Rehearse crisis scripts so your worst day becomes your best performance

The auditorium lights buzzed faintly as Jay clicked to the first slide. The projector froze, then went black. He felt the familiar rush—heat up the spine and hands going cold. He looked at the front row and said, “We’ll go analog.” A teammate passed the one‑page handout, Jay grabbed a marker, and he drew the core diagram on the whiteboard. The room leaned in. Ten minutes later, IT had the screen back, but by then the audience was already with him.

This wasn’t luck. Two weeks earlier, the team had built a two‑minute crisis checklist: If slides fail, then whiteboard the core story, hand out the one‑pager, and move to Q&A early. They rehearsed once with a timer and a teammate tapping a pen to add noise. A micro‑anecdote: in a debate club, a student forgot a key note card. She paused, took a slow breath, and said, “Here’s the argument in three parts.” She’d practiced that line.

Under pressure, attention narrows and working memory shrinks. That’s why you stage tools: printouts in the bag, a backup file, water on the podium. You don’t trust adrenaline to remember everything. The checklist sits in your notebook, not because you’ll read it, but because writing it once makes it easy to recall.

This approach borrows from aviation and medicine, where checklists save lives by offloading memory under stress. If‑then plans make behavior automatic when cues appear. Stress inoculation helps your brain learn that spikes are survivable and manageable. On the day everything shakes, your hands still know what to do.

Choose the three crises you’re most likely to face, then write a simple if‑then script with three small actions for each one. Rehearse once under mild stress—a timer, a little noise, or a friend watching—so your brain can find the script when the stakes rise. Stage your tools where you’ll need them, from printouts to backup files and water. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s reliability. Draft your checklist tonight and do one five‑minute practice run before your next big moment.