How to Prepare for General Conference

For years, general conference was two pleasant weekends a year that I mostly experienced as background noise from the couch. Everything changed when I started treating the week before as part of conference itself. Here’s the preparation rhythm — spiritual, practical, and family — that turned ten hours of talks into something I actually look forward to.

Updated August 2026 · 12 min read

I have a confession that I suspect is common in our wards and rarely said out loud: for a long stretch of my adult life, I watched general conference the way you watch rain on a window — vaguely aware it was happening, glad it was there, and almost completely unable to tell you afterward what any of it was about. I’d have the TV on or the stream up on a laptop, I’d half-listen while folding laundry or scrolling my phone, and by Monday, if you asked me what the Saturday morning session was about, I’d give you a warm smile and a subject change. Conference happened to me twice a year. I wasn’t in it.

The turning point came after an October session years ago, when a friend at church asked which talk had hit me hardest, and I realized with some embarrassment that I couldn’t name a single one. Not because the talks were forgettable — because I had never shown up to receive them. That week I made a small decision: next conference, I would prepare for it the way I’d prepare for a temple trip or a lesson I was assigned to teach. With intention. With a little work ahead of time. With an actual question in my heart.

What follows is the routine that grew out of that decision, refined over a lot of conferences since — some with toddlers climbing on me, some watched alone in a quiet house, some during genuinely hard seasons of life. It’s not a program and it’s certainly not official. It’s just what one ordinary ward member found that works. Take the pieces that fit your household and leave the rest.

Why Unprepared Conference Turns Into Background Noise

It helps to name the problem honestly, because I don’t think the problem is attention span. I’ve watched the same teenagers who can’t sit through one conference talk happily watch three hours of a playoff game. Attention isn’t the issue — investment is. We pay attention to what we’ve bought into.

When conference weekend arrives with no preparation, we show up as strangers. We haven’t thought about what we need, we don’t have a question we’re hoping to hear answered, we don’t have a way to capture what we hear, and we have no plan for the two-day stretch other than “the TV will be on.” So the talks wash over us at the speed of speech and leave at the same speed. There’s no hook for anything to catch on.

Compare that to how the Lord described hearing His word through His servants: “whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:38). That’s a stunning promise — but “the same” describes the source of the message, not the effort level of the listener. Receiving still takes something. The whole point of preparation is to give the messages something to land on.

Start the Week Before, Not Saturday Morning

The single biggest upgrade I ever made was moving my preparation from “Saturday morning while the choir sings” to “the Monday through Friday before.” A conference-week rhythm, kept small on purpose. Here’s what mine looks like now.

Re-read or re-listen to a few talks from last conference

This is the warm-up, and it matters more than it sounds. During the week before conference, I go back to two or three talks from the previous session — the ones I remember being moved by, or the ones I somehow missed entirely. They’re all on the general conference section of ChurchofJesusChrist.org, and each one takes about fifteen minutes to read or listen to on a commute.

Why revisit old talks when new ones are coming? Because it re-tunes your ears. After a few days of listening to prophetic voices at full attention, you arrive at Saturday morning already in the right posture — the way stretching before a run isn’t the run but changes how the run goes. It also surfaces unfinished business. More than once I’ve re-read an April talk in late September and realized I never actually did the thing it invited me to do. That’s a gift: I get to show up to the new conference having closed a loop instead of stacking new inspiration on top of ignored inspiration.

Read the life, not just the words

This one is optional, but it’s become a favorite of mine. If there’s a member of the Twelve I realize I know almost nothing about, I read a little of their story that week — where they grew up, what their career was, what their talks keep circling back to. Knowing the man behind the podium changes how the talk lands. A message about trusting God through change hits differently when you know what the speaker left behind when the call came.

Do a quiet midweek check-in with the Lord

On Wednesday or Thursday before conference, I take ten minutes — usually on a walk — and ask a simple question in prayer: what do You want me to get out of this weekend? I don’t always get a clear answer. But asking the question changes what I listen for, the same way being asked to pick out your friend’s voice makes you hear it in a crowded room.

Bring a Question — It’s the Engine of the Whole Weekend

If I could only keep one part of this routine, I’d keep this one. Before conference, I write down one to three honest questions I’m carrying. Not abstract ones — real ones. Questions from the actual life I’m living: How do I help a child who is pulling away from the Church? Is it time to make this change I’ve been avoiding? How do I forgive someone when I’ve already tried and failed? What should my next step be, because I genuinely don’t know?

Then I bring those questions into every session, written at the top of my notes page. And something close to miraculous happens with almost boring regularity: somewhere in the ten hours — usually not where I expected — an answer shows up. Sometimes it’s a whole talk that seems custom-built for my situation. More often it’s a single sentence in a talk that was ostensibly about something else entirely, a phrase that lands with the weight of a personal message.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf described exactly this in his message “General Conference — No Ordinary Blessing”: “Answers to your specific prayers may come directly from a particular talk or from a specific phrase.” I’ve found that true so consistently that I now get suspicious of any conference where I “got nothing out of it.” Almost always, that’s a conference I arrived at with no question. No question, no listening. No listening, no answer.

Conference rarely answers the questions we never brought. Write your question at the top of the page before the first prayer is offered.

One caution from experience: keep the questions honest, even the embarrassing ones. “How do I stop resenting my calling?” is a better conference question than a noble-sounding one you don’t actually have. The Lord already knows what you’re carrying. You’re just deciding to let Him address it.

The Spiritual Side: Prayer and, When Appropriate, Fasting

Conference weekend sits in the same family as other holy things in the Church, and it responds to the same preparation. Nothing elaborate — just deliberate.

In the week before, I try to make my prayers a little more specific than usual. Not longer — more honest. I mention the questions by name. I ask to recognize the answers when they come, because I’ve noticed the bottleneck in my life is rarely that heaven stays silent; it’s that I don’t notice what’s being said.

Some people fast before conference, and I think that’s a beautiful practice when it fits your circumstances. Fasting is a personal and sometimes health-sensitive matter, so I’ll simply say what I do and why: in seasons when I’ve been carrying a heavy question into conference, I’ve occasionally fasted the Sunday before — combining it with the regular fast Sunday when the calendar cooperates — and offered the question as the purpose of the fast. It sharpens things. When I’ve fasted with a specific question, I’ve gone into the weekend feeling like I had an appointment rather than an open house.

President Russell M. Nelson said it as plainly as it’s ever been said in his April 2018 talk “Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives”: “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” That sentence is, to me, the entire case for conference preparation. If personal revelation is that essential, then one of the richest, most concentrated opportunities for revelation all year deserves more than a cold start.

Set Up Your Note-Taking Before the Hymn Starts

Here’s a small thing that makes a big difference: decide before Saturday morning how you’re going to take notes, and stage it the night before. I’ve done every variation — no notes, frantic notes, notes so detailed I missed the next three talks — and what I’ve landed on is modest: I write down the speaker’s name, and underneath it, only the things that feel directed at me. Not a transcript. Impressions, phrases, the occasional to-do that the Spirit seems to be handing me. Some talks get four lines. Some get a single sentence. One memorable talk got just two words, and those two words carried me for months.

My own setup after much experimentation: a cheap dedicated notebook that lives in the TV cabinet and comes out exactly twice a year, which means flipping through it is a little time capsule of past questions and answers. I keep the pen clipped to it, because “where’s a pen?” at 10:02 Saturday morning is exactly the kind of friction that kills a good intention. If note-taking methods interest you beyond conference weekend, the same principles apply to scripture study — I wrote about that separately in our piece on scripture journaling methods.

Whatever method you pick, add one rule: capture impressions, not summaries. The talks are published within days. Your impressions are not published anywhere, ever, unless you write them down in the moment they arrive.

Preparing the Family Without Making It a Battle

Everything above applies to a household of one. Adding children changes the physics, so here’s what has worked in our house — offered humbly, because every kid is different and ours have humbled every confident theory we’ve ever had.

Talk about it early and specifically

The Sunday before conference, we mention it at dinner — not a lecture, just anticipation: “Next weekend is conference. No regular church meetings. We’ll watch at home, and there’s cinnamon French toast Saturday morning.” Kids rise or sink to the emotional frame you set. If you frame it as an event with food and pajamas, that’s what it becomes. If you frame it as an endurance test, it becomes that too.

Give everyone a way to participate

Each kid gets a copy of the family’s question, or picks their own. Our older ones keep their own notes. The younger ones get what we call “conference bingo” — homemade cards with squares like “someone mentions temples,” “a story about a grandparent,” “a hymn you know,” “someone says ‘families.'” It’s a little silly, and it works: a seven-year-old who is listening for bingo squares is, in fact, listening. We let them mark squares quietly and trade a completed row for first pick of the snacks at the break.

Let the wiggles happen

This took me years to learn: a child coloring on the floor during a talk is not a child ignoring the talk. Some of the most startling spiritual comments my kids have ever made came mid-crayon. We set a low bar — stay in the room, voices off, hands may be busy — and we’ve been amazed how often “hands busy, voices off” produces actual listening. If you need help with the broader rhythm of keeping gospel habits going in a house with young kids, our article on Come, Follow Me for busy parents covers a lot of the same territory.

Logistics and Traditions: The Unspiritual Details That Aren’t

Never underestimate the logistics, because the logistics are the container everything else gets poured into. A weekend of ten hours of talks will be remembered for how the days felt, and how the days felt is mostly decided by Thursday.

Meals: decide them before Friday

Conference weekend is not the time for culinary ambition. We plan simple, pre-decided meals: something slow-cooker for Saturday dinner, a Sunday roast or casserole that cooks during a session, and the one non-negotiable — a special breakfast at least one of the mornings. In our house it’s cinnamon French toast, made only on conference weekends, which means my kids have been conditioned since toddlerhood to associate the opening hymn with the smell of cinnamon. That’s not manipulation. That’s tradition. It’s the same reason the hymns themselves work on us.

Snacks with structure

An open snack table turns a session into a grazing competition. We put out a snack basket at the start of each session — popcorn, cut fruit, a small treat — and it stays out until the session ends. The basket arriving has become a little ceremony: snacks come down when the choir starts, which means the start of a session feels like something beginning, not something interrupting.

Pajamas, blankets, and the couch map

Yes, the pajama thing. Saturday morning session in pajamas is a real tradition in our house and, I’ve gathered, in half the wards in America. There’s something quietly right about it: conference is church received at home, and letting home be home lowers the barrier to actually settling in. We assign couch spots (it prevents the 9:58 a.m. territorial dispute), everyone gets a blanket, and the whole setup says: we’re staying a while, and that’s good news.

Handle the between-session hours on purpose

The two hours between sessions are where the weekend is won or lost. Left to themselves, they dissolve into everyone scattering to screens, and re-gathering for the afternoon session feels like herding cats. We plan one simple thing per gap: a walk, a nap with no guilt attached, throwing a football in the yard, or — our favorite — a short visit or call to grandparents to compare notes on the morning. Talking about what you just heard is secretly the best note-taking method there is.

Decide in advance about the evening session

The Saturday evening session has changed format over the years, so check the schedule when it’s announced and make a deliberate family decision about it — watch it live, record it for Sunday evening, or fold it into the next week’s family time. The mistake isn’t skipping it; the mistake is letting it evaporate by default because nobody decided.

During the Sessions: Listening Like You Mean It

Preparation done, a few things help in the moment itself. I’ve learned to watch the first ninety seconds of each talk with extra attention — speakers often frame exactly what they’re about to address, and catching the frame early makes the rest of the talk cohere. I keep my question at the top of the page where my eyes land on it between notes. And when a phrase lands hard, I write it down immediately, mid-sentence if needed. Impressions are perishable; they don’t survive “I’ll jot that down at the break.”

I also try to remember President Uchtdorf’s gentle warning from that same message: “Don’t discount a message merely because it sounds familiar.” Some of the most important things conference has told me were things I already knew — repeated, this time, at the exact moment I was finally ready to do them. Familiarity is not the absence of revelation. Sometimes it’s the confirmation of it.

And if you drift — because everyone drifts — just drift back. There’s no demerit system. A talk you half-heard can be re-read the following week; the archive isn’t going anywhere.

Your Conference-Prep Checklist

Here’s the whole system, condensed. It starts the Monday before conference and ends with a notebook waiting by the couch.

• Monday — Revisit last conference. Pick two or three talks from the previous session on the Church’s conference page and read or listen to them during the week. Note anything you were invited to do that you haven’t done yet.
• Tuesday — Write your questions. One to three real questions from your actual life, written down where they’ll sit at the top of your notes. Let family members old enough to have questions write their own.
• Wednesday — The quiet check-in. Ten minutes on a walk or after the house is quiet: tell the Lord what you’re bringing to the weekend and ask to recognize the answers.
• Thursday — Plan the meals and snacks. Decide every meal through Sunday, shop once, and pick one special breakfast. Future-you, at 9:45 Saturday morning, will be grateful.
• Friday — Stage everything. Notebook and pen by the couch. Bingo cards printed or drawn for the kids. Charge whatever device is streaming, and test it — the opening hymn is a bad time to discover a dead login.
• Friday night — Early to bed, one prayer. Conference mornings are long. Offer one honest prayer with your question in it and get some sleep.
• Saturday morning — Be seated before the prayer. Pajamas allowed, blankets assigned, question at the top of the page. Treat the opening hymn as the start of something, not the warm-up act.
• Between sessions — Do one planned thing. A walk, a nap, a call to family to compare notes. Keep the day shaped instead of scattered.
• Sunday night — The ten-minute harvest. Before the weekend fully closes, flip through your notes and mark the one or two impressions that matter most. Write one action you’ll take this week. This is where conference becomes change instead of content.

The Week After Is Part of Conference Too

One last thing, because it took me the longest to learn: the weekend isn’t the end of conference — it’s the beginning of it. The talks get published within days, the issues of the Liahona follow, and the next six months of Come, Follow Me and sacrament meetings will keep handing them back to you. I try to pick one talk per week in the months after conference to re-read slowly — basically folding conference into my regular study rhythm (the same daily-habit approach in this article on building a scripture habit works beautifully for this). By the time the next conference arrives, I’ve actually lived with the last one, which is the whole point of the re-reading step where this article began.

Everything I’ve described — the questions, the French toast, the bingo cards, the notebook by the couch — is scaffolding. The building is a person, sitting down twice a year, saying to the Lord: I’m listening, and I brought something with me. Conference rewards that posture in a way that still catches me off guard every single time. Bring your question. I’ll be over here with mine, in my pajamas, hoping yours gets answered too.

This article reflects personal experience and study, not an official statement of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Talks and scripture cited in the text: President Russell M. Nelson, “Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives” (April 2018); President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “General Conference — No Ordinary Blessing” (September 2011); and Doctrine and Covenants 1 (verse 38), all at ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Session schedules and formats change; check the current conference schedule at ChurchofJesusChrist.org each spring and fall.