Power of Three - How many points should I have in a speech?

Chunk Information so You’re Audience Will Remember It!

An audience Sensory memory retains an exact copy of what they see or hear, but only very briefly. Sense memory only lasts for a few seconds in fact some researches say lasts only 300 milliseconds. You need to help your audience get it into the next storage unit. Selective attention determines what information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory. STM is most often stored as sounds, especially when your audience is recalling words, but it may be stored as images.
Short-term memory provides working space in the brain like RAM memory in your computer. Short memory is thought to be 7 bits in length, meaning, audiences normally only remember 7 items in their short-term memory. You can have seven points if you are doing training, but it may be to many points for a speech. Storage that is more permanent is provided in long-term memory. The brains of your audience decide whether to put what you share with them into long term me memory based on its meaning and importance to them. That is why it so important to have a Tie to the Audience where you state the relevance of the information to there needs.

The Power of Three

You’re trying to remember a friend’s cell phone number and you don’t try to remember all the digits in a long list. You remember the three-digit area code, the three-digit prefix and then the last four numbers. Why? Because three elements are easier to remember than 10. Our short-term memory loves threes. When we are young that chunking into threes and that’s why we love to hear the story of the story of the three bears.

Brainstorm below all the things you can think of that come in threes. Think fairy tale characters, sports, jokes, and religious references. List things that come in threes.

Here are some examples

The three musketeers,
Three goats gruff,
Three blind mice,
Three little pigs.
Three strikes
Father Son and Holy Ghost
Three stooges
Lights Camera actions
Judge Jury Executioner
The Way the Truth the Light
Englishman and Irishmen and Scotsman
A rabbi and priest and a minister
Churchill’s famous speech “I can promise you blood sweat toil and tears” that everyone remembers as three things blood sweat and tears.
Reading writing romantic
ABC’s

So why did I have you list these things. Because we can very easily remember three things. Really, after teaching Presentation Skills for over 26 years I can tell you that audiences really can’t remember more than three points that you have made in your speech. You can have more, but they will either take your ten points or make it into three points or they will remember three of your ten points. My advice is to divide your speech into three points. Create three nice chunks of information. One of my friend’s teenagers was trying to convince her parents to let her go on a field trip to Washington DC. She went on and on and I could tell they had tuned her out. I took her aside, said think about it tonight, and go back to them tomorrow with three strong reasons. She did and they let her go. Audiences turn off when a speaker drones on and on about the smallest detail. Stick to the most important things.