When you’re making a speech or presentation, is it better to read from notes or try to memorise your script?
Well, here’s an idea than might help with the answer, and it comes all the way from ancient Greece.
Demosthenes was one of the most famous of the Greek orators. He was also renowned for making very long speeches without notes.
Cunningly, he had worked out a system which he called ‘Temples of the Mind’.
Here’s what he did.
When he had his speech written, he would imagine walking through his local temple and fixing posters of individual parts of his speech onto the various columns. Obviously, he did this quite vividly.
Then, later, when he launched into his speech, he merely imagined walking through the temple, in the same sequence, reading off the posters.
In fact, there was one occasion, it is said, when Demosthenes spoke for seven hours without referring to a single note. So he obviously had his system down pat.
How could you use the same trick?
Instead of a temple, why not think about your own house? You know it off by heart, and there’s bound to be a sequence you follow when you get home at night.
Make up a list of ten or more ‘objects’ within that sequence – your front door, the lamp in the hallway, that picture in the living room, and so on – and then ‘tack’ a visual representation of successive parts of your speech onto each object’
For example, start with your ‘Introduction’ segment and imagine the main points right in the middle of your front door. Create mental pictures and ‘see’ them as vividly as you can. (If your speech doesn’t suggest pictures to you, chances are it’s not going to be a good speech.)
Then simply move from room to room, attaching your key mental pictures to your selected objects – an upward surge of profits tilting the lamp in the hallway, the picture in the living room showing some of the organisational changes you want to make, and so on.
Do this as vividly as you can. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds for each object or position.
Then, when you’re ready to make your speech, mentally walk through your house in the same sequence. The images will be there to remind you.
This is also much the same party trick that ‘mentalists’ use when they quickly remember a long list of objects, and can then recite them back – both backwards and forwards. They simply create visual representations and attach them to their sequence of remembered things.
In fact during my presentation speaker training, I get our participants to do this as a simple exercise. It only takes a few minutes, but they’re certainly surprised at how easily the vivid images stay in their minds.
Later, when I get them to make an actual presentation, they usually find they can commit the main points to memory in less than a couple of minutes.
I invite you to try it. It could make a huge difference to your next speech or presentation.
John Cliff. www.johncliff.com
