Breathing before an exam, a talk, or an interview: a plan for the moment before

Your plan for the moment before

Feeling nervous before an exam, a presentation, or a job interview is normal. It doesn’t have to go away. This plan is just meant to keep it from running the show:

1. The day before: try the exercise once, calmly, so it feels familiar when it counts.
2. In the last hour: breathe slowly for a few minutes with a long exhale, for example on the way or in the waiting area.
3. In the last minute: quietly, eyes open, in for 3 seconds and out for 6, no breath holds.
4. Go: your nerves can stay. You can also call them excitement.

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The last minute: try it now

This exercise works with your eyes open, quietly, and without holding your breath. Nobody next to you will notice. Breathe in through your nose for 3 seconds and out slowly for 6, about seven times. Try it beforehand when you’re calm, not for the first time in the exam room.

One minute before you start

In for 3, out for 6, eyes open

Breathe along

What the research shows

There are only a few small studies on breathing exercises right before a test in adults. Here are the most useful:

• Before a job-interview speech: 66 young adults had to explain to a panel over video why they were right for their dream job. Those who did five minutes of box breathing or breathing with a long exhale beforehand showed less of a physical stress response than the group breathing normally. But their performance on the mental tasks afterward wasn’t any better.¹
• One minute in a tense moment: among 47 university students, one minute of box breathing or sighing lowered tension more than doing nothing. Afterward, they made fewer errors on an attention task but reacted a bit more slowly. This was a pilot study.²
• Before an audition: 46 musicians breathed slowly for 30 minutes before a very difficult performance. Heart rate variability measures rose more during the wait than without the exercise. Their anxiety didn’t drop overall, though, only in a small group of especially nervous players.³
• Before a decision task: 56 students either breathed with a long exhale for two minutes or simply waited, then spent 30 minutes on business case questions. Stress went up in the waiting group but not in the breathing group, and the breathers got more answers right. One small study.⁴

You’ll also often see a study of 122 elementary school children in Singapore cited: kids who took deep breaths before a math test reported less anxiety and scored higher.⁵ Whether that holds for adults, it doesn’t show.

These studies tested the technique, not the nowa app. The bottom line: a few minutes of calm breathing can take the edge off your stress response. None of these studies promises you a better grade or a better talk.

“I am excited”: reframing your nerves

A well-known tip comes from experiments by Harvard Business School researcher Alison Wood Brooks. In those experiments, people who said “I am excited” out loud before singing, speaking, or doing math felt more excited and performed better than people who tried to calm down.⁶

But there’s a second part to the story. A preregistered replication of the speech study with 74 college students found the same effect on how people felt. Independent observers, however, didn’t rate the “excited” group’s speeches any better.⁷ A review of 33 studies on reframing stress found a small boost in performance, and it shrank further after correcting for studies that likely went unpublished.⁸ You can still give it a try: breathing and reframing don’t rule each other out.

What to skip before a big moment

• Big deep breaths: very nervous music students tended to breathe too much before a public performance.⁹ Even six calm breaths a minute led to mild overbreathing on average in the lab.¹⁰ Slow is good; deep isn’t.
• Hard, fast breathing like Wim Hof breathing right before a presentation: there’s no study on it, but it can make you dizzy.
• Breath holds while driving, including during a driving test. And never breathe fast and deep before a swim test or diving: in a CDC report, all four people who died while holding their breath underwater had deliberately hyperventilated first.¹¹

Common questions

What’s the best breathing exercise before an exam?

There’s no clear winner. Before a speech, box breathing and breathing with a long exhale worked about the same.¹ For the exam room, an exercise without breath holds, slow and with a long exhale, works best.

What can I do discreetly in the exam room?

Breathe quietly through your nose for a minute, eyes open, no holds, for example in for 3 and out for 6. The real-life study also used one minute.²

Box breathing before a presentation?

Sure. In two short studies, it worked about as well as breathing with a long exhale.^{1, 2} How to do it and where it comes from is in the article on box breathing.

How long before should I start?

There’s no proven best timing. Studies used one minute in the moment, two to five minutes right before, or a longer session ahead of time.^{2, 4, 1, 3}

Will a breathing exercise improve my grade or focus?

That isn’t reliably shown. One small study found more correct answers; others found no difference in performance.^{4, 1} What breathing can do is take the edge off your nerves, so you can think more clearly.

Does it help before a job interview?

The simulated job-interview speech study fits exactly: less of a physical stress response, but no measurably better performance.¹ Breathe shortly before, on your way there or in the waiting area.