Memorize your talks & presentations for maximum impact
By far the best way to make your talks and presentations more impactful and memorable is to speak from memory. If you have to read from slides or from a script you will distract the audience and fail to create a connection between you and the audience.
Memorizing content is actually easier than it sounds, because you don’t actually have to memorize every word like a stage actor learning their script. There are simple methods and hacks that anyone can learn. Everyone has their own method for memorizing a speech, but here is the method I use and recommend to clients.
First of all, you should never attempt to memorize an entire script and deliver it verbatim. The main reason for this is that unless you are an extremely talented actor it will always sound stilted and people can tell you are playing a recorded announcement.
Because of this your words will be less impactful, and instead of inspiring people to be passionate about the topic you might just bore them. But another reason for not memorizing and replaying a script is that you are then in trouble if you have a temporary blackout. This is similar to the way that you lose situational awareness when you rely on an auto pilot.
Instead of memorizing the script, just read through it a few times, speaking out loud and fine-tuning the parts that don’t sound natural when you say them. When your complete draft is ready take the script and reduce it to key phrases. So, for example, if this answer were my script my first key phrase might be “never attempt memorize entire script”. Write down all your key phrases on a sheet of paper and group them into sections.
(You can also skip the entire script writing phase and go directly from your ideas to the list of key phrases, using a “speak first” approach. This saves time and usually gives a stronger result.)
Highlight the first key phrase of each section and memorize these key phrases and their order. This is important because to navigate easily through the speech you need to memorize just the structure and the key phrases. With that you can expand the key phrases to make the entire point, using whatever words come out. It will usually be similar to the script but every time slightly different. Because you are speaking from the heart and not memory it will sound much stronger. At the same time, you are much less likely to have a blackout.
When you have prepared your list of key phrases you can start to practice delivering the speech, remembering each key phrase and then expanding that. At first you will have to look at the list sometimes to see what comes next, but after some repetitions the order will start to become familiar, just like most people know which song comes next on an album they have heard many times. Sometimes you might even find that you don’t remember enough to expand a key phrase so you have to go back to the script and learn that part of the content better.
If you have trouble remembering the order, consider revising the structure of the speech and pruning the less essential parts. A well-structured speech is much easier to remember, to deliver and to understand. Anything that doesn’t fit in the structure is going to be a problem eventually. Everything should hang together elegantly to make a natural delivery possible.
Another way to make it easier to memorize the order of your sections is to visualize each section, imagining the talk or presentation as a sequence of scenes like in a movie, where you know what happens in each scene and the transitions between them.
Finally, when you are able to deliver the speech without looking at your notes you are ready to go. Always keep a copy of your key phrase list in your pocket just in case of blackouts. Almost certainly you won’t need it but just knowing that it is there can help immensely. Some people also leave a copy on the table next to the laptop, so that when they need to check what is next, they can “forget” they have a clicker and use the down button on the laptop instead, sneaking a peek at the list.
During the performance you could also put the key phrases in the speaker notes and display those on a monitor at the edge of the stage, but only look at that when you need it. Memorizing always makes the speech more persuasive and prompts should be only for when you get stuck.
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