The Lost Art of Professional Bullshitting
Why improvisation beats preparation when everything goes sideways
I've got to present a 2-hour webinar on Tuesday.
I'm building three AI agents live in front of 200-300 people and giving them away.
Most people would find that daunting.
Let's not lie, it is.
Even the best speakers, artists, and actors in the world will tell you there's either a feeling of dread or excitement before they walk on stage.
Now, doing it to a faceless group on a webinar does make it easier.
Let's not pretend I'm headlining Madison Square Garden here.
But it's still an unusual and stressful task.
Here’s the thing about this kind of high-stakes performance.
Preparation only gets you halfway.
When Preparation Meets Reality
You prepare everything.
Your tools are solid, your demonstrations rehearsed, your slides perfect.
You know exactly what you're going to say, when you're going to say it, and how long each section should take.
That's table stakes.
That's the obvious part everyone focuses on.
But then Tuesday arrives and your screen share lags for 30 seconds.
Your co-host can't find the document.
The agent takes two minutes to execute instead of thirty seconds.
And suddenly, there you are, 200 people watching, silence creeping in, and your perfect script is worthless.
This is where most people panic.
This is where presentations fall apart.
Because preparation can't save you from the unpredictable nature of live performance.
What saves you is something else entirely.
Something we've somehow convinced ourselves isn't a professional skill.
The ability to bullshit.
Let me be clear.
By bullshitting, I don't mean lying.
I don't mean pretending you know more than you do or making shit up.
I mean the ability to keep talking and keep people engaged while you're waiting for that agent to finish executing or your co-host to get his documents together.
The ability to recall detailed, relevant information that pertains to what you're teaching.
To remember a random fact someone told you three years ago that people watching today will find useful.
To fill dead air with actual value instead of awkward silence or nervous filler words.
This is a skill that separates good presenters from great ones.
And it's something you can actually train.
The College Presentation That Taught Me Everything
Back in college, we had a communications class.
We had to find a company that interested us, interview people from that company, and put together a report with a full presentation showing our findings.
My good friend Andy was my partner for this project.
He was also away on vacation.
Of course I told him to take the time off and I'd handle the presentation.
But he was only arriving back the day we were meant to present the report, in our first class of the day.
So Andy rocks up, fresh off a flight two hours earlier, looking tired and ready for sleep.
He walks over and goes, "So what's this about?"
I had about one minute to run him through the first couple of slides.
He got the basics.
It wasn't complicated.
I told him I'd handle most of it and he could just read a few quotes from the screen.
We get up to present.
I start talking, working through four slides explaining the company we chose, what they do, their market.
I'm just moving to the slide about the employees we interviewed when Andy interrupts.
"So, we talked to Emma Moore, the head of marketing, and what we discovered was..."
And Andy was off.
He spent ten minutes glancing at our presentation and relaying - completely accurately - the information that was on the screen in a way that kept people engaged and entertained.
He didn't lie.
He didn't make up statistics.
He didn't pretend to know things he didn't.
He just took what was in front of him and turned it into a coherent, interesting narrative on the spot.
That's bullshitting.
The ability to think quick on your feet, improvise, convey information, and keep people interested without lying or fabricating.
The Science of Thinking on Your Feet
Turns out this isn't just some soft skill we should wave away.
Research on improvisation training shows that 67% of professionals report better oral presentation skills and reduced anxiety after improv workshops.
More interesting is that 56% felt more able to deal with stressful situations.
When researchers measured physiological markers, they found participants who used improv techniques showed lower heart rates and decreased cortisol levels during high-pressure situations.
Your body literally responds differently when you've trained yourself to handle the unexpected.
But what’s most interesting is that the benefits were most pronounced for people who were originally the least confident.
The ones who were terrified of public speaking.
Who froze when put on the spot.
Who needed everything scripted.
Improv training didn't just make them slightly better.
It fundamentally changed how they approached uncertain situations.
And this makes sense when you think about it.
Traditional presentation training teaches you to prepare, rehearse, memorize.
All useful.
But it creates a fragile system.
If anything breaks in your carefully constructed sequence, you don't have the tools to recover.
Improv training does the opposite.
It teaches you to build on what's happening in real time.
To use accidents as opportunities.
To trust that you know enough to fill space with value.
One study found that participants reported feeling "less afraid of making mistakes" and more relaxed in spontaneous speaking situations after improv practice.
They weren't more prepared in the traditional sense.
They were more adaptable.
And in live situations, adaptability beats preparation every single time.
What Real Bullshitting Looks Like
Most people think improvisation means having no structure.
That's wrong.
Professional improvisers have frameworks.
They just apply them flexibly.
Same with professional bullshitting.
You're not making things up.
You're drawing from a deep well of knowledge and applying it contextually.
When your demo is taking longer than expected, you don't just say "sorry, this is taking a while."
You fill that time.
"While this is running, let me tell you about why we chose this particular model. Last month I was working with a client who tried the alternative approach, and here's what happened..."
Now you've turned dead time into a case study.
The demo finishes, you've added value, and nobody felt the wait.
Or your co-host can't find the document.
Don't sit there in silence or make awkward small talk.
"This actually gives me a chance to address something three people asked in the chat earlier..."
You're not lying.
You're contextualizing.
You're using the unexpected space to deliver value you would have delivered anyway, just in a different order.
This is why breadth of knowledge matters as much as depth.
You need to have accumulated enough random, relevant information that you can pull from it in real time.
That fact someone mentioned three years ago.
That article you read last week.
That conversation you had at a conference.
All of it becomes ammunition for filling space meaningfully.
How to Train Professional Bullshitting
This isn't a natural talent some people have and others don't.
It's a skill you build deliberately.
First, consume information widely.
Not just in your field.
Read weird articles.
Watch documentaries about topics you know nothing about.
Have conversations with people who do completely different work.
You're building a knowledge base you can draw from.
Second, practice recalling and connecting ideas without preparation.
Try explaining complex topics to friends without notes.
Force yourself to find examples and analogies on the spot.
Record yourself talking about your work for five minutes straight without pausing.
Watch it back.
Notice where you struggle to fill space.
Those are your weak points.
Third, embrace the pause.
Most people panic during silence and fill it with "um" and "uh" and "so yeah."
Silence is fine.
A two-second pause while you gather your thoughts reads as confidence, not uncertainty.
What breaks presentations is nervous filler, not brief quiet.
Fourth, collect stories.
Real ones, from your life and work.
File them away mentally by theme.
Client success stories.
Mistakes you made.
Interesting observations.
Technical explanations that worked well.
When you need to fill time, you can reach into this mental filing cabinet and pull out something relevant.
The more stories you have catalogued, the easier this becomes.
Finally, practice recovering from mistakes in low-stakes environments.
Deliberately mess up in casual presentations.
See how it feels to improvise your way back on track.
The first few times will be uncomfortable.
Then it becomes normal.
Then it becomes a tool you can deploy with confidence.
This is what Andy had done, probably without realizing it.
Years of conversations, presentations, and social situations where he'd had to think on his feet.
By the time he showed up to our college presentation jet-lagged and unprepared, improvising his way through it wasn't scary.
It was just another Tuesday.
Why This Matters Beyond Presentations
The ability to articulate ideas clearly under pressure shows up everywhere.
Client calls where they ask unexpected questions.
Meetings where you're put on the spot.
Networking events where you need to explain what you do.
Job interviews.
Sales conversations.
Management discussions.
All of these require the same core skill.
Taking what you know and delivering it coherently without perfect preparation.
People who can do this get opportunities others don't.
They get promoted faster.
They build trust more easily.
They're seen as confident and competent even when they're figuring things out in real time.
Because that’s the secret, most of professional life is figuring things out in real time.
The people who pretend they have everything perfectly planned are usually the ones who fall apart when plans change.
The ones who've trained themselves to handle uncertainty, to fill space with value, to think while talking?
Those are the ones who thrive.
So yeah, I've got a 2-hour webinar on Tuesday.
I've prepared everything I reasonably can.
My demonstrations work, my tools are ready, my content is solid.
But I'm not worried about preparation.
I'm confident in my ability to bullshit.
Not to lie, not to fake expertise, but to keep 200 people engaged for two hours even when things inevitably don't go exactly according to plan.
Because the real skill isn't having a perfect script.
It's knowing you don't need one.
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