What if I told you that you could save time by not having to laboriously memorize a public speech. There is a faster way. It still involves work and practice but no memorization.
Senior year of college had a class called science communication. The final project was giving a speech to the class on a scientific topic. This speech had two things not enough speeches have. It had to be super engaging and understandable. We read books and learned techniques all year to give a great final speech.
One day I got a text from a staff member at the school to come to a faculty and staff audience to talk about whatever I would like. The staff member and I were close and her last minute faculty speaker had fallen through so she asked me. She gave me five days notice then I promptly forgot. Two days before she asked me again and reluctantly, but knowing it would be a good learning experience, I said yes. I told her I would come after my science communication class was done. This would give me around 30 minutes to sit in the ballrooms and formulate exactly what to say.
The day arrived and I was in my science communication class. I was going to talk about the makerspaces on campus since I knew the subject well. Suddenly my phone buzzed and the text said loudly, “WHERE ARE YOU?” I had told her the wrong time by one hour. Quickly responding that my class ended in 15 minutes, I asked her if she would delay. Immediately after class I rushed over to the ballrooms. The staff member welcomed me and went to the stage to introduce me. The room was filled with over one hundred people, a third of all the faculty and staff on campus. And I was late. Loudly my heart picked up beating faster and faster. Using the extra blood going to my head I relaxed and formulated some of the ideas I wished to say and which idea to start with. No details but rather large concepts. Then I took the stage.
The speech went amazingly. I had prepared almost nothing but on a subject I knew well. Later while reading a book for science communication the author recommended going into a speech with several clear arguments about a topic that one knows or learns a lot about. The book recommended exactly what I had been forced to do under compressed time. Reusing this technique, I spent around an hour practicing the science speech beforehand always making sure the ideas and facts were right. The actual words I relied on my head to think up as the speech progressed. Compared to many hours of hard memorization, I instead practiced the main arguments. The final course speech went great despite spending little time preparing.
::One can save a lot of time public speaking by learning the topic and arguments well rather than memorizing every word::