Estimating the prep time

Too frequently I see presenters make the mistake of not setting enough time aside to create and rehearse presentations. It seems to be human nature to think that we can prepare a presentation the night before we go before an audience.

It takes a lot of time to create powerful slides and the last constraint that you want to impose on yourself is too little time. How much time does it take to prepare a presentation?

This week I discussed the time investment for speeches with three past winners of Toastmasters speech contests. All three agreed that you must be willing to put in a lot of time to craft, rehearse, adjust and get feedback on your speech. A conservative estimate is 7 hours per minute that you are on stage.

That's 50 hours of rehearsal (sometimes alone, and sometimes driving to an audience for feedback on live performances) in order to have a shot at winning the Toastmasters District Speech contest.

For a business presentation, I have found that 3 complete rehearsals is the bare minimum. If you are making a 20 minute presentation, then plan to rehearse 3 separate times and revise your speech in between your rehearsals.

This means that you should have your presentation ready to rehearse about one week in advance of your presentation date. This will give you enough time to rehearse, revise, rehearse, revise and get a good night's sleep before your presentation.