Why you should never ever memorize a speech. It's certainly true that audiences don't like it if your head is buried in the notes, or you're staring at a PowerPoint slide. But some people go too far by trying to memorize every single word in the speech. The problem is, it's just really, really hard to do. And unless you're a trained actor, it is going to sound kind of like you are reading a teleprompter in your brain. It's not going to sound natural.
Because you're going to sound like you're thinking about what do I say five seconds from now because I'm looking at this teleprompter in my brain. The other problem is, the body reacts to stress in predictable ways. If you're standing up and speaking in front of people and you're not doing that every single day, your body is feeling stress. You're feeling nervous when the body's nervous, the brain shuts down, the adrenaline is pushing and your body is just telling you run get Ready to run away as quickly as possible. Because of that, your ability to have recall goes way down. So even if you're normally great at memorizing something, it's not going to be as effective when you're giving this presentation.
And the problem is if you're giving this speech and everything's going well, and all the sudden you forget the word, it's gonna be like a train that goes off the tracks, like what just happened to me, it's going to come to a screeching halt. And it's going to put a spotlight on sort of the mechanics of the speech. It's kind of like if you go to a Broadway show, doesn't happen very often, but when an actor does flub a line, it's often the most memorable part of the whole show. You don't want that to be the case when you're giving a presentation. That's why I do not recommend that you try to memorize a presentation. I also don't recommend that you read it.
What I do recommend is have a simple sheet of notes, plants down at your notes, occasionally simple bullet points to three words. To keep you on track. You need a roadmap. then focus on the ideas, the examples, the stories you want to tell, don't worry about getting word for word, everything right now, it's different if you're a full time professional keynote speaker and someone has paid you $50,000 for a set speech that you're famous. Well, that's different. I understand that.
But if you are a business person, you're speaking at a chamber of commerce, a city council meeting, you're running for political office or you're talking to a bunch of customers or prospects. Don't try to memorize the speech work from a simple outline.