How to Say it All Effectively

Twenty minutes is the time you’ve got to say it all. New research from Maureen Murphy at the University of North Texas (UNT) suggests that if you exceed this, your audience will benefit less and less.

Maureen Murphy tested this idea in an experiment:

“She had adults attending a 60 minute presentation at work, and tested to see the difference in memory and reaction to the same talk given in one 60 minute long presentation, versus a presentation that had 20 minute segments with short breaks in between.

What Dr. Murphy found was that the people enjoyed the 20-minute chunked presentations more, learned more information immediately after, and retained more information a month later”

This information could help save your audiences, especially those held captive by the nature of the presentations for formal reasons; and hence cannot leave at their pleasure. This can include students, conference attendees and worshippers, even.

If you can remember those double maths on thursdays afternoons during your high school days; probably the reason you came to hate math.

Or the last sermon you endured that makes you dread another one. Or those staff meetings that you dread to receive memos on.

This is the advice provided by Murphy as quoted by Brad Phillips:

“See if you can build in some kind of change every 20 minutes.

For maximum learning you want a break every 20 minutes, as opposed to just a change of topic….Instead of taking one long break, take several short ones….I sometimes introduce short “stretch” breaks.

These [breaks] are anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes in length.

I just announce, ‘Let’s take a short 3 minute stretch break’.” She advises.

This may also be useful for counselors when planning their sessions.

And, in case you are the sort of person who goes hysterical when offended by your spouse or subordinates, you should limit the duration of your verbosity for maximum effect.

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