Easy Ways to Remember Your Material

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One of the most common reasons people fear public speaking is that they blank out and forget their entire speech. I remember when I was competing on the speech team in highschool, I did a speech on memory. In the middle of the speech during the competition, I blanked out and ended up saying something stupid like, “And it does this [blanked out, paused] for many reasons.” Arg!

Sometimes it feels like you can practice and practice and practice and when the moment comes that you need to remember your presentation, everything goes blank! However, there are ways that you can fool proof your message so that the parts you actually have to memorize are minimal.

You do this by incorporating triggers into your presentation. These triggers can be things like power point slides, props, and stories that you scatter throughout your speech. What the triggers do is prompt you to talk about the next point in your presentation. The triggers also serve as a trigger to help you remember what to say next.

There are four primary ways to remember your presentation.
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