Some show up when you lose the thread. A few are pure habit, the kind you'd say reading a grocery list out loud. The drill below targets the lost-thread kind, which clusters mid-thought. If yours show up at topic switches, that's a planning problem, and the fix belongs in your outline.

The drill: close your mouth and pause

Ten minutes out loud, once a day for a week. You need your phone's voice recorder.

  1. Pick a topic you can riff on: your last project, your commute, why your industry's onboarding is broken. Anything works.
  2. Talk about it for 90 seconds and record it. Use your normal speed and don't perform. If you say um, let it happen. This first take is your baseline.
  3. Play it back and count the fillers. Really count them and write the number down. Most people are surprised, which is the point. The count turns a vague problem into one you can measure.
  4. Do a second take with one rule: when you lose the thread, close your mouth. Skip the um and the "like." Stop, count one beat in your head, then carry on with the next chunk. It's hard to say um with your lips together, so the closed mouth does most of the work.
  5. Record take two and count again. Then do take three and compare the three counts. The closed-mouth rule goes after the reflex to fill silence, so the count is where you'll see whether it's working.

The count matters as much as the drill. Seeing the number move between takes is what makes a pause start to feel like competence. It's also hard to get an honest count on your own, because your ear filters out your own fillers while you talk.

In the room: making the pause land

What people get wrong

Two common moves backfire. The first is swapping um for "so," "like" or "you know." The count stays the same, the word changes and listeners still notice. The second is trying to remove every gap. Scripted-sounding delivery comes across worse than a few honest pauses. Natural pauses are part of clear speech, even for people who speak for a living.

Also, nobody counts your fillers the way you do. A couple of ums in a well-organized talk bother listeners far less than a rushed, memorized delivery with none. Aim for fillers nobody notices.

Practice it in Charisma Lab

Filler Elimination is one of the 48 techniques in Train. It gives you a line full of fillers to say without them, then checks your take for words like "like", "basically" and "you know" and tells you which ones it caught. It reads a transcript of your take, which can leave out um and uh, so listen for those when you play it back. In Speak, tap the center, tell the coach what the talk is for and run it out loud. You hear each take played back, and the coach tells you what to fix, like a filler habit or a pause you skipped.

Setup is free and includes a short live session with the coach. See pricing.

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FAQ

Are filler words bad?

In moderation, no. An occasional um barely registers with listeners. The problem is density. Several per sentence makes you sound unsure of your material, whether or not you are.

How long until the drill works?

It varies. Compare take one with take two on the same day, then compare recordings across a week or two. You're looking for the pause to become your default under real pressure.

Does saying um mean I don't know my content?

Usually not. It means your recall is running behind your speaking pace at that moment. Slowing down and adding a beat between points often clears the fillers with no extra prep. If you fill heavily on a topic you know cold, though, the outline needs work.

How do I stop saying like?

Run the same drill and count only your filler likes. Listen for where they land: at the start of a thought, or where you soften an opinion. When you feel one coming, close your mouth and say the next part plain. If like means about ("it took like a week"), say about. Keep the likes that compare things. Those are words, so they stay.

Why can't I hear my own fillers while I'm speaking?

Attention. You're handling content, nerves and delivery at once, so your brain filters the fillers out. A recording gives you the honest count, which is why the drill starts there.

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Updated November 1, 2026.