E-Tips

Do Pushups, Fold Laundry

The speaker dropped to the floor and started doing push ups to show how hard the older way is. A speaker promoting nuclear disarmament dropped BBs one at a time into a tin wastebasket explaining that each BB represented a bomb or warhead the size of the Hiroshima bomb extant today. Many were in tears two minutes later when the BBs stopped falling. A speaker pulled out a laundry basket and started folding clothes in the middle of his speech to show the idea of multi-tasking. I remember all these events years later.

According to brain research reported by psychologist Tony Buzan, there are five factors that can increase our audiences' retention of what we say: primacy, recency, linking, outstandingness, and review.

Primacy/Recency Effect - The brain recalls material at the beginning and at the end far better than what comes in the middle. Our most important ideas, therefore, need to be hammered home at the opening and closing of our talks. A forty-five minute talk could be broken into three, twelve minute chunks separated by, say, audience participation or a short video. This gives you three recency/primacy effect points in the talk to increase retention of the major ideas.

(PowerPoint Presentations - If you use PowerPoint visuals, a good way to transition between the three chunks of a presentation is to hit the "B" button to make the screen go blank. This breaks up the pattern and brings attention back to you. When you're ready to continue, hit "B" again and go back to the PowerPoint slides.)

Linking - Connect major points of a presentation with some common image or verbal marker, i.e. "I have a dream that..." repeated with each new point.

Outstandingness - Your core message will stick in the minds of your audiences if you connect it with something unusual, strange or out of context. I still remember the laundry being folded and the BBs dropping even though these talks occurred years ago. Speakers usually don't do that sort of thing.

Review - The memory pattern will be strengthened by reinforcement. This is why a summary at the end of your presentation is so critical to long-term retention.

Speaking of review, the next time you put together a talk, remember the power of primacy, recency, linking, outstandingness (Buzan's word, not mine), and review. By the way, if you've seen speakers do things that helped you remember their talks years later, we'd love to hear what they did.