Memorising a twenty-minute speech

The fundamental mistake

Never memorise a speech word for word. Three reasons: it is fifty times slower, it sounds recited and therefore false, and one gap loses you the thread for good.

You are going to memorise the structure, not the text. The words re-form naturally out loud, since you know your subject.

Splitting into blocks

A twenty-minute speech is about ten blocks of two minutes. Each block carries one idea and one piece of evidence, a figure, an anecdote or an example.

For each block you create one pivot image: a single scene containing the idea and its evidence.

A worked example. Block 4: our retention rate fell by 18% because onboarding new customers takes too long.

Pivot image: a dove, 18 in the Major System, tangled at the top of an endless slide; customers shoot past it and vanish through a hole at the bottom. Station 4 of the palace, the hall mirror: the mirror reflects that infinite slide.