Remembering everything

When helping speakers prepare for a presentation, I almost never recommend speaking from a script. Scripts sap your natural energy as a presenter, drain your potential for spontaneity, and generally remove your ability to have a truly interactive and engaging conversation with your audience - which should be your goal for every presentation.

Of course, if you're not going to have a script and you're going to assemble the details of your presentation on the fly, you really ought to know your stuff.

The foundation of speakership mastery is your message. When you see a masterful speaker deliver a presentation it can seem like she has access to a limitless variety of relevant information on all aspects of her topic. Imagining yourself in the same position can be somewhat intimidating. "How could I ever know and remember that much stuff?", you might ask yourself.

Fortunately, it's not magic. It's a skill that can be learned, and it's not that complex; there's two steps to it.

Step 1: Capture your genius

Find a way to unpack, interrogate and store your insights. The easiest way to start is just taking notes every time you have a good idea, and putting it somewhere accessible, like Evernote. If you want to take it to the next level and haven't yet been introduced to the magic of Pink Sheets, either buy a copy of Speakership or hang out with me more often. They're a game changer for thought leaders.

Step 2: Make it stick

Most great ideas, interesting facts, and thought-provoking quotes come into our minds and leave almost immediately, never to be recalled again. This is entirely unsatisfactory for a speaker who might need to access that idea/fact/quote to propel a conversation in your next presentation.

I first found this model in The Decision Book by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, and it is enormously helpful.

It's pretty clear what happens. You learn a new thing, and over time the probability that you'll remember it diminishes. But if you've mastered step 1, and you've captured the idea/fact/quote, it's a piece of cake to revisit it periodically to make it stick.

Once you've created a pink sheet or saved a note on a particular topic, simply set reminders (you can even do it directly in Evernote) to review it in 1, 10, 30 and 60 days. The review for each pink sheet might take only 30 seconds, but doing so massively increases your ability to successful store and recall the information.

Then, when you have an important presentation coming up, you can quickly review all the pink sheets tagged with the topic you'll be presenting. It will make a huge difference to your ability to think on your feet under the pressure of a live audience, and deliver a presentation which is rich, interesting, and organic.