How to prepare a presentation in two days

Why out loud

Most last-minute preparation is re-reading slides and rewriting sentences, which feels productive and changes almost nothing about how the talk goes. What changes it is saying it.

Day 1: shape it and say it once

1. Write your one-sentence point. If the audience remembers one thing, what is it? Everything else in the talk serves that sentence.

2. Pick three to five points that support it, in order. That's your structure. Write them as a short list of cue words.

3. Write your first two sentences and your last sentence word for word. Nerves peak at the start, and the ending is what people remember. Everything in between can be in your own words.

4. Say the whole thing out loud, once, timed. Standing up, at full volume, even badly. You'll find out how long it really runs (usually longer than you think) and where you lose the thread.

5. Cut to fit. If you're over time, drop your weakest point entirely rather than trimming every sentence.

Day 2: rehearse it twice, record once

6. Two more full run-throughs, out loud and timed. Each one gets noticeably smoother. That's the whole trick.

7. Record one on your phone and listen back once. Listen for one thing only: the moment you got lost, or said "um" three times in a row. That's the only part worth fixing, and you fix it by rehearsing that transition until it's automatic.

8. Practise from cues, not the script. Run it once from just your list of cue words. If you blank on the day, you only need the next cue word, not the next sentence.

9. Answer the questions you're dreading. Write down the three hardest questions anyone could ask and answer each one out loud. Out loud matters: an answer you've only thought through will come out tangled.

The morning of

• Don't learn anything new. Run your opening twice and stop.
• Breathe slowly right before you go up: in for 4, out for 6, five times. Longer out-breaths help slow your heart rate.
• Reframe the nerves. A racing heart is the same body response as excitement. Telling yourself "I'm excited" tends to work better than "calm down", because you're relabelling the feeling rather than fighting it.
• Know your first line cold, so the worst thirty seconds run on autopilot.

What to skip

Perfecting slides, memorising word for word, and reading about public speaking (yes, including this). Every hour spent on those is an hour not spent saying the talk out loud.