How I Memorized a Presentation for TEDx (Word Perfect)

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Ever since my TEDx Talk cracked several million views, people from around the world have asked me how to memorize a presentation.

Beyond that presentation from the stage, what qualifies me to offer you advice for memorizing a presentation of any length?

Well, I also spent a decade as a professor at three universities in three different countries. I delivered dozens of lectures during those years. In more than one language.

I’ve also spent over a decade as an online “professor of memory.” My expertise in memory has taken me around the world. I’ve given presentations in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, England, China, Canada, Australia and the USA.

In fact, the feature image for this post shows discussing memory as a part of language learning at a 2016 Polyglot Conference in Berlin. You can also watch hundreds of hours of my presentations on YouTube from several years of live streaming.

And on this page, I’m going to share the best of my experiences with multiple kinds of presentation.

If you want to memorize your presentation verbatim, I’ll show you how.

Or, if you prefer to work from mental bullet points, I’ll help you do that too.

When it comes to memory aids for speakers, this is the real deal from someone who practices these techniques week in and week out.

Ready?

Let’s get started!

So You Need to Memorize a Presentation… Here’s Where to Start

Getting started… this is the tricky bit.

So here’s a story using the Polyglot conference speech I gave to help dimensionalize the starting point I usually use.

Determine Who Your Presentation Is For… And Who It Isn’t For

Before I wrote a single word, I asked myself a very simple set of questions:

Who can I help and who am I unable to help?

And what’s the one thing that will help the listeners above all?

I went through this same process with my TEDx Talk and many other presentations.

Make no mistake, this step can be tricky. It’s a discipline to whittle things down to the biggest and most important point.

But it is possible and often the success of the talks we enjoy most comes down to knowing that the audience you’re addressing is defined as closely as possible.

It was hard for me, but I believe focusing on just one kind of person and one message for that person helped my TEDx Talk reach so many viewers.

Of course, some presentations need more details and more nuance, but even then, the principle is the same. If you think about who each principle is for and how to focus on the biggest and most impactful part, it’s going to be easier to digest. And easier for you to remember successfully.

Script The Presentation

When it comes to helping yourself remember your presentation, writing is key. And you need to make sure that you’re actually delivering on the promise so that your presentation is worth memorizing.

For example, in law school I recently got an A+ for an oral presentation worth 50% of the course grade. I wrote the presentation and then re-read the assignment. I realized I hadn’t fully addressed the requirements, so I rewrote it and simplified my points for clarity.

But if you write a bunch of mush with endless long sentences, you’re setting yourself up for a struggle.

So when you’re putting the presentation together, ask yourself:

• Do I want to memorize the presentation verbatim?
• Or can I memorize keywords and let my expertise fill in the blanks while speaking?

Both ways work very well. It just comes down to your goal. In the case of my TEDx Talk, I wrote the presentation and memorized it verbatim.

In my Polyglot Conference talk, however, I prepared slides and memorized only the key points, which involved speaking some Chinese based on how I’ve studied that language.

Either way, scripting or preparing slides can help you decide how you’re going to memorize the presentation.

And if you’re preparing a speech rather than a slide-based presentation, please see my guide on how to memorize a speech fast for more details on verbatim memorization.

Review The Presentation

As a final preparation step, it’s great if you can take a moment to review what you’ve prepared. Ideally, you’ll also get at least one other person to review it as well.

For my TEDx Talk, Thomas Krafft reviewed the script itself and a recording of me delivering it from memory. Before presenting the script of my live-action “Memory Detective” game attached to a memory improvement novel I wrote, I had a test audience go through the entire sequence.

Reviewing the speech, slides and related materials with others helps add an extra layer of understanding that helps with the memorization process. I highly recommend making time for review.

How to Memorize a Presentation from Start to Finish in 7 Easy Steps

As Hanna Pishwa points out in Language and Memory, Aristotle was one of the first to intensively describe the rhetorical strategies used for persuasion in speeches.

But we can go a step further: Aristotle also closed his treatise on memory by explaining that we are moved most by people who speak from memory.

He says reciting from memory is impressive because the person who has memorized their presentation doesn’t have to “hunt” for their ideas. They use a “process” that brings those ideas to them automatically.

How can you do that too? Just follow these steps:

One: Learn To Use The Memory Palace Technique

Since long before Aristotle, people have been using the ancient art of memory to commit presentation points to memory using Memory Palaces.

A Memory Palace is simply a mental copy of a location you know well, like your home, office, school, church or any place with walls, paths and other environmental features.

This is a graphic representation of the Memory Palace I used to memorize my TEDx Talk:

It’s a neighborhood in Brisbane and the numbers represent individual stations.

I teach people who take the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass to number their stations to help them rapidly create these simple journeys.

To do this, it’s helpful to draw your Memory Palaces first. Like this:

Two: Add Interesting Associations To The Words & Ideas In Your Presentation

The best memory techniques all rely on mnemonic imagery.

When it comes to how to memorize lines for a presentation, you can do this very quickly by tapping into a pegword list.

For example, in a presentation that starts with, “How would you like…?” my pegword list suggests Howie Mandel for “how” and Elijah Wood for “would.”

Those figures are laid out in the Memory Palace at the beginning of its journey.

This leads us to the next step.

Three: Make Your Associations Zany

Let me make a preemptive strike here:

A lot of people have protested to me over the years:

“I’m not creative. I can’t get myself to see Howie Mandel and Elijah Wood kicking a like button on a platform like YouTube.”

Stop right there.

I’m not creative either.

All I’m doing is taking two people who already exist and having them do something strange. There are only so many actions in the world. They could kiss the like button, put it in a rocket ship and send it to the moon, or bury it with thumbs-up shaped shovels.

Seriously. There’s nothing “creative” about this. It’s just borrowing from real possible actions and animating them in the Memory Palace. Please don’t overthink this process and make use of the exercises I’m going to share with you in step four.

If you’re memorizing your presentation verbatim, you’ll need more associations than you would for one delivered based on bullet points.

Either way, the process is the same.

Four: Make Your Associations Multisensory

Once you’ve decided what your characters are going to do with one another, add some multisensory elements. For example, you can hear the voices of your celebrity associations, or imagine that you’re feeling them interacting with the like button in our example.

We do this because scientific research makes it clear that elaboration helps form memories faster.

To get better at making your associations weird and multisensory within seconds, these elaborative encoding exercises will help, as will these visualization exercises.

Five: Use The Memory Palace To Memorize Your Presentation

When the ancient Romans gave presentations, they often would start a persuasive passage with a set of points.

“In the first place,” an orator would say before diving into the point. Then the orator would say, “In the second place,” etc.

This convention remains with us today, and those orators were literally using their Memory Palaces in real time to recall each point they wanted to make.

But you can be sure that they had practiced in private before delivering them. We know that Rhetorica Ad Herennium, originally attributed to Cicero, gives many suggestions around how best to practice for both public speaking and reciting poetry.

And you need to practice as well.

You do it by starting at the “first place” of the Memory Palace and then triggering those images to help you recall the words.

Personally, I practice my presentations by following several patterns. For example, instead of always starting at the beginning, I will practice reciting a few lines from the end, then switch to the beginning, then go to a spot in the middle.

This is helpful in ushering the presentation into long-term memory quickly because it harnesses the primacy effect, recency effect and serial-positioning effect.

Six: Practice Delivering The Presentation

Now, this point raises a subtlety that I personally find very important and impactul when memorizing presentations.

I do not go through my Memory Palace while delivering my presentations unless I absolutely have to do so.

See, when you follow the process I’ve described above, the presentation will be in your long-term memory.

However, unexpected things can happen. During my TEDx Talk, people laughed at a spot where I hadn’t placed a joke. It surprised me for a second and I briefly popped into the Memory Palace I’d made to help me get back on track (instead of standing there like a deer caught in headlights).

But ideally, you want to just have the presentation memorized and not have to rely on any mnemonic strategies while in the moment.

In other words, with optimal setup and execution, the memory techniques will have already done their job and you can do what Aristotle described: speak without looking like you’re hunting for the ideas. This point is especially important when delivering a sales presentation from memory.

And that means you can connect with that audience you identified during the preparation stage. The more you connect with them, the more successful you’ll be during and after your presentation because people remember connection.

Seven: Analyze Your Performance

Want to be a pro speaker?

Then you’ll want to spend some time reflecting on your presentation.

This step is important because it gives you the opportunity to identify areas to improve the next time.

And it will help you congratulate yourself where credit is due. Please make sure to do so. Delivering a presentation is a huge accomplishment and you deserve recognition merely for making it happen.

But the real gold is found when you apply some objective and subjective reasoning to the entire process. Reflecting on your experience will also reveal new ideas for other presentations you might not have thought about otherwise.

How to Memorize a Presentation in Another Language

If you’re wondering how these steps apply to presenting in a language other than your mother tongue, I’ve done this myself a few times.

During my Mercator Guest Professorship in Germany, for example, I was asked to present in German on an aspect of Canadian Cinema.

Here’s exactly what I did:

First, I drafted the script myself. After doing my best on my own, I asked my research assistant for help in correcting it. This step matters a great deal when presenting in a second language for at least two reasons:

• It’s better for your listeners if your grammar and vocabulary choices are as accurate and sensible as possible
• You will help yourself memorize aspects of the language correctly, developing your fluency instead of digging common errors second language learners often make deeper into your memory

To memorize my presentation once it had been corrected, I used the Magnetic Memory Method by following all the steps covered on this page.

But there’s one addition that makes all the difference when memorizing presentations in another language.

The Principle of Word Division

Often in foreign language learning, it can be difficult to find mnemonics for words with multiple syllables.

That’s why I suggest you break words down and give each syllable an individual mnemonic association. Scientifically speaking, this step is called chunking and is well-known to aid memory.

Once you’ve broken a word down, then link individual syllables together with well-formed associations on one or more stations in a Memory Palace.

This approach isn’t exactly something I invented. It’s inspired by the memory guides written by Peter of Ravenna and Jacobus Publicius, both of whom discussed either presentations or language learning.

Their approaches to syllable-level encoding have been so useful to me that I produced my own translations of their works so more people could discover the process.

And if you’ve watched my TEDx Talk, you’ve already seen this technique in action. The memorized Sanskrit I recite in that presentation was encoded the same way, syllable by syllable.

In sum, whether you’re presenting in German, Spanish, Chinese or any other language, the process is the same:

Write the script, get it corrected by a native speaker and memorize the corrected version. When words resist memorization, use the Principle of Word Division to chunk them down and keep moving.

How Long Does It Take to Memorize a Presentation? 4 Case Studies

This is one of those questions that requires nuance and discussion of actual circumstances. Because ultimately, I can only speak for myself and how the techniques I’m sharing with you have helped me.

TEDx Case Study

I worked on my TEDx Talk for approximately two weeks before I realized the script was totally wrong. As mentioned, I’d gone through it with my coach and then essentially rewrote the opening and closing of one of my books.

Although I kept revising small parts up to the date of delivery, I memorized most of it verbatim and walked the same journey I used as my Memory Palace several times. I made these practice walks approximately twice with the script in hand, then entirely from memory another two times.

Then, after arriving in Melbourne a few days early, I recited the talk while walking the city a few times before finally delivering the presentation during a dress rehearsal one day before I delivered the final version.

Polyglot Conference Case Study

The slides for this presentation took approximately 90 minutes to prepare and I was instilling the material in memory as I went.

Plus, as a mostly image-based presentation, I could rely on those pictures to help trigger various aspects of the presentation. You could say that the presentation script was somewhat cinematic, rather than keyword-based or verbatim.

German Presentation Case Study

My German lecture took considerably longer than any of the equivalent English presentations I’ve given.

I technically had three months, though I confess I only got started writing the presentation three weeks before showtime.

But if you’re presenting in another language, treat the timeline according to your own comfort and how much practice time you think you’ll need.

Foundational Questions That Will Help You Memorize Your Script In Minimal Time

How familiar are you with the material?

I could prepare my Polyglot talk in 90 minutes because I’d spent years thinking about and teaching its content. But if you’re presenting on something you’re still learning, budget time for understanding first.

Sure, memory techniques help you encode words and their meaning. But they can’t provide it.

How practiced are you with memory techniques?

I’ll be straight with you:

Some people pick up mnemonics and start succeeding almost immediately. Others dabble for years. If this is your first Memory Palace, give yourself extra time rather than judging yourself against my numbers.

How long is the presentation?

A 20-minute talk based on a topic you know deeply can take less time to prepare than a 5-minute verbatim script in a second language. You need to prepare accordingly.

You Never Really Know When You’re Ready (And That’s Okay)

Finally, here’s something few people will tell you: I do not believe there’s ever a moment coming when a presentation is definitively “done.”

You will never feel like there’s enough time and you cannot anticipate what might go wrong during the presentation itself that causes issues or delays.

For example, during my TEDx Talk, people laughed at a spot where I hadn’t placed a joke.

My response? I riffed on it and wove something that wasn’t intended to be funny into a speaking point.

During my German presentation, where riffing wasn’t as easy for me, I simply took my time during the Q&A and asked my assistant for the right word when I needed it.

When delivering my recent oral presentation for law school, the connection kept breaking up. So I just paused, waited for a moment, and when the connection was reestablished, carried on.

My Personal Rule: Start Preparing the Moment You Know

If you take one thing from this section, it should be this:

I start thinking and researching from the moment I know I’m going to give a presentation. Even if I switch topics at the last minute, that background thinking always pays off.

In other words, don’t ask “how long will this take?”

Instead, always ask yourself, “how much runway can I give myself?” Then enable yourself to take as long as it takes.

But what if you don’t have weeks? What if the presentation is tomorrow and you need to move fast? Let’s discuss what I do in cases like that next.

In a Pinch? Here’s How to Memorize a Presentation In One Night
(Or Even a Few Hours)

I know that some people don’t have time for all of the steps above. And as I mentioned, I wound up rewriting my recent law school presentation when I realized my original draft hadn’t fully addressed the requirements.

Noting that normally I would give myself a much longer runway, that’s not always possible. So because I realized my mistake the night before the law school presentation needed to be delivered, here’s the technique I used instead of memorizing it verbatim.

The Acronym Method

I’m often invited to speak in the community at the last minute. I literally don’t have time to mindmap more than a few ideas.

But I can take those ideas and arrange them into a keyword.

For example, when I was invited to speak at a “Masters of Marketing” event, I arranged my ideas into the acronym F.R.E.E.

• Frequent messaging to a…
• Relevant audience…
• Entertains, Educates and…
• Engages in the direction of a response

I placed that acronym in a simple Memory Palace and talked about what each concept means for two minutes each.

The great thing about the acronym approach is that you don’t have to practice as much, if at all. The logic of the acronym itself guides you through the parts of your presentation because you’re mentally checking them off by spelling the acronym.

Give this presentation technique a try and you will have no problem committing presentations to memory fast.

Memorize Your Presentation in No Time With the Steps Above

Let’s recap:

Presentations are so much easier to remember when you’re clear about who you’re addressing and who you’re not.

Once you’ve decided on whether you’ll be speaking verbatim or working from bullet points, the Memory Palace technique is a tried-and-true technique with thousands of years of success stories.

To make information “stick,” you need a process of elaborating associations. A bit of prep will take you a long way if you complete the exercises I shared on this page.

Finally, it’s worth repeating that reviewing your talk in any way possible is tremendously valuable. Even if you get a last-minute invite to speak, you can probably squeeze in a few minutes to record yourself on your phone and tweak a few things.

Even if you don’t have time to change anything, just seeing yourself once will give you ideas about how to make what you’re about to say in front of an audience better.

Just make sure to avoid perfectionism. Relax and if you make a mistake, just call a spade a spade and find your way back to where you got lost.

And if you want more on the memorization process so you always recover quickly when things happen during live presentations (as they inevitably will), check out my FREE Memory Improvement Kit:

So what do you say?

Are you ready to get out there and give the best presentation of your career?

Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to share with you more granular details from my long career of presenting around the world.