I fervently try to avoid filler words, such as: um, like, so.
Discussion
That’s a good aim!
Because I’ve done speaking, I had to practice eliminating those. They are so prevalent in our conversations we often don’t realize how frequently we deploy them.
The tactic that helped me was slowing down my speech and allowing my words to catch up with my brain,
I accomplished this by pausing and taking a medium depth breath whenever I felt an “um” coming on.
As for “like”, in my writing I’ve trained myself to use “Such as” and as far as “so” goes…
I still use so because I like it 😜