Any speaker who has received feedback of any kind from an audience has likely been humbled by how little that audience remembers. Studies of retention (of what we’ve heard) over the years range from 10 to 30 percent – a woefully small number. At best, less than a third of all that carefully prepared content you deliver will stick. That’s right: two-thirds of your brilliance vanishes into the ether within hours.
I had a friendly person approach me at a conference just before the pandemic, saying, “Nick! I remember your speech from 10 years ago (at the same conference)! I was enchanted to be remembered. When I asked him what he recalled, exactly, he said, happily, “Nothing! Except the story you told at the end!” And then he proceeded to regale me with a pretty accurate version of the story, the rest of the speech apparently long gone.
Traditionally, we speakers have relied on two main tactics to boost memory: slides and repetition. Let’s start with the beloved slide deck. Microsoft, bless their dedicated hearts, spent years trying to prove that PowerPoint slides increase retention. The evidence never quite came through. What slides actually do is force audiences to look in two directions at once – speaker and screen. And the cognitive science is pretty clear: multitasking is a myth. What we really do is switch from one thing to another. And every switch comes with a cost – we miss something at the end of A and the beginning of B as our attention lurches between them.
So, how about repetition? There’s nothing a speaker loves more than a rhythmic, repeated phrase, especially one the audience can chant back in unison. It feels powerful – memorable even. And to a degree, repetition does help. But – and here comes the twist – a new study shows that mere repetition isn’t as effective as repeating with variation. (Butowska-Buczyńska et al., 2024.)
In other words, the brain learns and recalls more effectively when the same idea is expressed in slightly different ways. So, if I want to teach the definition of a word like claustrophobia, I might first describe it as “a fear of confined spaces.” Then I might explain it as “a specific kind of anxiety disorder related to enclosed environments.” Combining both lenses – definition and context – creates a stronger memory trace than simply repeating “fear of confined spaces” over and over.
As a recovering claustrophobic myself, I can’t help but wonder: will a richer understanding of the term make me more aware of my condition… or just better at diagnosing myself in elevators?
Ah well — it’s all in the service of science, right?
So, fellow speakers: maybe it’s time to ditch the dependency on slides and retire the over-rehearsed chants. Instead, think of your key ideas as precious stones – and show your audience how the light catches them differently from multiple angles. Vary your bites at the memory apple. Offer analogies. Shift perspective. Ask your audience to consider thirteen ways of looking at the blackbird of memory.
After all, as Wallace Stevens might agree – it was never just one blackbird to begin with.
The person who remembered the story you told at the end of your speech reminds me of something a career consultant once shared: “Put the most important thing you want to say in the postscript of your cover letter.” Spoken, written, experienced — how you finish is how they’ll feel, and what they will remember.
Bonus points for sprinkling that message throughout, in different ways, as you suggest!