Invisible Notes for Presentation - How do you present without looking at notes?

A lot of people experience feelings of nervousness and apprehension when it comes to giving presentations. Personally, I can attest to holding onto my notes as I fear the possibility of forgetting important points. Can anyone relate? 

I used to work in an international law firm in Tokyo, where I oversaw Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). As part of my responsibilities, I regularly presented my D&I strategies to the partners and top management, had presentations on D&I initiatives during weekly office-wide meetings and highlighting the importance of D&I to all new joiners. While I always aimed to appear professional and confident during any presentations, there were times when I had to refer to my notes, which was not the level of professionalism I desired. 

However, recently I discovered this incredible technique that has significantly helped me in this regard. And let me tell you, it is not only amazing, it is also super fun! I wish I had known about it earlier in my career.

This approach involves selecting a few items that you can use to help you remember each point of your presentation. This could be anything that’s easy to remember, like things in the meeting/presentation room, on your body or on your dress/outfit, in sequence. Then, you need to associate them with each point of your presentation. For instance, if your presentation is about the top 5 healthy foods, you might select 5 objects such as the entrance door, phone, screen, table, and chairs of the meeting room. You can also try something that you wear, like earrings, sleeveless shift dress, pockets on the dress, cardigan and shoes, whatever is easier for you to remember! 

Once you have chosen your 5 objects, the next step is to connect each presentation point with the corresponding object. To do this, you need to create a memorable scene in your mind that links the two together. So for the first presentation point, say for example, it is about almonds, you then connect almonds with your first object, which is the entrance door in this case. You might imagine a bunch of almonds spilling out of the entrance door and blocking your way into the room. For the second point, let’s say it is avocados, and the second object is a phone. You could picture an audience holding a halved avocado by their ears as if they were talking on a phone. And so on, for each point.

The goal here is to choose objects that are memorable and easy to visualise, so you can use them to create memorable mental images that will help you remember all your points. It is also important that you mentally see the images in your mind. One more thing to note - choosing a sequence of objects can help you remember each point of your presentation in the right order.  This is especially helpful if you're prone to forgetting the order of your presentation or if you have a lot of points to remember. 

You might think it sounds a bit childish, but trust me, it works! The more creative and interesting the scenes you come up with, the easier it is to remember your points. And you can use the same concept for sub-points too. Some might also say this is just a simple example and in real life, our presentations would be a lot more complicated. But I believe we just need to be more creative and there are always ways to work this out! 

I tried this and it has significantly boosted my confidence in giving presentations. I even taught it to my family and they loved it, and I am sure kids would love this method too! So the next time you're feeling nervous about a presentation, give this technique a try. It might just change the game for you too!