More and more than the call is for short speeches.  Of course, the popularity of TED and TEDx talks is ane cause, but the impatient of the times is another, forth with our shrinking attention spans and all the other distractions competing for our mindshare.  Keynote speeches, which used to exist 90 minutes, are at present sixty, and our clients regularly report that they are oftentimes asked to give a xx- or 30-minute version of their keynote oral communication – and sometimes on the wing.

Then you lot'd better take a short version of your talk prepare to go, along with that splendid, full-bore, detailed, lx-minute masterpiece.  How do you compress what you accept to say into a xx-infinitesimal miniature version of itself?

The hush-hush to maxim something memorable in 20 minutes is to resist the urge to say too much.  Irresolute lives in 20 minutes takes focus.  And that's something that well-nigh people take a difficult time doing.  In 20 minutes, you can say roughly 2500 words, requite or have, and that's not very many if you lot've set yourself the task of changing the globe.  So y'all've got to narrow the field, resist the urge to say it all, and option your details judiciously.

A adept 20-minute talk presents one idea, tells one story, and asks one question.

Brainstorm by choosing ane thought.  Effort to arrive an idea that has universal interest, but where your specific expertise tin usefully be applied.  Then, narrow it down and focus it until you can sum it up easily in an elevator pitch of a few sentences:

Every bit a neuranatomist, I study the difference between normal brains and the brains of the mentally ill.  Ane morning time, I suffered a stroke, and experienced a mental disorder of my own. I was fascinated to acquire from the feel.  Here's what I learned while I was dying, especially about the differences betwixt the right and left hemisphere'south experiences of reality.

That, roughly speaking, is what Jill Bolte Taylor might use equally a guideline for preparing her TED masterpiece on her "stroke of insight."  It'south one idea, her expertise is highly relevant, it's focused and it's inherently interesting.

Next, selection one story to go with the ane idea.  Make it a story only you lot can tell.  And make it a story with a point, or lesson.  In the Taylor example, her story focuses on the drama surrounding the moment of the stroke, and what follows from that.  The insight Taylor brings to touch her stroke lets her tell the story in a mode no one else can.  The lesson she derives from the story is all about learning to live, particularly in that right-brain, non-judgmental world of affirmation, and in the end it's her affidavit in the face of such a harrowing life-event that makes her perspective powerful and unique.

Note that your story doesn't have to be as dramatic or life-threatening as a stroke, but of course information technology doesn't hurt.  The further downward you are on Maslow'south hierarchy of needs, the more than viscerally you will grab your audition.  The prophylactic level is the best place to exist, simply don't fake it.  If your voice communication is not about life and death, don't distort it to try to brand it so.  Just tell information technology in the way that but you can.

Finally, enquire ane question.  A good talk poses a question, for which it has an reply that might exist sketched quickly at the starting time of the talk, but for which the talk itself is the fuller reply.  Don't be agape to make it a big question.  In Taylor's case, the question she asks is "Who are we?" – plenty big – and the reply is that we are boundless beings that aqueduct and embrace the free energy of the universe – but that have the physical body to practice something with that energy.

Audiences ever start out request why – why should I care, why is this talk of import, why should I listen – and it's good to give a provisional, brief answer at the top of the talk, so that the audience relaxes and listens to the whole talk as the fuller reply.   Taylor cheats a little on this 1, opening with the statement that she studies the brain considering her brother suffers from mental illness.  So she studies the differences between brains similar hers that allow her to dream her dreams and however bring them into reality, whereas her brother's dreams never go reality.  That does respond the question why, simply her spoken language is non really about normal v mentally sick brains.  Rather, it'due south about the universal and differing experiences of reality offered up past the left and correct brains.

But by the fourth dimension we get to the end of the speech, most of u.s.a. have forgotten that entry point, so compelling is her story.

One idea, one story, i question.  That'southward  how y'all focus your thoughts to produce a coherent, potentially powerful 20-minute speech.


My Stroke of Insight