Pratica di Shadowing: Why you’re so tired - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

Year after year, more of us are quietly asking the internet,

⏸ In Pausa

Velocità:

392 frasi

Se le frasi sono troppo corte o troppo lunghe, clicca su Edit per modificarle.

Year after year, more of us are quietly asking the internet,

Why am I so tired?

Searching for answers to something we all feel but don't really understand.

Every morning we're waking up feeling a little bit more worn out than we were the day before.

Our afternoon slumps are a little slumpier.

So much so that companies make fun of us for this.

What's going on?

It's a 3 p.m slump selling us meat or cheese

or coffee or human grade jet fuel to somehow cure our afternoon energy deficit.

Now listen, this isn't a video where I'm gonna tell you to just get more sleep

or to stop looking at your phone before bed,

which all of those things you should do.

But I wanna approach this question a little differently.

I wanna look at the bigger reasons why we're all so tired.

A lot of those reasons have to do with what's happening right now during the day,

like right now while I'm filming this.

Things are happening in my brain and your brain that will make us more tired later on today and tomorrow.

It'll affect how long and how well you sleep,

and whether or not you feel refreshed in the morning.

In order to understand why you're so tired,

I'm gonna take you back in time to 300,000 years ago.

Meet Johnny Caveman.

Johnny Caveman kind of has a similar body to ours today.

He's a human.

His body's a little different.

His hips and his head are shaped a little differently.

He's got this wider, flatter nose.

He's got this big strong brow.

But up where it counts,

his brain is very similar to our brain today.

And yet how he uses his brain is very different.

Similar brains, totally different worlds.

To show this, let me show you Johnny Caveman's morning routine.

As Johnny Caveman begins his day,

let's keep an eye on this part of his brain.

This is the prefrontal cortex.

When you make decisions, this part of your brain is doing most of the work.

This morning, Johnny Caveman has a few decisions to make.

He has to decide where to get his water today.

Should he go out and hunt with his group,

or should he spend time picking berries?

He just found some mushrooms.

Are these mushrooms safe?

Should he eat them?

Johnny Caveman will likely spend a big chunk of his day just sitting here around this campsite,

eating and chatting with his band of other humans.

He might go out and gather sticks to build a campfire later.

I mean, look at his brain.

There's some decisions being made here,

but it isn't pinging very much.

There's not a ton of action up here in the prefrontal cortex.

His day is routine with not a ton of choices.

Fairly simple decisions.

Okay, but let's transport forward in time now.

I wonder what would happen if we put this same Johnny Caveman in the 20th century.

Same brain, same body, different world.

Ah, yawn.

The sun is still waking Johnny Caveman up.

Now he's got a few decisions to make.

He decides to shave before he goes to work.

What's for breakfast?

Apples again?

I think I'll have a peach.

Now off to work.

The world's gone through the industrial revolution,

so he spends his day at a factory where he's repeating tasks over and over.

He's definitely making more decisions than Johnny Caveman was,

but the prefrontal cortex isn't pinging a ton.

It's not a lot of action up here.

Okay, how does Johnny Caveman do in 2024?

Did I get enough sleep last night?

Where's my phone?

Is my kids concert today or tomorrow?

Ugh, I need new socks.

These don't match.

What should I eat for lunch later?

Should I cancel with my coworker?

Did I have a burrito yesterday?

I need to remember to send the receipts to the insurance company.

I need to file that expense report.

When am I going to change this fish tank?

How much gas is this?

Should I get an oil change this week?

Why is the ice cream so slow again?

Should I be upgrading to a different insurance company?

Should I move to the couch?

It's 8.30 in the morning and I've already made a ton of decisions,

way more than Johnny Caveman,

or the Johnny from the 20th century.

These decisions are complex, they are abstract, they are high stakes.

My prefrontal cortex is going bananas.

One estimate I read said that modern humans make 35,000 decisions every day.

We make more than 200 decisions about food alone.

Okay, okay, I get it.

Modern life is full of a lot of decisions,

but like, I'm not running from tigers anymore.

Like, I don't have to like scavenge and hunt for my food.

Shouldn't I be less tired?

I'm using my brain instead of my body.

100

And I'm doing way less physical work.

101

I mean, we've got washing machines and dishwashers and automatic head massagers and at-home spas.

102

And damn it, we even have lazy boys.

103

Shouldn't I feel more rested because of all of this?

104

Okay, and here's where we come to the answer to the question,

105

which is we gotta look at that prefrontal cortex again

106

and see what's actually going on when you make all of these decisions.

107

It's a part of a war that is happening between you and the modern world.

108

This war is being fought on two different battlefields, daytime and nighttime.

109

Day man, ah, fighter of the night man,

110

ah, champion of the sun.

111

So we're in this daytime battlefield and you're making a bunch of decisions.

112

We've talked about that.

113

Let's see what's happening here in the brain.

114

When you're making decisions, there's an electronic signal,

115

like a pulse, that is traveling between regions of the brain along these wires called neurons.

116

You've got like almost 100 billion of these things and they all are forming this giant network,

117

tons of connections, and they all send signals to each other.

118

That is what decisions and actions are.

119

But in order to send these signals between the different parts of the brain,

120

you need a very important chemical called glutamate.

121

Glutamate makes all of this happen.

122

It's a neurotransmitter.

123

It helps everything talk to each other.

124

But look, after you make the decision,

125

the glutamate kind of sticks around.

126

And as you make more and more decisions,

127

glutamate starts to build up and it starts to clog the system,

128

which new research suggests makes decisions harder because the whole system is clogged,

129

which makes you feel fatigued.

130

Make a bunch of decisions,

131

you feel tired, even if you didn't lift a finger.

132

It's like as if your brain were a big city.

133

All of these roads are the neurons and synapses that you use to make decisions.

134

It's all functioning nicely, everyone can flow,

135

But the more decisions you make,

136

the more trash you produce.

137

And the trash starts to pile up.

138

Trash collectors will eventually move this trash out,

139

but if you're producing a ton of trash,

140

it starts to pile up.

141

And it eventually starts to block the streets,

142

making it much harder for the cars to move along.

143

Meaning for your brain activity to do what it's supposed to do for you to make decisions.

144

This is what it looks like when you're really tired.

145

It's 11.30 a.m here at my desk,

146

and I've made so many decisions.

147

I haven't done any strenuous work,

148

but I'm drowning in glutamate and feeling tired.

149

By the way, this is like brand new research from the Paris Brain Institute,

150

and it is still being worked out how this works or exactly what it looks like.

151

You can check my sources to fact check everything I say in this video,

152

but look at this paper specifically.

153

It's pretty interesting.

154

So I'm gonna jot this down on my list of why we're so tired.

155

I'll be making this list and the solutions on what we can do about it.

156

A lot of cultures have a solve for this.

157

It's called biphasic sleep, which is just a cool sounding name for a nap in the afternoon.

158

People usually around like the Mediterranean take naps from the hours of like two to five.

159

They rest, they reset.

160

Research found that people who take siestas have increased brain functioning and are 37% less likely to die of heart disease.

161

But here in the United States,

162

we pledge to not sleep on the job.

163

We will never take naps like those failing socialist countries in the Mediterranean.

164

No. The hustle never stops here in America.

165

Sorry, I recently watched Top Gun.

166

I'm just feeling really patriotic right now.

167

That's right.

168

I am dangerous.

169

So our brains, which are the same as Johnny Caveman's brains,

170

aren't totally set up to make all of these decisions without feeling very tired.

171

I mean, it kind of makes sense.

172

We've got these caveman brains living in 2024.

173

This is called evolutionary mismatch.

174

Our brains haven't caught up with our lifestyle,

175

with our world and all of the decisions that we are required to make to just be normal, modern humans.

176

So what do we do about this?

177

Well, you can take siestas,

178

which is like not something I can do in my life.

179

I'm just not set up for it here, sorry guys.

180

But that would be a way to clear out some glutamate and reset.

181

But the biggest takeaway for me is just limit how many decisions I have to make every day,

182

which is not easy, but there definitely are ways to do it.

183

I've started choosing the outfits that I'm gonna wear for the week on Sunday,

184

so that in the morning when I wake up,

185

I'm just like, oh, the outfit's already chosen.

186

Or you could go full Steve Jobs,

187

Mark Zuckerberg style and just wear one thing,

188

so that you can have a closet that looks like this, which...

189

Meal planning, that's another one.

190

On a Sunday, we've started writing down every meal we're gonna have during the week,

191

and that makes life way easier when you're at the end of a day of work and you are feeling tired.

192

A big theme in today's video is information.

193

How much information our brains are met with these days.

194

And even as a journalist,

195

it's my job and I get stressed out by the amount of information out there.

196

One of the tools we use to sift through all of this is actually the sponsor of today's video.

197

Ground News is a website and an app

198

that takes news stories from all around the world and aggregates them into one place.

199

And then gives you a ton of information about that story and its sources.

200

Instead of an algorithm, you are in control with Ground News.

201

This tool allows you to see what political bias exists in the different articles,

202

how reliable each source is,

203

who owns these different publications,

204

a whole other level of transparency that allows you to feel confident in the news you're reading.

205

One of my favorite parts about Ground News is it helps you keep an eye on your own reading habits.

206

It gives you this dashboard where it shows you some insights,

207

like the top sources that you rely on and how reliable they are.

208

And my favorite of these insights, the Blindspot Feed.

209

When you're navigating so much information,

210

it's hard to remember that sometimes you are in a very different news bubble than everyone else.

211

The Blindspot Feed helps you see this by giving you articles that you wouldn't naturally click on or be exposed to,

212

helping you fill in your perspective, challenge your biases.

213

I value this kind of thing so much as a critical thinker

214

and as someone who is worried about echo chambers and bias in today's news landscape.

215

So if you are tired of letting social media companies and sensational headlines decide what you click,

216

Ground News might be for you.

217

It's a great way to sharpen your critical thinking skills and to stay informed while doing it.

218

If you wanna try this out,

219

you can get a big discount if you click the link in my description.

220

It's ground.news slash Johnny Harris.

221

You can also use this QR code on screen if that's more convenient.

222

This will allow you to get 40% off the Vantage plan,

223

which is all of these tools I've talked about today.

224

So thank you, Ground News, for sponsoring today's video.

225

With that, let's dive back in to why we are so tired.

226

There's one more chemical we have to talk about for this daytime battle,

227

and it's called adenosine.

228

It is this very clever evolutionary feature of our brain that's basically like a signal to our brains

229

that tells us when it's time to rest.

230

As you go throughout your day thinking and doing things,

231

this adenosine builds up, and it kind of signals to your brain that you're tired.

232

It signals that you should feel sleepy and hopefully makes you go to sleep.

233

But being industrious humans focused on progress,

234

we found a substance that will block the buildup of adenosine.

235

It's called caffeine.

236

Making caffeine the most popular drug in the world.

237

It blocks adenosine, this natural signal of you should be tired and sleep,

238

and allows us to keep operating as if the adenosine doesn't exist.

239

But guess what?

240

The caffeine doesn't last forever.

241

It eventually wears out.

242

And all of this adenosine that had built up comes flooding into your brain,

243

like a megaphone saying, hey,

244

you're really tired, and we're finally able to tell you.

245

This is called the afternoon crash.

246

My solution to this is like the greatest thing in the world,

247

and it's called a coffee nap.

248

When you nap, your body gets rid of the adenosine.

249

It's like the adenosine clearing hour.

250

And if you drink caffeine,

251

then you get this like multiplier effect where all the adenosine is gone

252

and the caffeine just comes in and doesn't have to block any adenosine and it's just ready to like hype you up.

253

Drink a quick coffee, lay down for just 15 minutes.

254

It's amazing.

255

Coffee naps, add it to the list.

256

The other option is to drink your coffee a little bit like later than you would.

257

Like don't drink it right as you wake up.

258

Drink it between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m so

259

that it lasts until you're done with work and then you can have your coffee crash.

260

Okay, so that is our daytime battle.

261

Glutamate builds up because we make so many decisions.

262

Adenizine builds up because we don't let it clear out and we block the signals because of caffeine.

263

And our modern world doesn't like us naturally clearing these things out,

264

so we feel really tired.

265

Now let's get to the nighttime battle.

266

Everyone says we should get 700 hours of sleep,

267

but when you go to bed and when I go to bed is probably different.

268

Back in the Johnny Caveman days,

269

groups of humans couldn't leave their camp unattended at night,

270

so we evolved to have different sleep times so

271

that some of us could stay awake and guard the camp and others could sleep,

272

and then we could switch off.

273

Today what that looks like is that I go to bed at 10.30 and I wake up at 6.30.

274

You may be a night owl and you wanna go to bed at one in the morning,

275

or you may wanna go to bed at nine a.m.

276

These are called the chronotypes,

277

and there are roughly four of them,

278

Everyone has a slightly different interpretation of what it means,

279

but the fact is, we're not all the same when it comes to when we go to bed.

280

And yet, we all live in a society that wants us to be the same.

281

Our standard work day, nine to five,

282

was constructed for like the average person,

283

but you may not be that person.

284

You have a job that requires you to be there at 9am,

285

and you're a night owl who wants to sleep until 10.30?

286

Too bad.

287

Capitalism says no. Researchers say that our chronotype is in our genes.

288

Like this is like we are naturally coded to have an optimal time when we are sleeping.

289

And that may not work with your life.

290

Evolutionary mismatch once again.

291

So I'm gonna write chronotypes down on my list.

292

What's the solution here?

293

Find out what your chronotype is.

294

You probably already know what it is.

295

Take this test online.

296

I'll give you a QR code here.

297

You can scan this, take a test.

298

Maybe aligning your lifestyle with your chronotype could help you get sleep during the time when your sleep is most optimal,

299

which will help make you feel less tired.

300

Okay, finally, in a video that you clicked on about why you're so tired,

301

finally we're talking about sleep.

302

Sleep definitely matters.

303

And I think there's actually a lot of great videos and literature,

304

books, whatever, on sleep and how to optimize sleep.

305

Our brains catalog all these memories.

306

All the sensory input and memories from the day get cataloged.

307

Our muscles and our circulatory system,

308

they all get to relax and take a break, which is super vital.

309

And, as we talked about earlier,

310

we clear out a lot of the byproducts from living life,

311

the glutamate, the adenosine, all of the kind of toxins and byproducts that we accumulate from a day.

312

This is all super important that not all sleep is created equal.

313

And what we do in the hours leading up to bed can make a big difference.

314

So let's see what this looks like using an example.

315

As we're following along, let's track my chemical levels.

316

I get home around 8 p.m.

317

I whip up some of my famous macaroni

318

and cheese before sitting down to my desk because I've got a little more work to do.

319

Now, my chronotype is the lion,

320

which means I kinda wanna go to bed like at 10.

321

I'm getting kind of tired.

322

So I pour myself a cup of coffee to fight off all the adenosine that has been building up in my brain.

323

Okay, I finish up my work.

324

It's two hours past when I normally go to bed,

325

but I need some time to wind down.

326

Here I am making more decisions on Netflix.

327

And look, even though it's nighttime outside,

328

this giant TV screen is emitting light.

329

My brain thinks this is the sun.

330

It thinks it's daytime.

331

So it blocks the release of melatonin.

332

Melatonin's a chemical that we need to shift our brain from wakefulness to sleep.

333

Finally, after some Netflix, I feel like I've wound down and I'm gonna go to bed.

334

It's 2 a.m.

335

I turn off the TV and I get a little bit of melatonin,

336

but not nearly enough to feel tired.

337

I've got a ton of adenosine in my brain, but it's not registering.

338

I should be feeling tired,

339

but all of this adenosine is blocked by the caffeine I had earlier.

340

One more look at my phone to set my alarm.

341

Gotta check Instagram really quick.

342

Eventually the caffeine wears off,

343

the adenosine comes flooding in,

344

and I fall right asleep.

345

But it's now 3 a.m.

346

My body goes through the important process of clearing out all these chemicals.

347

It's a slow process.

348

I need time to do this.

349

My body's making great progress, and then...

350

It's been five hours, which is just not enough time for our bodies to take out all the trash.

351

My brain still kinda looks like this.

352

I'm gonna start my day with all of the residual glutamate

353

chemicals swirling around in my brain as I start to make new decisions and accumulate more glutamate,

354

more adenosine that I'm gonna block with caffeine.

355

So I guess I'm gonna add the obvious one to my list.

356

Get enough sleep and wind down without caffeine or alcohol,

357

the things that kind of kill your ability to get good sleep.

358

Now let me just say there's a lot more to say on sleep.

359

It's very well documented.

360

There's a lot of like pop science books about sleep.

361

I didn't wanna go into those now because I feel like they're easily accessible,

362

but you should definitely check out my sources

363

if you want to learn more about preparing for good sleep and having good sleep and why it matters.

364

So, this is my list.

365

Here it is.

366

Why we're so tired and what we can do about it.

367

It's not exhaustive,

368

but it includes the lesser covered aspects of fatigue

369

that I have found very compelling and that have affected how I approach my day-to-day life.

370

In short, it's not just because we look at our phones before bed that we're so tired.

371

There's a lot more going on.

372

And a lot of it has to do with life,

373

modern life, and these brains that we have that were evolved for a very different time.

374

There's a lot of upside to the fact that we don't live in caves next to campfires hunting for our food.

375

But one of the downsides is that we feel this very specific kind of fatigue.

376

It's often mental fatigue.

377

And now I understand why.

378

I'm not going to dramatically change my life because of these findings,

379

but I now at least have a list of a few things

380

that I can tweak to maybe feel a little less tired.

381

like an early idea um

382

and i'm just curious i want to hear from from you all most people have left by now

383

and so it's just a few of you

384

so just like leave a comment if you have heard this

385

and uh let me know i also wanted to make sure

386

that everyone knows about our new channel called search party not

387

so new it's about a year old now

388

but it is started by my old colleague sam ellis it is a focus on geopolitics

389

and global sports it's a fantastic channel very concise beautiful videos

390

that I learn a lot from and you should go check it out.

391

Thanks so much for watching.

392

I'll see you in the next one.

TRENDING

Popolari

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

☕ Offrici un caffè

ShadowingEnglish rimane gratuito al 100% grazie al tuo supporto. I costi del server e IA sono elevati — il tuo caffè ci aiuta ad andare avanti! 🙏

Dona via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – Pratica di Shadowing in Inglese

Parla inglese fluentemente usando la tecnica dello Shadowing. Ascolta video di YouTube con madrelingua, ripeti frase per frase e costruisci una pronuncia e fluidità reale — usata da studenti IELTS in tutto il mondo.

Pratica di Shadowing: Why you’re so tired - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

Popolari

Informazioni su questa lezione

Vocabolario e frasi chiave

Consigli per la pratica

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Pratica di Shadowing: Why you’re so tired - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

Scarica l'app

Informazioni su questa lezione

Vocabolario e frasi chiave

Consigli per la pratica

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?