How to Stop Saying Um:
Why You Do It and What to Do Instead

To stop saying um, you first need to hear when you’re doing it. Record yourself or use a person, game, or app to catch the pattern, then replace filler words with a brief pause, breath, smile, or prepared phrase. The goal isn’t to eliminate every um. It’s to reduce the repeated fillers that show up at the start of sentences and transitions.

I was in sixth grade the first time I remember feeling like I had no voice at all.

I was the only redhead in town, and I got bullied bad enough that I switched schools. The new school was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, it was worse. New kid, same red hair, same target on my back. I got chased. I got hit. I stopped wanting to talk at all, at school or anywhere else.

One night my dad found me in my room, door locked, crying, listening to Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” on repeat. Locking the door wasn’t allowed in our house, so when he couldn’t get in, he kicked it open. He wasn’t upset with me. He saw how bad it was.

He said, “Get up. We’re going to karate.”

That night, one of the first things I learned was the horse stance. My instructor showed me how to physically hold a posture of authority, feet planted, shoulders back, chest up, before I felt anything close to confident on the inside. I started bringing that same posture to school. Shoulders back. Head up. I looked less like a victim, and when I spoke, I had more authority in my voice.

I want to be clear about what that story actually taught me, because it’s easy to get this wrong. It’s not “karate stopped me from saying um.” It’s this: I learned early, physically, that you can change something on the outside before you feel it on the inside, and the inside catches up. You don’t wait until you feel confident to act confident. You build the physical thing first, and the confidence follows.

That’s the same principle behind everything in this resource.

Because here’s the truth about um. Almost everything you’ve read about it treats it like a speaking tic you’re supposed to white-knuckle your way through. Slow down. Take a breath. Just pause instead. That advice isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete, and it misses the actual mechanism. Let’s start there.

Um isn’t simply a bad habit. It’s often your brain buying time while doing live word retrieval, while you’re already speaking, under pressure. You can’t fix a pattern you can’t hear yourself doing, so the real fix isn’t a speaking trick, it’s building outside awareness, through a person, a game, an app, or a recording. Once you notice it, you can actually start changing it.

Here’s what’s actually happening when you say um.

You’re mid-sentence, and your brain is doing two jobs at once: producing the words you’re already saying, and searching for the next ones. Most of the time that search finishes just in time. Sometimes it doesn’t, and um is what falls out while your brain catches up.

There’s real research behind why this gap exists, and it’s more interesting than “you’re nervous.”

A large c ross-linguistic study led by Tanya Stivers, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at conversations across ten languages from five continents and found something remarkably consistent. The average gap between one person finishing a sentence and the next person starting to respond is about 0.2 seconds. That’s the case in English, Japanese, Korean, Danish, and languages you’ve probably never heard of. It’s about as close to a human universal as conversation research gets.

Here’s the problem. A separate line of research from Stephen Levinson and Francisco Torreira, published in Frontiers in Psychology, measured how long it actually takes the brain to plan and produce a single word, from the moment you decide to say it to the moment it comes out of your mouth. That number is around 0.6 seconds.

Read those two numbers again. The gap between turns in conversation is 0.2 seconds. Producing a single word takes 0.6 seconds. That means in a normal back-and-forth conversation, you’re often expected to respond before your brain has even finished planning what to say.

That’s not a flaw in you. That’s the math of human conversation. We know the brain is often preparing a response before the other person has even finished speaking. And when that preparation isn’t finished by the time you start talking, um can become one way of buying a little more time.

This is also exactly why um shows up more when you’re unprepared, uncomfortable, or under pressure. All three of those things can make live speaking and word retrieval harder, which widens the gap between when you need to speak and when your brain actually has the word ready.

The tighter that gap gets, the fewer ums you’ll have. That’s the whole game, and it’s why the rest of this resource is built around closing that gap instead of just telling you to “pause more.”

Occasional um is human.

The problem isn’t um itself, it’s um as the first word of a sentence, and um as a crutch that shows up in nearly every transition.

I want to say this clearly because most of what’s written about filler words skips it entirely: you do not need to eliminate um. If you say um once in the middle of a sentence during a normal conversation with a friend, nothing bad happens. Your life doesn’t fall apart. Nobody writes you off. That’s not what this resource is about.

There’s a difference between um showing up occasionally and um running your speech.

The version that actually costs you something is um as the first word of a sentence, especially in answers, and um as a repeated crutch that shows up in nearly every transition, enough that people start to notice a pattern instead of hearing your message. That’s the version worth fixing.

There is research suggesting filler words carry a real cost to how you’re perceived. A study out of Cal Poly by Lea Gikas and Zachary Sutcliffe, using recorded interview responses with filler words either present or absent, found that more filler word use lowered how professionally and personally credible listeners rated the speaker, regardless of the speaker’s gender.

Related research reviewed by Emily Duvall and colleagues at BYU points the same direction, that heavy filler word use tends to reduce perceived competence and clarity for the listener. I want to be careful here. These are legitimate studies, but they’re not massive, sweeping consensus science. Research suggests filler words cost you something. It doesn’t prove that every um is a disaster.

Occasional fillers make you human. Um as a first-word habit or a constant crutch is what actually works against you, and that’s the version I’m going to help you fix.

You can’t fix a pattern you can’t hear yourself doing.

The fix isn’t a speaking trick. It’s building outside awareness through a person, a game, an app, or a recording.

This is the part almost every other article on this topic skips completely. They jump straight to “pause instead” or “slow down,” which are fine tips, but they treat um like a mechanics problem. It’s not. It’s an awareness problem. You are not consciously choosing to say um. It’s happening below the level of attention you’re paying to yourself while you talk, which means you can’t will it away. You have to build an outside system that catches it for you until your own ear catches up.

Here’s a mechanism I’ve used for years in classrooms and workshops. I call it the um game. In a room full of people, I tell everyone the rule up front: if you say um as the very first word of a sentence, not any word in between, just the first word, whoever notices it first calls it out.

In a room of two hundred students, someone will say um first, I’ll be the first to catch it, everybody laughs, and they try again. Sometimes they say it again, right away, two or three times in a row.

The whole room relates, because everyone realizes the same thing at once: you genuinely cannot hear yourself doing this. You need someone else’s ears first.

That’s also the whole idea behind the UmmGum app I built. It gives you a way to record and track how often you’re actually saying it, because most people wildly underestimate their own count until they see it in front of them.

I also created a physical product to go with it, UmmGum, a pack of gum that comes with a QR code linking to the app. The gum itself isn’t what stops the filler word. It’s a physical reminder, something to chew on that keeps the awareness front of mind, while the app does the actual tracking and shows you the pattern in black and white.

If you don’t have a game, an app, or a person, mirroring is worth knowing about too, because it works against you if you’re not paying attention to it. Um is socially contagious. If you spend a lot of time around someone who says it constantly, your own usage tends to creep up, even if you’re normally aware of your own patterns. That’s one more reason external awareness matters more than willpower. You’re not just managing your own habit, you’re managing what’s rubbing off on you from other people.

None of these tools fix the habit directly. What they do is build the awareness that lets the habit start correcting itself. Once you can actually hear it happening in real time, you finally have the awareness needed to start changing it. That’s the mechanism. Everything else in this resource is a tool for either building that awareness or reducing the pressure that produces the um in the first place.

Most people can’t hear their own filler words at all, and it’s often not even um.

Record yourself, watch it back, and find out what your actual pattern is before you try to fix it.

I learned this one the hard way, in a Toastmasters evaluation contest. I’d won the year before, and I felt good about my chances going in. I gave what I genuinely thought was one of my strongest performances, a real-time evaluation of another speaker’s talk. I didn’t win, and I couldn’t figure out why until people told me afterward what I’d done.

I’d said the word “now” as a transition, over and over, almost every single sentence. I had no idea. I went back and watched the recording, and I cringed watching myself say it constantly, without a single moment of awareness while it was happening.

That story matters here because it proves the blind spot isn’t limited to um. It can be any word. I’ve caught myself saying “alright” as a filler in workshops I’m giving right now, today, and I have to actively catch myself doing it, sometimes calling myself out mid-sentence when I notice it slip out again.

So here’s the actionable version. Record yourself, whether that’s a phone propped on a stand, a Zoom call you save, or an audio note during a normal conversation.

Then do two things with it.

First, just listen once straight through and see what jumps out.

Second, if it’s a recorded meeting, most video platforms now generate a transcript automatically. Take that transcript and run it through an AI tool, asking it specifically to flag filler words or repeated words and phrases. That turns a recording you already have sitting around into a free diagnostic you’d otherwise never think to run.

One more exercise worth trying, especially if you’re new to this: train your ear on someone else before you try to catch yourself. Next time you’re at a conference or a meeting, keep a small tally on your notes of every filler word a speaker uses, um, uh, “you know,” whatever shows up.

You’ll start hearing patterns in other people almost immediately. That same trained ear is what eventually lets you catch your own pattern, because you’ve practiced noticing it somewhere lower stakes first.

A quick research note, since I know some of you will ask: there’s a well known 2002 study by Herbert Clark and Jean Fox Tree, published in the journal Cognition, that argued uh signals a short delay and um signals a longer one, as if they’re two different words with two different jobs. It’s an interesting idea. It’s also disputed. A later analysis by O’Connell and Kowal, using actual acoustic measurement instead of listener perception, found the two didn’t reliably separate that way at all. I’m including this because I think it’s worth knowing the research exists, and because I don’t want to hand you a “fact” that isn’t as settled as it sounds.

Silence isn’t the enemy. It’s a tool.

Your body can fill the same gap um used to fill, without a single word.

In one of my TEDx talks, I explore the power of the pause, and the whole talk is built around one idea: most of us are pouncers, not pausers.

A pauser actually waits until the other person finishes, takes a beat, and then responds. A pouncer is already halfway into their answer before the other person has fully stopped talking. Most of us are pouncers. We just don’t realize it.

That matters for filler words because the faster you try to jump into your response, the more likely you are to start speaking before you’ve fully formed what you want to say.

The good news is you don’t have to fill that space with a word. You can fill it physically instead.

There is research suggesting filler words carry a real cost to how you’re perceived. A study out of Cal Poly by Lea Gikas and Zachary Sutcliffe, using recorded interview responses with filler words either present or absent, found that more filler word use lowered how professionally and personally credible listeners rated the speaker, regardless of the speaker’s gender.

Related research reviewed by Emily Duvall and colleagues at BYU points the same direction, that heavy filler word use tends to reduce perceived competence and clarity for the listener. I want to be careful here. These are legitimate studies, but they’re not massive, sweeping consensus science. Research suggests filler words cost you something. It doesn’t prove that every um is a disaster.

Occasional fillers make you human. Um as a first-word habit or a constant crutch is what actually works against you, and that’s the version I’m going to help you fix.

Here are four physical alternatives I use with speakers.

Each one gives your brain a little more time without forcing you to fill the silence with a sound.

I want to say this clearly because most of what’s written about filler words skips it entirely: you do not need to eliminate um. If you say um once in the middle of a sentence during a normal conversation with a friend, nothing bad happens. Your life doesn’t fall apart. Nobody writes you off. That’s not what this resource is about.

There’s a difference between um showing up occasionally and um running your speech.

The version that actually costs you something is um as the first word of a sentence, especially in answers, and um as a repeated crutch that shows up in nearly every transition, enough that people start to notice a pattern instead of hearing your message. That’s the version worth fixing.

Smile

Instead of saying um, smile for a beat. It gives you a moment to think while looking completely intentional. Your audience doesn’t know you’re searching for your next word. They just see someone comfortable taking their time.

Breathe

Take an actual breath. It’s almost impossible to say um while you’re inhaling. That breath creates the little bit of processing time your brain was looking for in the first place.

Strike a Pose

Physically signal that you’re thinking. Look up for a moment. Put a finger to your chin. Shift your eyes. Your body says, “Give me a second, I’m thinking,” without you having to say anything at all.

Sip Water

Take a sip. It creates a completely natural pause while giving your brain another second or two to find where it wants to go next. Nobody wonders why you stopped talking. You’re simply drinking water.

None of these are magic tricks. They’re simply ways to become more comfortable occupying the silence instead of immediately filling it. Over time, you may not need the physical cue at all. The pause itself starts to feel normal.

And there’s another simple lever: slow down. In my coaching, I’ve found that when someone deliberately reduces their speaking pace, they often create more room to retrieve the next word before they need it. You don’t need to speak painfully slowly. You just need to stop racing your own brain.

Don’t search for the perfect word. Have a few ready phrases you can reach for instead.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you need silence. You actually need a bridge to your next thought.

This is especially useful when someone asks you a question and your brain needs a second to figure out where your answer is going.

Instead of starting with “um,” give yourself a few phrases you can reach for automatically:

“That’s a great question.”
“The way I think about it is…”
“There are a couple ways to look at that.”
“The first thing that comes to mind is…”
“Let me give you an example.”

I think of these like battle cards. You don’t need fifty of them. You need a handful of reliable phrases that give your brain somewhere to start while the rest of the answer catches up.

The key is to rotate them. If you replace every “um” with “that’s a great question,” congratulations, you’ve just created a new filler phrase.

Another tool I teach in SpeakerSHIP is the Rule of Three. When you’re put on the spot, organize your answer into three parts. It might be three reasons, three examples, or simply past, present, future.

That little bit of structure reduces the number of decisions your brain has to make while you’re already talking. Instead of searching an unlimited universe of possible answers, you’ve given yourself a path to follow.

Here’s a simple way to practice this. Record yourself answering a question for 60 seconds. You can use your phone and listen back manually, or use the Umm Gum app to record and monitor your filler words for you. Then listen specifically for what happens at the beginning of your sentences and between your ideas.

Every time you hear an um, uh, or another filler, pause the recording and ask yourself: What could I have done instead?

Could you have paused? Taken a breath? Smiled? Used one of your ready phrases? Organized the answer into three parts?

Then answer the same question again.

You’re not trying to create a perfect recording. You’re training yourself to recognize the moment when the filler word happens and giving your brain another option for what to do when that moment comes again.

Because the higher the stakes, the harder your brain is working.
When you’re worried about sounding smart, answering quickly, or speaking in front of someone with more authority, filler words can show up more often.

Think about the difference between talking to your best friend and answering a question from your boss, a client, or a room full of executives.

The mechanics of speaking haven’t changed. The pressure has.

In higher-stakes situations, you’re not only trying to figure out what you want to say. You may also be evaluating how it will sound, how you’ll be perceived, whether you’re giving the “right” answer, and how quickly you need to respond.

That’s a lot of processing happening while you’re already expected to be talking.

This is why self-awareness matters so much. If you know that you tend to say um when you’re put on the spot, you can recognize the situation before it happens. You can deliberately slow down, take a breath, or give yourself permission to pause before answering.

You don’t have to prove you know the answer by answering immediately.

Actors don’t say um because um isn’t in the script.

The lesson isn’t that you need to memorize everything you say. It’s that preparation reduces how much your brain has to invent in real time.

I have two degrees from UC Santa Barbara, one in Business Economics and one in Dramatic Arts, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the difference between performing a script and speaking naturally.

Actors can deliver entire scenes without filler words because they already know what they’re going to say. The words have been decided. Their brain isn’t searching for the next sentence while they’re delivering the current one.

But I don’t think the answer for speakers is to memorize every word.

In fact, memorizing a speech word for word can create a different problem. If you forget one specific word or sentence, suddenly you’re trying to remember the script instead of communicating the idea.

What I teach is prepare and improvise.

Know your stories. Know your main points. Know your opening. Know where you’re trying to land. Then give yourself enough freedom to find the actual words in the moment.

Preparation narrows the universe of things your brain could say next. You still sound like yourself, but your brain has a much smaller search area.

Sometimes filler words aren’t just a speaking habit. They’re a confidence habit.

I think of excessive filler words like a verbal limp.

If you hurt your leg, you might start limping because you need the support. But after your leg heals, you can sometimes keep favoring it simply because your body learned the pattern.

Filler words can work the same way. Maybe you started saying um because you were nervous, unprepared, searching for words, or uncomfortable with silence. Eventually, the original reason may disappear, but the verbal pattern sticks around.

That’s why simply telling yourself to “stop saying um” rarely works. You’re trying to remove something your brain has learned to use as support without giving it anything else to do.

The goal isn’t to attack the filler word. It’s to build enough awareness, preparation, and comfort with silence that you don’t need the verbal support anymore.

There’s another important layer here for people speaking in a language that isn’t their first.

If you’re translating thoughts, searching for vocabulary, or navigating unfamiliar sentence structures while you’re speaking, your brain may simply need more processing time. That’s not a reason to become more self-conscious about filler words. It’s a reason to become more comfortable giving yourself that time.

A pause is available in every language.

You don’t have to rush to prove fluency. Give your brain the space it needs to find the words.

Hear it

Find out what your actual filler words are. Record yourself and listen back.

Catch it

Build outside awareness. Use a friend, the UmmGum Game, the UmmGum app, or another feedback mechanism to catch the pattern as it happens.

Replace it

Give your brain another option. Pause. Smile. Breathe. Strike a pose. Sip water. Or use a prepared phrase.

Prepare

Know your stories, your main points, and where you’re going. Don’t memorize every word. Prepare and improvise.

Repeat

Awareness becomes useful when you practice it enough that catching yourself starts to happen automatically.

This article draws on research into conversational timing, speech production, filler words, and listener perception. If you want to go deeper, here are the primary sources referenced above:

Stivers et al. (2009), “Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Levinson & Torreira (2015), “Timing in turn-taking and its implications for processing models of language.” Frontiers in Psychology.
Gikas & Sutcliffe, research on filler words and perceptions of speakers. Cal Poly Digital Commons.
Duvall et al., research on filler words and speaker perception. Brigham Young University.
Clark & Fox Tree (2002), “Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking.” Cognition.
O’Connell & Kowal (2005), analysis of uh and um in spontaneous speech.
Myers & Wadkins, research on the social contagion of filler words.

Why do I say um so much when I talk?

Um often appears because your brain needs more time to retrieve and organize what you want to say while you’re already speaking. It can become more noticeable when you’re unprepared, uncomfortable, or under pressure.

Is saying um a sign that I’m nervous?

Not necessarily. Everyone uses filler words sometimes. Nervousness can increase them because your brain is doing more work, but saying um doesn’t automatically mean you’re nervous or a poor speaker.

How can I stop saying um and uh?

Start by becoming aware of when you use them. Record yourself, ask someone to listen for them, or use a tool like the UmmGum app. Once you can hear the pattern, practice replacing filler words with a pause, breath, smile, physical cue, or prepared phrase.

What should I say instead of um?

Sometimes, nothing. A brief pause is often better. When you need a verbal bridge, phrases like “That’s a great question,” “The way I think about it is…” or “Let me give you an example” can give your brain time to organize your response.

Are filler words bad?

Occasional filler words are normal. They become a problem when they’re frequent enough that listeners begin noticing the pattern instead of focusing on your message, especially when um repeatedly appears at the beginning of sentences or transitions.

How long does it take to stop saying um?

There’s no universal timeline. The goal isn’t to eliminate every um overnight. Start by hearing the pattern, catching it in real time, replacing it with another behavior, preparing more intentionally, and repeating the process until the new response becomes more natural.