Step 1: Improve Speaking and Pronunciation

Before I dealt with issue of speaking in public, I first wanted to be a good speaker.  There’s an unfortunate catch-22 with public speaking: good speakers have confidence, but they have confidence because they are skilled at public speaking.  To raise my own abilities, and confidence in those abilities, before I ever spoke in public I first practiced just speaking.

• Read out loud.   I had a number of choose-your-own-adventure novels I enjoyed when I was young. In addition to being entertaining, reading them out loud allowed me to practice speaking with a broad, exciting vocabulary.  Choose your own adventure books also lend themselves well to dramatic interpretation, which allowed me to play around with inflection and tone.  My brother and I would sometimes take turns with them, reading a page and then debating which was the best approach.  If I had to pick reading material to start with now, I would probably use op-ed pieces in newspapers. 
• Emulate other speakers.   As a child I watched Wheel of Fortune with my family. Pat Sajak had a calm, clear speaking voice.  When I started looking to improve my speech, I would watch and quietly repeat what he said to myself, and later while reading out loud in my room, or even in conversations with friends, I would ask myself “How would Pat Sajak say this?”  Pat Sajak was the ultimate host – he made people feel at ease, projected confidence and charisma, and spoke clearly.  I noticed how he looked people in the eyes, his body language and the way he was expressive with his hands and body – but not too expressive.   Eventually I stopped emulating him, as I grew into my own as a speaker.

Step 2: Practice Speaking and Poise

Once I was comfortable with speaking out loud clearly, I needed to improve my timing, tone, inflection and presentation.  There were no shortcuts for me – just lots of practice and steady improvement.  

• Practice speaking to a mirror.  This has always been a little difficult for me.   The usefulness of this activity is hard to dispute though.  The feedback is clear and immediate, and as I started improving it boosted my confidence by seeing how easy it was for myself to present an argument or point of view – even if it was just to myself. 
• Record yourself speaking.  Video works best, but even just hearing audio will point out flaws in your speaking.  You’ll notice whether you speak too slow or fast, the inflections in your voice, the “ums” etc. If you can stand it, it’s great to have someone else review your recording and critique you as well. In high school I picked up a cheap audio recorder and would record myself practicing class presentations.  I did this for timing, as well as to see how I sounded – did my presentation make sense, did I speak clearly, was I too slow or fast.  By the time I had to actually present in class, I had already heard the presentation a half dozen times – and breezed through it.

When I was attending USC for my master’s, I had to collaborate with other students on group projects which often ended in a class presentation at the close of the semester. Because we could not always meet in person to practice, we needed to find another way to review our speaking parts. The easy solution was to upload videos to YouTube. A couple of my classmates were foreign students who were still learning how to speak English. Watching them on video allowed me to point out grammar errors, inflection, mispronunciation, etc. After the course was over, one of them remarked to me that the group project recordings had done more to improve his speaking than the two years he had spent trying to immerse himself in America.

Step 3: Practice Speaking With Friends and Family

No real secret here – once I started improving my speaking skills, I enjoyed conversation more and was more outspoken among friends.  If you lack interesting material to talk about, consider reading some of my favorite personal development books.  Some other stories and thoughts from this site that provide good conversation fodder include:

• Famous Failures – Michael Jordan, Abraham Lincoln and J.K. Rowling  
  
• The Price of my Dreams – $60 a Week
• Are You Really Working – or Just Using Metawork as an Excuse to Avoid Real Work?

Step 4: Practice Speaking to Others – For a Small Audience

Once I had confidence in my abilities speaking, there were still a couple hurdles to cross.  Among them – would I run out of things to say, and since speeches are a one way street, how would I know if my audience was interested?  There are a few social situations that can help with this

• Multiple person dinner/party conversations.  All human interaction isn’t just one on one – oftentimes we’ll meet for dinner with multiple people, or perhaps I’ll be in a circle of friends at a party.  In these cases, when I’m talking and more than one person is listening, it’s a bit like a radio show – myself and the person speaking are the radio hosts, and the other spectating conversationalists are our audience.  These situations (unintentionally) present fantastic opportunities to work on speaking skills in a (generally) warm environment
• Committee meetings and debate.  I was in a number of service clubs, social clubs, student government organizations etc as a child.  Even at work I continue to have small 3-6 person committee meetings.  Once again, this provides a small, reasonably receptive audience to speak to – and one or two people who would provide immediate feedback.

Step 5: Practice in Small Venues

Once I was able to present my point of view in front of spectator audiences, it was time to speak to real audiences.  I started small, in welcoming environments

• Toasts/Speeches at Social Events.  Nobody is going to boo you off stage if you choose to make a toast at a New Year’s, etc.  Depending on your level of comfort, it can be simple (“Here’s a toast to health and happines in the New Year!”), or perhaps a short speech if appropriate for the event.  Remember, it’s just about practicing speaking.
• Toastmasters.  I’ve attended a few toastmaster’s meetings.  Though I never stuck with it long enough I have no doubt regular attendance would boost anybody’s speaking skills.  The meetings I attended were well organized and everyone had a chance to speak, if only for a few minutes.  Members also were able to present longer speeches (5-10 minutes) that they had worked on and prepared on various topics for the group, who then critiqued them and provided feedback on the presentation, as well as how well the speaker presented.  Practice coupled with constructive criticism  is a surefire recipe for public speaking success.

That’s it! Once I was able to speak comfortably at small venues, it was just a matter of increasing the size of my audience.  I typically do not speak to groups larger than 50-100 people in person, but I imagine past that point any issues that arise would be most likely related to intimidation and stage fright.  There’s no cure for that except for preparation, practice and putting yourself out there.  I have glossed over stage fright above, because it’s hard to address that directly – but after considering it, I think I have an explanation for how I overcame stage fright as well.

Bonus Tip:  Non-Speech Performances to Increase Speaking Confidence

The above steps are the basic formula I followed to improve my public speaking skills, but I have one final tip which didn’t fit in the above categories, but that definitely helped me overcome stage fright.  The secret? Performing in domains where I already had expertise, just to get me comfortable in front of an audience.

• Spectator Sports. Throughout school I played various sports – swimming, soccer, baseball, basketball, table tennis, tennis, badminton.  I was not a particularly good athlete, but my parents had to come cheer me on anyway.  Being out on the field in front of people, win or lose, gave me the confidence to be out there.  I am sure it helped that my parents were supportive – so be sure to bring some cheerleaders along.
• Karaoke, chorus, concerts and open mic nights.  I’ve always enjoyed music – I played piano when I was younger and play guitar now.  I sang in chorus, played for hundreds of people at concerts and have performed at dozens of open mic nights by myself. Any chance I get, I’ll sing at karaoke as well.  Hamming it up for friends and strangers helped boost my confidence to once again deal with stage fright, which made facing crowds easier when I delivered seminars and speeches.
• Plays and theater performances.  My good friend Ryan took a theater class his first year in college, and while he was hardly shy before that, taking the class definitely made him more outgoing.  Making a fool out of himself on stage, in front of 500 of his classmates, with no negative repercussions has helped him be effective in his role as a manager today. 

A Final Point – Experience and Expertise

One point I have glossed over above is that it takes experience and expertise to speak effectively on a topic. I can discuss with confidence various technology trends, blogging, web 2.0, time management, efficiency, etc – but I have no skill in other areas.  The reason I can speak confidently about certain domains is because I have the years of experience, training and personal study to back them up.  Put me in a situation where I need to discuss something that I have no familiarity with, and without adequate preparation time I’m sure to falter.  If you need to give a speech, don’t be scared of pushing your limits, but at least be aware of your expertise – and spend an appropriate amount of time preparing.  

What do you think? What other tips would you add?

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“We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.”
– John of Salisbury (Sidenote: for a a fascinating book on the origins of this phrase, see On The Shoulders of Giants by Robert K. Merton)

The Best Experts and The Best Information – Available Everywhere

I recently listened to a Software Engineering Radio podcast with Ted Neward – a man who I also had the pleasure of seeing deliver a keynote at The Server Side Java Symposium.

Ted Neward is a rockstar among software development rockstars, though he somewhat modestly refers to himself as a “big geek.” He has written numerous books, and is about as sharp as anyone you’ll ever meet. When he discusses intricate software and programming language development issues, my brain is working overtime as he connects all the dots together and lays out a coherent, nuanced explanation.  Until probably a hundred years ago, there would have been no way that thousands of people would be able to hear his voice as they do now – certainly not download it in a podcast and listen at their convenience.

Today, anyone can buy an MP3 player, download some podcasts and transform their headphones into a mobile classroom. I have at my fingertips Ted Neward, Joshua Bloch (another rockstar), The Java Posse, various Rails gurus, Java Rant…all podcasts produced by very smart people, and available to me to listen to at my leisure.

I know not everyone reading this is a software developer, but everyone here has a particular field they excel at or want to excel in.  Or perhaps there is a particular task or problem you need solved.  With the articles online, podcasts and books, you can readily access the best information there is about almost any subject.

We can access discussions, explanations – and my favorite, solutions.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel – and this is as true of software development as it is in more fuzzy fields, like social relations.  Rather than going through the process of trial and error ourselves, we can benefit from other people who have already made the mistakes and distilled those lessons into concise explanations.

Paying Someone Else to Learn from Their Mistakes

Consider Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Dale Carnegie used to present seminars on handling people, and distilled his knowledge into a book that has hardly been updated since the 1930s because the advice and strategies have stayed relevant.  When I read it, I literally gave up trying to write in the margins and “star” the parts I liked – virtually every page had an insight or anecdote I wanted to save for later.  The book is filled with pitfalls that Dale Carnegie encountered himself, or observed in other people – and he tells you not just the issues, but also the resolutions.

Just as I’ve found it’s a better trade off to pay someone $60 a week to cook for me so I have 10 additional hours of free time, it’s worth it to me to spend some small sum of money and time reading a book that I can learn from, the lessons of which will pay huge dividends in avoiding the pitfalls others have faced.

Put another way –

Why spend years learning how people work, when I can just read Dale Carnegie’s book and apply the knowledge?

Try Out a Proven System or Continue Using Your Own Ad Hoc Unproven “Solution”?

On a similar note, for years I worked on organizing my life with my own system.  Sure, there was some degree of order, but it was very much ad hoc.  One day I decided I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I bought David Allen’s Getting Things Done.  I was skeptical at first – but I took a step back and thought about it as if I was totally unbiased, and was just choosing between two options before me, to try temporarily:

• On the one hand we had Getting Things Done.  This system had been used for years by many people, was detailed in a best selling book, and was being presented to me by a person whose whole business was built around the reputation he had for improving people’s productivity.
• On the other hand, we had the ad hoc Sid Savara method (if we are generous with the term “method”) – which was undocumented, unknown, had many unhandled “exception” cases, and the one person using it was admittedly looking for a replacement.

You can understand why I decided to suspend my skepticism and give David Allen a chance.

Not only did the strategies and method help me organize my tasks, but it changed the way I thought:  the way I looked at emails, phone calls, my calendar – everything.  This isn’t a post about the nuts and bolts of Getting Things Done, so I won’t go into the details, but Getting Things Done basically outlines a strategy for dealing with every contingency for issues and tasks as they come into your life. There are many resources online where you can get the gist of it, but if you plan on applying it, I recommend not trying to read Wikis etc to learn it. I tried initially until I finally purchased the book, and it’s like night and day – the book has so much more information it’s not even a fair comparison.

The Road Ahead – Knowledge Skills, and Leveraging Other People’s Knowledge

I’ve only scratched the surface here, but the point of this post is to prime you for what lays ahead.  There are many books I’ve read that I believe were well worth my time for the level of expertise they provide, and for how they increased my productivity or skills in a particular area.  I’ll write about them and guide you towards the best resources I have found to solve specific issues I have encountered.  There’s no need for me to rewrite books and articles that have already been written – but I can show you which ones I’ve liked.

Every day I apply what I have learned from Dale Carnegie, David Allen, Tim Ferris, Joshua Bloch and many others – and in so doing I can leverage their expertise, and stand on the shoulders of giants.

But…did this study really happen?  Let’s find out

Just Like Hiring My Own Research Staff – Google Book Search

As I mentioned in that past article, the study is sourced from the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack.

I was curious, and searched for the actual study online, but was unable to find it.

It Isn’t True Just Because The Internet Said So – Or Books Either, Apparently

I had read the study was conducted at Harvard, and thus when researching, I searched for “Harvard written goals study.”
I have since learned that sometimes the study references a Harvard class of 1979, and sometimes a Yale class of 1953.

I went researched on Google Book Search and found additional references to such a Yale study.  The premise and results were always the same.  Either this was a reproducible experiment… or something was a little fishy.

On Google Answers, I found someone had offered $20 in 2004 for a study showing the effects of writing down a goal on its achievement.

The question was never answered, though a passing reference was made to the Harvard and Yale studies being myths.

While it was hard to find the study or proof that it happened, I wanted further confirmation – and I got it.

From The Horse’s Mouth:  Yale Says There Is No 1953 Goal Setting Study

I finally came across a page at the Yale Law Library that asks “Where can I find the Yale study from 1953 about goal-setting?“.  The answer, in it’s entirety:

It has been determined that no “goals study” of the Class of 1953 actually occurred. In recent years, we have received a number of requests for information on a reported study based on a survey administered to the Class of 1953 in their senior year and a follow-up study conducted ten years later. This study has been described as how one’s goals at graduation related to success and annual incomes achieved during the period.

The secretary of the Class of 1953, who had served in that capacity for many years, did not know of [the study], nor did any of the fellow class members he questioned. In addition, a number of Yale administrators were consulted and the records of various offices were examined in an effort to document the reported study. There was no relevant record, nor did anyone recall the purported study of the Class of 1953, or any other class.
(Source : Where can I find the Yale study from 1953 about goal-setting?)

So it appeared that my urging people to write down their goals was based on a study that never happened.  Fortunately, I stumbled across something else quite interesting while researching the validity of the Yale and/or Harvard study.

Among the results of my online research for this article, I came across an actual study done with results received from 149 participants.

They too believe the story of the Harvard/Yale study to be a myth – and thus conducted a study of their own!  The results of the study:

The positive effect of written goals was supported: Those who wrote their goals accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals.

[…]

• This study provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of three coaching tools: accountability, commitment and writing down one’s goals.
• There now is a study demonstrating that writing one’s goal enhances goal achievement. However, it was not done at Harvard or Yale, but at Dominican University.

(Source: Summary of Recent Goals Research(PDF here: Gail Matthews Written Goal Study Dominican University), by Gail Matthews, Ph.D., Dominican University)

Note: the original links I had for this article keep moving, so I am now hosting a copy of the PDF since the links appear to break every couple weeks.

The moral of the story: Don’t believe everything you read online. Nonetheless, the initial advice is still sound – write down your goals!

In Dynasty mode, you coach a college football program through multiple seasons and you can only improve your team long term by mastering the recruitment process.

NCAA Football 09 Dynasty Mode Recruitment Rules

The relevant rules for recruitment:

• Recruit enough players to play each position, or you will have to choose a walk-on from your college class
• You have 25 scholarships to hand out and 35 slots on your recruitment board
• You have  10 “hours” a week to recruit (in real life, this takes about 3 minutes).
• The computer will spend any leftover time recruiting players on your behalf
• Players will rank aspects of each school based on how good they perceive it to be and how important it is to them. Their perceptions will affect how easy/hard it is to recruit that particular player.

Life Lessons – Goal Setting, Prioritizing, and Persistence

As I got better at NCAA Football 09, I’ve noticed that my strategy based on the various rules hold broader lessons for my life.

Lesson #1:  If you don’t go after what you want, you won’t get it. Spend your time chasing what you really want.

Example:  Automatic CPU Recruitment – The first season I played, I didn’t want to do any recruiting.  I spent none of my 10 hours per week, the CPU automatically recruited for me.  At the end of the year I looked at my new players and what did I have? Garbage.  The players were terrible and the computer didn’t pay any attention to how the players would fare in my lineup down the road.

Real Life: Life happens to all of us sixty seconds at a time, whether we are ready for it or not. Make the most of your time, and make sure you choose how you spend it – going after what you desire, or you’ll just get the scraps that happen to fall your way.  I’m reminded of this quote:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs (emphasis mine)

Lesson #2: Recruit and fill the roles you must with what you want, or they will be filled for you.

Example:  Walk Ons –  After I stopped letting the CPU control my recruitment, I recruited for everything but one particular position: center. I ignored it  and had a walk-on fill the gap. This turned out to be a disaster. While the average player on my team was a 65 or 70 (on a scale from 40-100), my walk-on was in the high 40s and useless. 

Real Life: I have always tried very hard to find jobs and companies that challenge me and that further my career.  If I hadn’t made a conscious decision to do this, I am sure I would have taken any job that came my way that paid the bills.  I also try to surround myself with friends who are intelligent, interested in fitness and health, and successful – if I don’t make a conscious effort to surround myself with quality people, I’ll just take whoever I can get.  Every day we can make a choice: do we fill our lives with what we want, or will we just accept whatever life provides us?

Lesson #3: Play to your strengths – know what you are good at, and where your advantage lies.

Example:  Recruiting Players: Their Priorities versus My Program – I noticed that some of the players I recruited were a better fit than others (e.g., my Athletic Facilities were Excellent, and it was their Most important criteria).  These player were an easy sale and generally ended up signing with me.  For other players, their athletic facilities interest might be “Average” – they were interested, but it wasn’t their top criteria, no matter how good my facilities were.  These were much tougher sells, and occasionally I could swing them, but it wasn’t easy.

Real Life: I’ve learned that I have an easier time achieving goals and getting things that are in line with my strengths. I experienced this firsthand when trying to get my first real job.  When I finished college, I wanted to develop software.  My strongest competency was Java development, but I was hungry to develop any software database work, software in other languages (C++, Python, Perl).  I was pretty good all around, but I had a hard time convincing managers to hire me – they always found someone that was better than me for that specific position, with the specific skills they wanted.  I finally landed a job at DirecTV, and developed other skills, but furthered my Java software development skills.  My next two jobs since then?  Both heavily Java based, and both relatively easy to get.

Lesson #4: Just because you can chase a large number of opportunities doesn’t mean you should.

Example:  Recruitment Board Slots – When I started recruiting, I noticed I had 35 slots.  I immediately filled all 35 with players I wanted and tried to recruit as many of them as I could. With only 10 hours a week, however, I was spending less than 20 minutes a week on each player.  I would later learn that realistically, it takes between 1 and 2 hours a week consistently to recruit a quality player.  Unable to spend a sufficient amount of time on any of the players, you can guess what happened – I often didn’t get most of them.  I had to prioritize, and as I’ve gotten better, I now typically only recruit about 8-10 quality players a year at any given time.

Real Life: We can do anything we want in life, but we can’t do everything we want all at once.  I used to have a large todo list – not anymore. Since implementing the system outlined in Getting Things Done, I now have a “Someday” bucket.  While I have many items on the backburner, at any given time I keep my commitments and priorities to the most essential – everything else, I let it slide.

Lesson #5: It won’t come easy, but if you set your mind to it, you can usually get what you truly desire.

Example:  Recruiting Poorly Matched, But Desired Players – Sometimes, all I want is a good quarterback – but there are no quality quarterbacks available that want to play for me. I learned that while I couldn’t recruit the one quarterback I wanted with just an hour every week, I could if I spent 2-3 hours a week.  One year I spent one third of my whole season’s recruiting time, every week, on a single player – a running back that was faster than anybody else.  My persistence paid off, and the last week of the season, he finally signed on.  He was the cornerstone of my team for the next four years.

Real Life: If you want it bad enough, sure you can have it – but you need to put in the effort- and perhaps make some sacrifices.  My freshmen year in college I was skinny and tired of it.  I am an ectomorph (translation: people with my body have difficulty gaining large amounts of muscle), but in spite of the disadvantage I started out with, I wanted to improve my physical appearance and bulk up.  I made my workouts a priority (including the days of final exams), ate lots of food, drank 6-8 glasses of chocolate milk a day and slept 8-10 hours a night consistently.   My commitment paid off, as I gained more muscle, about 40 lbs, in a shorter time frame than I ever have since.

Lesson #6: It ain’t over till it’s over.

Example:  Recruiting Players That Have Already “Committed” – In NCAA 09, there are two types of commits – a soft commit and a hard commit.  A hard commit means the player has signed and there’s no turning back – he’s playing for your team.  A soft commit on the other hand signals that a player has made up his mind, and is about to commit to a team – but there’s still a chance they can change their mind.  Whenever a player has a soft commit to another team, if I really want them, I recruit them hard that week. If they stay as a soft commit, I keep hammering on them – and about half the time, I can swing them to a soft commit to me, and then a hard commit to me.

Real Life: It’s almost never really over, and a client/hiring manager/etc saying no is only a temporary setback – the equivalent a soft commit.  As an undergraduate in college, I wanted to run for student government. I inquired in September, but they told me elections are held at the end of each school year, in April/May, and to come back next year.  One day I noticed they had put a small sign in the window about special elections. I learned that because some senators had dropped out, I could run for office and complete their term. I won, entered the senate, and had the opportunity to serve a year longer than I would have if I had just thrown in the towel the first time they told me no.

Life Lessons from Unusual Places

Some of the ways I often learn things is through books, my favorite blogs and of course my parents – the older I get, the smarter they are!  Just like this example though, I’m sure many of you have learned things in non-traditional areas, that have carried broader lessons in your life.

What video games do you enjoy?  Are there unusual ways/places/experiences that have shaped your life?  Or any life lessons you’ve learned from people in your life you’d like to share?  I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Sid weighed his options, made his decision, and lived with the fall out.

A Difficult Situation – Weighing The Options

As the deadline loomed, the software development team, (consisting  entirely of Sid) discovered themselves hopelessly behind schedule.  They were unable to work through implementation as quick as they had hoped, and at this rate the deadline was going to get the better of them.  Tradeoffs needed to be made, long hours and additional developers were considered: everything was on the table.  Sid thus considered his options:

1. Get It Done At All Costs.  In this scenario, Sid would work through the issues, forgoing hours of sleep, time with his friends, and likely hampering his other goals.  It’s a strategy that has been used successfully in the past, and a perennial crowd favorite.  Everyone loves a good war story, where the hero works on the beta software right up until the last minute and the demonstration is pulled off successfully.  The option of choice sure to elicit toasts, pats on the back, and “back in my day” stories for years to come.
2. Present it Half Finished.  Work through some of the problems, and present a lame demo of a half-completed project.  To compensate for the lack of functionality, slick powerpoint presentations, bullet points and talking around the issues will be used to distract the audience.  Generally the fall back plan after #1 has fallen through.  Given the current state of affairs, as much as #1 would be preferable, this option had to be considered as a likely scenario.  Nobody likes a lame demo, especially the people giving it.
3. Just Let It Go.  The unthinkable:  admit temporary defeat, cancel his commitment, and continue life as normal. This would be difficult for someone as accomplished and unaccustomed to failure as Sid, and truly a measure of last resort.

The Decision Is Made – and The Fallout

After careful consideration, Sid decided to Just Let It Go.  He emailed the organizer, Ryan Ozawa, and told him he wouldn’t be able to demo anything, but would still attend Manoa Geeks.  Friends, history shall judge whether it was the right time to withdraw.  Ryan swiftly rendered this stern judgment (reprinted in its entirety):

Aloha e Sid,

Bummer! But it’s most important that you be there!  See you then.

Ryan

Aloha e Sid, indeed. (loosely translated aloha means any number of things:  hello, love, welcome, goodbye)

The Demo Is Scrapped – Yet Somehow, The World Goes On

Manoa Geeks was yesterday evening, and from all appearances, the lack of Sid’s demo presented little consequence, save for perhaps making a liar out of Ryan on Twitter.   The sponsor, ILovePhotos showcased a development build of their application that has been getting fantastic reviews around the web, and put on a great event.  The free pizza and company were excellent, and Ryan’s planning, if anything, was easier with one less demonstration to account for.

The lesson?  Sometimes we make commitments we can’t live up to, and we need to just let it go.  Drop the ball once in a while.   It’s ok:  I, and Ryan, give you permission.

Aloha e friends.

PS – This shouldn’t be misconstrued as carte blanche to just let everything fall apart.  Back out of your commitments too often without reason and you risk coming off as flaky, and someone who cannot keep their word.  From time to time however, we all have setbacks, bad days, or simply overcommit.  Relax, and just let it go.