Wednesday, September 24, 2025

 🎙️Weekly Insight #58 -Listicles Aren’t Mystical: From Checklists to Integrated Practice

Checklists give you the items, practice tells you what really belongs in your cart.

Using lists as starting points, not finish lines, in voice work.


I recently saw an article titled ‘5 Techniques to Build a More Powerful Speaking Voice.’ Lists like this can point out the basics — breath, pace, articulation — and give us benchmarks to track. What matters most is how we practice those reminders and integrate them into our own system.

Most people don’t spend much time thinking about their voice until a moment demands it — a presentation, an interview, a performance. That’s why lists are appealing. They offer a quick way to make sense of something that feels complex. And that’s what listicles were designed for in the first place: not to give the full picture, but to offer simple entry points. The value is in using them as a starting point, not as the final word. For each individual voice user, the real work begins when you take those reminders and test them in your own system.

As Jordan Peterson once put it: “If all you can teach is the words on the appropriate list, you could just be replaced by the list.” That’s the trap with surface-level advice. It risks making the teacher — and the learner — interchangeable with the list itself.

Another list, this time from Speakeasy Inc., promises to build “a voice that commands respect” through breath, articulation, and pacing. The categories are familiar — the same buckets most lists return to. That repetition isn’t a flaw. It shows that these elements really do matter. But the lists can only give you a doorway in. The rest of the work is figuring out how those elements function in your own voice.

An article on “Why Authentic Narration Improves Training Retention” points out that learners remember more when the voice is emotionally connected. Breath, tone, articulation, and pacing are the means that allow that connection. The difference is whether you stop at the list or use it as a springboard to explore how those elements work for you.

That’s the step Harshaw pressed us to take. She didn’t deny the importance of the buckets — breath, vowels, articulation, posture. She pushed us to individualize them: to notice how I breathed, how my vowels shifted, how my body reacted. Once those elements were integrated, then authentic narration was possible. In my own recital work, I can tell when I’m focused only on the sound. But when the vowels and breath are ingrained, I can shift my attention outward — toward text, story, or audience — and the connection changes.

Presence isn’t a commodity or a medal you earn after following steps. It’s emergent. It shows up when the basics have been practiced and absorbed, and when the listener feels engaged in return. It’s relational — a back-and-forth between speaker and listener. In a (BA) Business Analysis workshop, I can see it when participants lean in; in a recital hall, when the silence sharpens around a phrase.

  • Presence is emergent — it shows up when practice and integration free you to connect.
  • Presence is relational — it’s co-created between voice and listener.
  • Presence is adaptive — it varies, and you refine it through feedback and adjustment.

Francesco Pecoraro’s “Developing a Strong Vocal Presence” outlines a step-by-step sequence for resonance, pacing, and confidence. This kind of structure can be helpful when you’re first paying attention to your voice. But presence doesn’t appear because you follow a sequence. Lists can point you toward the right pieces, but the foundation of voice depends on exploring how those elements work in your own voice.

And this connects to focus.
“If you are everywhere, you are nowhere.” – Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 2.6

Training is about projecting focus as if your life depends on it — because in many ways, it does. Harshaw’s five-vowel exercise on a single pitch worked the same way. It narrowed attention to something so specific that, once mastered, it became automatic. From there, focus could shift: to text, to phrasing, to connection. Like the selective attention exercise — when you train your eye on one thing, you miss the gorilla walking by — practice forces you to look closely at one element until it’s ingrained. Then you can release that focus and widen your awareness.
“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good." – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17

That’s also where Stoicism connects. Epictetus didn’t say, “Follow these three easy steps to virtue.” He taught that habits are built in the small, repeated actions you choose every day.
“If you have properly trained your desires and aversions, you will never fail, never fall into what you would avoid, and never be thwarted.” – Epictetus, Discourses 1.1

In one place he writes that if you’ve trained yourself to know what is in your power and what is not, you won’t be derailed when events don’t go as planned. The same is true for voice. Shortcuts can give you a quick boost, but they rarely hold up in the moments that matter. What holds up is the patient work of aligning breath, tone, and words until they move together without thought. Natural talent can get you far, just as raw athletic ability does, but it only becomes reliable when you understand how it functions under pressure. Lists can help point you toward the buckets, but real presence comes from testing, repeating, and integrating those elements until they belong to you.

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Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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