Embodying Your Talk

I've had some difficulty articulating how my philosophy of memorisation works. I haven't read anything like it anywhere else, so I'm not quite sure how to describe it. This is my attempt to describe it for you in a way that you can hopefully use.

Traditional Memorisation vs. My Approach

What we think of as memorisation involves going into our memory, searching for something, and retrieving it. This is what we learn at school and with exams. You learn the material, get asked questions, and retrieve that information from your memory. That is how we think memory works.

Most people who try to memorise something tend to picture the words they read. In effect, when they are reciting something like a script or a poem, they are reading the images displayed on the screen of their mind. -This is a terrible way to try to memorise things!

My almost twenty years in martial arts suggest that memory works differently. In martial arts, we drilled movements in response to various attacks over and over until our responses became fluid and automatic. The whole point of the drilling and practice is that you don't have time for thought. When you're fighting at a high level, you think strategically above the base level of action.

The most profound experience I had was when I won the South Island Championships for my grade. I was in flow all day, responding instinctively to attacks from my opponent while strategically thinking about my moves and protecting myself as I attack.

Applying This to Speaking

I believe that memorisation for speaking works the same way. A more accessible comparison for most people is music. You don't search your memory when you hear a song you know well; it comes out naturally. This is what I want to achieve with a talk. We want it embodied, drilled into you so that it just comes out.

Most people don't think this way because our educational system doesn't generally do things this way. My program for speakers starts with working out the structure on paper. This academic approach makes editing and rearranging the structure easier for better impact.

The Process of Embodying a Talk

We start by writing the structure on paper. This allows us to easily edit and rearrange parts to build more tension or curiosity. However, memorising a written talk is not embodying the talk.

To embody the talk, you must repeat it a lot, like learning a song. You don't have to repeat the whole talk; you pick a chunk, a small, complete piece, and practice it until you get it right. It helps to say it with the pitch, pace, and gestures you want to use on stage.

Record yourself saying the chunk, listen to the recording, and make adjustments. Do this at least seven times without looking at a piece of paper. This repetition helps you internalize the talk.

Once you're comfortable with individual chunks, start practising two chunks together. Gradually build up to larger sections until you can do the whole talk from memory without notes.

The Importance of Listening to Yourself

Listening to your recordings is crucial. It helps you identify words that don't work or need more emphasis. You can experiment with different emphases or words and refine your talk. To be fair, nobody enjoys listening to their own voice. No matter how often I do it, I still hate listening to my voice.

The point is that you will only embody your talk by repeating it over and over again, with passion. Performing it in the same way you would sing a song to learn it.

Think of a song you know really well.
If I asked you to recite the lyrics without singing, rhythm, or tone changes, you would find it difficult no matter how well you know the song.

Your talk works the same way. To make it memorable to you, you must first imbue it with the passion, the rhythm and the movement that you want to express from the stage. The more of that you put together in practice the easier it will be to memorise effectively.

Conclusion

Your written structure provides the overarching direction of the talk. Once you have that, you virtually throw away the script and start building your talk word by word, sound by sound, gesture by gesture, with the pitch and pace you want.

Include every click of the slide deck. So you know the beats of the slide change in harmony your talk. I often suggest my speakers say ‘click’ out loud when practicing so they know when they will be changing slides and can picture what the audience is seeing.

This is how my TEDx speakers construct and practice their talks.

Snippets is a section where I comment on interesting text I encountered in the previous week.

Binge Bank

This is a term I heard Shaan Puri use on the How I Write podcast with David Perell. The concept is a good one, but I also want to point out the brilliant naming of the concept.

The idea of a binge bank is to have a collection of content available online so that when someone is searching to find out more about you, they can binge a range of information that links from one to the other.

Nobody is likely to spend a long time reading or watching one long post or video. However, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs of shorter content that leads from one to another builds your credibility and authority piece by piece.

Naming the concept ‘the Binge Bank’ with an alliterative name makes it memorable and proprietary for Shaan.

Class Traitor

Scott Galloway, in his interview with Steven Bartlett on the Diary of a CEO podcast regarding his recent TED talk, mentioned that one of the elements of his talk was to be perceived as a class traitor. Doing this added some credibility and intrigue to the talk, which captured the audience.

Plus, the term class traitor appealed to me.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section in which I explore a famous (or not-so-famous) quote and how it applies to the Compelling Communicator.

This is the simplest quote I have ever included in the Compelling Communicator, but I believe it is the root of courage.

You don’t have to do anything. All actions in life are a choice. If you fail to make choices because you are afraid you won’t ‘win’, then you won’t move. Nothing will change. You will not learn or grow.

Life is about action.

Growth cannot happen without action.

What we too often fail to consider is that sometimes winning is not the best option. Sometimes, we learn far more from failing to win, which leads us to a better outcome in the long run. But if we never attempted because we were not guaranteed a win, then we would remain stuck.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I am entering a number of awards for Epic Learning. In fact you can vote for us in the people’s choice award here. I would really appreciate the vote!

Recreationally:

I haven’t left the house much in the last month, with my most exciting pastime being re-reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series of books.

What I am reading:

I have been reading Nicholas Cole's The Art and Business of Writing, which I have found fascinating. I have also been reading Donna O’Toole’s book: Win! -Raise your profile and grow your business by winning awards, which offers a great blueprint for the award strategy I am putting together for Epic Learning.

What I am watching:

My guilty pleasure at the moment is watching the latest season of The Traitors on TV3. I watched The Terminator on TVNZ on demand, and I am happy to say it holds up well for a film that was released 40 years ago. Sure, some of the animations look a little off (they are 40 years old!), and the hairstyles took me back to my own nightclubbing days, but it is still a great story.