Why Memorising Your Presentation is Holding You Back
How to build a presentation that you won’t forget
You’re in the middle of a presentation, it’s going well, your audience is nodding in agreement with your story and then… your mind goes blank. The PowerPoint slides that you so carefully built over the past weeks don’t give you any clues either. Your mind is racing; what was that next sentence that you had practised so many times? Frantically, your eyes go over the notes you’re holding in your hand. You’re all for sustainability, however this one time you really wish you had printed it in a bigger font.
Do you recognise that feeling? I think it’s safe to say we’ve all had moments like this. It’s happened to me many times.
I used to be so nervous to speak without notes. Terrified that I would forget to mention a key point or that I would go completely blank. I would write my script and try to memorise the text.
As a back-up, I tried all the tricks in the book:
Printing the text in font size XXL, ending up with a pile of paper.
Printing the text with very wide margins, thinking: fewer words per line improves readability in case of emergency.
Creating note cards with the most important sentences and running out of cards.
Sticking Post-it notes around my screen when presenting online, only for them to come twirling down halfway through the presentation.
Here’s a photo of one of my first “big presentations” that I did 3 years ago. I’m standing in front of 300 young beef producers in Roma, QLD and all I could think was: Who am I to tell all these people something about sustainability and the importance of community? This Dutch girl from the city who has been in Australia less than 3 years…
These self-sabotaging thoughts clouding my brain obviously didn’t help me deliver an engaging presentation. Quite the opposite: I was so nervous that I couldn’t leave the lectern and ended up reading significant parts of my presentation.
Reflecting on this presentation, I realised something interesting. This feeling of being so nervous to make mistakes and forget my text happened to me only with certain presentations. And those were the presentations where I wasn’t telling the stories that I had created myself, where the content wasn’t my own and I was referring to work of other departments that I wasn’t fully comfortable with. I tried to memorise this content, hoping that it would come out as my own. But I realised I was doing it all wrong.
When you memorise a piece of text from beginning to end, you teach your brain to remember the sentences in a certain order. This comes with a risk. If you forget one or two sentences you may lose your train of thought and you don’t know where to pick the story back up.
Since then, I’ve prepared my presentations differently. I’ve developed the following method that helps me build a story that is my own and that I can tell without holding notes in my hand:
Step 1 - Define your core message: Start with deciding on the key ideas that you’re aiming to get across. Place them in the order that is most logical. This is your scaffolding, you’ll build everything else around it.
Step 2 - Create your stories: Using the technique of the Story Bank, build the stories around these core messages. Try to find a balance between data, anecdotes and analogies; you want to avoid losing your audience presenting 10 graphs in a row. Don’t shy away from emotions: you can show the pain of the problem you’re discussing and later the excitement when presenting your solution.
Step 3 - Practise out loud: Start by reading the text out loud to yourself and you’ll quickly notice if the words flow naturally when you speak. If they don’t, change them! Then start practising on others. This doesn’t have to be the full presentation. Another technique is to incorporate parts of your presentation into daily conversations with people around you. That way, it comes out more naturally each time.
Using this method has significantly improved my speaking. Six months later, I spoke like this instead:
Do you also want to feel more confident on stage and never worry about forgetting your text again? I help professionals craft and deliver powerful presentations that feel natural and engaging, without the stress of memorisation. If you’d like to learn this and practise with expert guidance, check out my coaching programmes here.
Let’s make your next presentation one to remember!