Jay Discount gives a presentation where he expalins how to prepare a speech in one hour. Part of his point is that people worry too much about the preparation and never get around to giving the speech. He believes that a good speech (not a perfect one) can be preparted in as little as an hour, that no perfect speech exists so people should settle for a good one, and that the benefits of giving a good speech include being better able to preapare the next one.
There are people who make a career out of giving one speech. They give the same speech every time and they do it VERY well. Most of us are not going to settle for one speech, we are going to give many different speeches, and we need to do it in an efficinet process.
Preparing a speech in 1 hour.
(20 minutes) Think of a topic. Roughly based on "something happened in your life." Pick somehting you know about and are interested in. This eliminates much of the research phase of preparing a speech. (To improve a good speech into a grat speech you would then do further research, add quotes, refine what you have, etc. But it all begins with picking a topic.
Think of three Major ideas on this topic. for a standard length speech those three things shouyld take 2 minutes, 1 1/2 minutes and 45 seconds to express, in that order.
(20 minutes) Prepare. Think of three points to support each of those three major ideas. Make notes (an outline).
(20 minutes) Practice
Give the speech. It's not much good to any one else if you skip this step, and this step is really the whole point. The speech will not be perfect, but it can be good. It's never going to be perfect, hence the saying 'The perfect is the enemy of the good'. Leave something for the evaluator. You will learn more from gioving a good speech then from trying to prepare a perfect speech.