At Toastmasters we are concerned about the time of a speech for one very good reason: Most people are not aware how long they are speaking for. By timing speeches we help members become aware of the passing of time. During table topics we often find that time passes very slowly; during a prepared speech time seems to speed up and pass at a blurring pace.

The following was written as a two-minute tutorial on how to stay on time in a speech. At each meeting an experienced toastmaster member is assigned to present a two minute review of one of the basics of public speaking in two minutes. The average time for these presentations has been surprisingly longer than desired. Hence the choice of this topic.

Two Minute Tutorial
on
Staying Within Time Limits

Tonight I'm doing a two minute tutorial on how to stay within time limits...so it looks like for the first time someone is going to do a two minute tutorial in two minutes.

There's a joke about a worker being asked by the boss to give a fifteen minute speech. The worker replied that it would take a week to prepare. Oh, then just talk for five minutes offers the boss. The worker answered that in that case it would take THREE weeks to prepare!

There are two ways to prepare a speech and have it stay within time. The first is flexibility.

When you use the flexibility system you wait until you start to run out of time and then you cut out material. For some reason no matter how scared you are during preparation that you'll run out of material for your time and offend your audience, you never run out of material early. And somehow it is very hard to cut material after you've worked so hard to stretch.

So the stretch then cut method of fitting to time doesn't seem to work very well. The best thing to remember when worried you won't have enough material is what's the worst that can happen? you'll leave your audience with a concise presentation, wanting more. Actually that sounds like good advice!

The flexibility method comes in handy when just before you rise to speak they tell you they're running late, and please shorten it.

Plan 2) The prepare in detail method. If you look at speech number 9 in the basic manual you'll see that it has two distinctions: it is the only speech that is read; and it has very tight timing since it simulates preparation for television. This one can be very precisely timed because you will use the same text every time, so you can cut a little here, or add a bit there and adjust the time of the speech to precisely match the allotted time. The point is that while we don't usually write speechs verbatim because it interferes with expressive communications , being able to estimate the time needed by each portion of your outline allows you to stay on time.

When I gave speech 9 for my CTM, I timed the presentation the night before, edited slightly and re-timed and then nailed the time! Just like I nailed this outline.