Optimal Length of a Speech

00:00 How long should my speech be, and how can I be more concise? Let me stop you right there. Your goal shouldn't ever be to be concise.

00:09 Your goal should be communicating ideas that are important to you, interesting and relevant to your audience, and doing so in a way that's actually memorable. That should be the goal.

00:21 So take as much time as you need for that.

00:24 Now, there was a study done in 1974 by the US Defense Department that said the perfect length of a speech was 17.5 minutes.

00:31 Personally, I find that complete, utter baloney because we've all seen people who speak for 2 minutes and everyone's asleep.

00:41 On the other hand, I've seen speakers talk from ten in the morning till midnight.

00:46 The audience wanted more.

00:48 Why? Because they were consistently interesting.

00:52 So I would be careful about trying to pigeonhole your speech into a specific time amount.

00:59 Now, there may be times when you're told you have exactly 20 minutes, you're at a financial conference, you're told you have exactly 25 minutes and 5 minutes for Q&A, and you've got to stick to it. But there are plenty of times in real life where you're talking to your own employees, colleagues and new business pitch.

01:16 People may have traveled to come see you set up a meeting, and it took them an hour to get there and an hour to get back.

01:23 They're going to listen to you.

01:24 They're not sitting there with a stopwatch for 3 minutes.

01:28 And the most important thing is that you actually communicate your ideas in an interesting way.

01:34 So remember, the choice isn't between being really, really boring for a long period of time versus really boring for 2 minutes, if that's the only choice. Yeah, better to be boring for 2 minutes.

01:46 But there is another option, and that is to be incredibly interesting, memorable for the amount of time you need to convey your ideas.

01:54 So rather than worry about being concise or speaking just for 5 minutes, focus, you're on your ideas. Make sure they're interesting and memorable.

02:02 The time will often take care of itself.