How do you think on your feet during immediate review? The glib answer is you shouldn't. Don't think on your feet. Think on your seat before the interview ever started. That's the time to really think about all the possible questions, easy questions, tough questions. Great answers, most important, great messages and great sound bites.
Do your thinking in advance, because here's the thing until you do 10 interviews a day. You're going to feel nervous when you're doing interviews, especially TV interviews, especially live TV interviews, you're going to feel nervous. When your body's feeling nervous. It's sending adrenaline throughout your body, there's moisture coming out of your hands, the bottom of your feet, and your brain is shutting down. Because your brain is saying run use that energy to run. So it's much harder to recall information.
It's harder to think and that's why you don't want to put all of your focus on being quick and thinking in the middle of the interview, do your thinking in advance, practice what you're going to say on video. So when the interview happens, you are saying things not for the first time or the second time, but the third or fourth time or more, it becomes easier. You're not having to think as much. You're just really sharing information. You've already told people before, during the practice, that's the best way to appear to be thinking during the interview. The other thing is you got to realize there's nothing wrong with stopping and thinking for a moment it will feel like an eternity.
But on TV, it really won't seem that long. And for any sort of interview that is not live, it's edited. It's unlikely the reporter will use that couple of seconds of you just thinking