Step 2: Watch yourself

Now you are going to watch. And the first thing you feel will not be useful information.

The first seconds do not count

When you see yourself on film you react first to the voice and to the face. The voice sounds wrong because you are used to hearing it from inside your head. The face does things you did not know it did.

None of that says anything about whether the clip works. It is just unfamiliarity.

Watch twice

First time: let the reaction come. Flinch, sigh, laugh. That is the entire purpose of that viewing.

Second time: look at the work. Now you can actually see something.

Separate the two kinds of observation

There are observations you can do something about, and observations that are just discomfort in disguise.

• Actionable: "I looked away three times", "I said um at the start of every sentence", "it took nine seconds to get to the point", "the sound echoes".
• Not actionable: "I look strange", "my voice is awful", "I seem uncomfortable".

The second list feels more true. It is also completely useless. If you only have observations like that, you watched once, not twice.

One more thing

You will get used to your own voice. Not because you start liking it, but because you hear it so often it stops being an event. It takes a couple of weeks of regular watching.