Paula Rizzo explains why video calls drain you more than in-person meetings and offers three fixes: schedule calls during your peak energy hours, keep meetings to 15-45 minutes instead of an hour, and practice looking directly at the camera lens to build confidence.
Hey there, I'm Paula Rizzo. I'm the author of Listful Living, and also I'm a media trainer and coach, and I wanted to pop in to give you a couple of tips to combat some of that fatigue that you're feeling when it comes to video calls. Am I right? It's happening to you. I get it. I have spent the last, almost 3 years working for myself, working from home. And so I am very, very, very used to talking to that camera and talking to people only through that camera. So when I media train and coach people to be better on video or to interact with the media or whatever it is, I'm teaching them how to do it here. But you're now doing it all the time, right? How many of you have probably had your fill of video Happy hours and video meetings. It's exhausting. I totally, totally get it. So today I'm going to talk to you about 3 ways to fight video call fatigue. And the reason it happens is because interacting with the camera takes a lot more energy than in-person, you know, meetings. It actually does because you have to be on the entire time. You have to be really focused and looking right at that camera and engaging with people and looking interested. It's exhausting. So one of the ways that I have found to really, really be able to combat this is to tap your productivity style. So, you know, I'm a productivity author. My book is called Listful Living. And what I have found for myself, even when I started working from home, was that I wanted to fill my whole day and say, okay, from, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, I'm going to just put in as much stuff as possible. It's impossible to do that, okay, for anybody. But for me in particular, I needed to take a look at how I worked best, my personal productivity style. So when are you most productive? When do you actually feel the most productive? Think about it. Go through your day today and say, oh, you know, I actually got a little bit more jazzed about talking to people in the afternoon. That's how I am. I like to talk to people later in the day versus in the morning. The morning I like to have my own time. So to schedule calls around that time and also not to pack too many of these video calls in because as you know, now you're trying it and you understand that it is exhausting. So I, I think one time my record was like 7 or 8 video calls in one day. I didn't even know what I was saying or what was happening. I had to take a nap after each one. So instead, what I now do is that I do calls at 11:30, 2:00, and 3:30. It's very spaced out. I make sure to give myself a little buffer in between the calls and also a lunch break. So for me, that really taps into my own personal productivity style so that I'm able to really show up my best possible self for any of these video calls. So that helps, being able to have structure and have having a way to say, you know what, I'm not going to do a video call at 8:00 AM because I'm not great at 8:00 AM. I don't want to do that. I want to be doing yoga and reading the newspaper and drinking my tea. That's what I do at 8:00 AM. So instead I have changed how I, how I do these video calls. Okay. Number 2 is to have shorter meetings, have shorter meetings. I think this entire thing that we're going through with the COVID-19 pandemic is going to change how meetings are done across the board forever because guess Guess what? You're finding out that a lot of those meetings that you had were a big waste of time, right? And actually video calls are much more efficient because you sit down, you get right to it. So I would just push you to say, hey, let's not do a whole 1-hour call. Let's try a 30-minute call. Let's try a 45-minute call. Let's try a 15-minute call. If you have those shorter calls, it's much easier rather than sitting on there the whole time. So you have to be very focused. Very focused about what the call is about. What is the intention of this call? Okay, we're going to get on this call to talk about this one thing or these two things. So everybody getting on that call knows exactly, clearly defined what it is that we're looking to do, right? So having those shorter calls will also help you to not be so fatigued by these. And number 3 is to practice, practice, practice. I am on video all the time. I have been doing this my entire career and training people to be able to do this, right? Working in television and media, this is what I do. So I am used to talking to the camera like it's a person. Many of you are not used to doing that yet. And part of it is just doing it, just connecting with the camera, looking directly into that camera and knowing there's another person over there. You can connect with them. I've been doing a lot of trainings with, executives and sales teams and people who are looking to get a new job, right? Job seekers who are trying to be more connected through the camera. So I've been coaching people and doing workshops and being able to help with that. And one of the big things I say is you have to practice. It doesn't come naturally at first. You have to treat that camera like a person and make sure you look right directly into that camera and not down at yourself. Because if I was looking down at myself now, look, I've left you out of the conversation. You don't think I'm talking to you because I'm not. I'm looking at myself., but I make sure to look directly in that camera and connect with you to make sure that it looks good and that we're connected. So, um, I hope this was helpful. I have a lot of other helpful tips both on list-making and productivity and also on, you know, media and video and how to produce your own videos. If you go to paularizzo.com/checklist, you'll be on my list. I'll send you all kinds of tips and tricks and ways to do that. And if you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below and I'll check them out. And I'm hoping to be able to do more of these. Live videos and pop on, hopefully do, you know, something pretty regular, maybe a weekly thing or something like that. I'm, you know, my producer brain is going, so I'm trying to think through what that would look like. So if you have any suggestions or ideas, I'd love to hear them in the comments. And I hope that this is helpful for you.
