Shadowing Practice: A Method To x100 Your Productivity | Robin Sharma - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Hi, it's Robin Sharma, author of The Leader Who Had No Title, founder of the Titan Academy, and welcome to this mastery session.
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This mastery session is all about a method to times 100, to increase by a factor of 100 your productivity.
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And we live in a world right now where productivity, and in particular what I call exponential productivity, has never been so important.
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Here's a brain tattoo for you to consider.
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An addiction to distraction will be the death of your creative production.
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Here's another brain tattoo for you to consider.
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We live in a world where focus is more valuable than even your intelligence.
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I mean, if you watch most performers today, you watch most people in business today, you watch most people in your community today,
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and they are walking while checking their social feeds.
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You know, they are addicted to the entertainment of video games.
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They are spending the best hours of their days watching dancing cats on YouTube.
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I mean, it is incredible right now how consumed people are with their tiny white screens.
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And yet if you look at the A players, if you look at many of the most creative and productive people on the planet,
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they are doing and working in such vastly different ways.
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Because if you want to achieve the results only 5% achieve, you've got to think and produce and behave like only 5% of the people on the planet.
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And the best people on the planet in terms of creativity and productivity are not spending their finest hours addicted to distraction.
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They are doing work that matters.
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They're not doing fake work, they're doing real work.
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And so in this mastery session, I want to walk you through a number of protocols
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that will really help you multiply your productivity in the finest of ways.
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And I'm going to get right into the first one, which is the 90-91 rule.
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Now, I've become pretty well known for this.
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I've taught it to a lot of people who attend my annual event,
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the Titan Summit, and they've used this one tool alone to create vast amounts of productivity that have scaled their businesses,
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scaled their impact on the world and created world-class lifestyles.
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So I really invite you to pay even more attention to the 99.1 rule.
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And what's that all about?
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It's pretty simple, like any great rule.
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For the next 90 days,
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spend the first 90 minutes of your workday on your single most important opportunity to move the needle in your industry.
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And I'll repeat that again with great respect because it's so important, I believe, to your productivity.
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The 90-91 rule is simply for the next 90 days,
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spend the first 90 minutes of your work day on your single most game-changing opportunity.
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Because what happens?
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A lot of us get to work and we spend our best hours on our least important activities.
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We get to work and we start checking our social feed.
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We get to work and we check our text.
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We get to work and we chit-chat at the water cooler about the latest TV show that we watched last night.
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And research has shown that the morning hours are when you have the most focus, when you have the most energy, and when you have the most willpower.
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And so you want to use that first 90 minutes.
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You know, that is game time.
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That's show time.
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The second piece of technology to create exponential productivity is what I call tight bubbles of total focus.
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Your environment is so important.
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And if you look at B performers or C producers, they really don't pay a lot of attention to their environment.
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And so they get very distracted.
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There's lots of noises.
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Their phones are going off.
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Maybe there's news in the background.
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Maybe there's messy environments all around them.
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Maybe there's toxic people.
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What I'm suggesting to you as the second piece of technology to really 100 times your productivity is this.
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install environments of tight bubbles of total focus.
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The way I run my work life on certain days, I am very hard to reach.
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And I challenge you with great love and respect, be very hard to reach during key times of your week.
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I mean I see a lot of people and it's not judging them, it's just observing them.
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Every time their phone rings, they check it or they have you know these loud notifications
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so they're constantly being distracted and we know what the research says.
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The research says we spend 2.1 hours a day in distraction.
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We spend, and it takes 21 minutes to refocus your focus after you've been distracted.
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So if you are being distracted by notifications, checking your phone, checking your Twitter feed, checking your Facebook feed, looking on Instagram, checking all the different platforms,
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that is going to destroy your focus.
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So the second piece technologies create these tight bubbles of total focus
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and the way I do it is I have certain days
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that I label as creative days
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and on those creative days I actually go device free
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and on those days I'm very hard to find
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and on those days I'm in total solitude
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and on those days I go to certain places I call
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them my Menlo labs just like Edison had his Menlo lab
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and these places are very minimalist and there's no one there and that's where I do my best work.
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So install these tight bubbles of total focus and create these Menlo labs where you're completely distraction free.
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And then you will find your brain will drop from the
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beta state into the alpha state where you will do your best work and get your best ideas.
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The next piece of technology that will help you create exponential productivity in your work life
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so you truly impact the world around you is choose your peer group really really well.
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There's a lot of excellent science coming out
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and a lot of excellent research coming out
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that says the number one way to improve your behavior is to surround yourself with a peer group
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or social circle of people who are also playing at the level you want to be playing at.
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So if you want to be a high performer in terms of your productivity, populate your life with high performers.
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Now here's the science behind it.
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In the brain we have something called the mirror neuron system of the brain
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and it dates back to thousands of years ago when we were living on the Savannah.
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And this mirror neuron system allowed us to model the behavior of the dominant people in the tribe.
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So if someone figured out a tool or figured out fire or a better way to survive,
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subconsciously, this system in the brain allowed us to model the behavior.
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And I think this is pretty fascinating information.
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Now here we are in the modern world and what happens?
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Subconsciously, we are modeling the behavior of the people we spend most of our time with.
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And so if you are around victims, you will start behaving like a victim.
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If you are around people who are mediocre performers, you will subconsciously start behaving like them.
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If you're around people who gossip, who are not A players, who do not produce very much, you will subconsciously, because of the mirror neuron system in the brain,
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start performing like them.
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Why else is it important to surround yourself with a peer set or social orbit of A players?
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Emotional contagion.
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And that's a scientific phenomenon that simply says we pick up on the emotions of the people that are around us.
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And so if you are around a social circle of people who are inspired, people who want to do great work, people who want to be ultra productive, people who want to be innovative,
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people who are relentlessly optimizing their work, their thinking, their creativity, just being around them will allow you to adopt their energy and their ways of being.
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And then the final technology for you to create exponential productivity is what I call learned minimalism.
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So you know minimalism is often considered as a design philosophy, right?
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It's like very stark, very sparse, sometimes industrial, lots of white, not a lot of things.
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You know, like you go into a boutique hotel and it's designed by Philippe Starck, the great French designer, and it's very minimalist.
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What I'm encouraging you to do with great love and respect is to be ultra productive, adopt the mindset of learned minimalism.
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Now, I've worked with a lot of the most creative and productive people on the planet.
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I've worked with billionaires and CEOs.
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I've worked with true titans.
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Here's one thing I've observed in them.
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They understand that the secret to genius is not complexity, it's simplicity.
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If you look at a Picasso of any industry, if you look at a great artist, they didn't fill their work days and their personal lives with a lot of things.
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They filled them with a few things.
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I guess what I'm suggesting to you is one of the
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secrets to iconic productivity is be monomaniacally focused at being world-class at just a few things.
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And if you look at any great artist, any great entrepreneur, any great business builder, any great author, any great humanitarian,
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they were monomaniacally focused on one thing.
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They were minimalists.
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And so what I wanna leave you with is this.
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Maybe this year, rather than having 50 projects that you want to achieve at the highest level, maybe pick three.
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This year, rather than having 1,000 Facebook friends, maybe go deep and develop three really great relationships.
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This year, or maybe the next few months, rather than trying to read 20 audiobooks, 50 ebooks, go to five courses,
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why not focus on one course and one audiobook?
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And why not study one great autobiography?
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Maybe it's Isaacson's autobiography of Steve Jobs.
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Maybe it's Nelson Mandela's autobiography.
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I'm going through the autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. right now, which actually wasn't written by him, but it's called the autobiography of Martin Luther King junior I
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am encouraging you to really adopt this thinking protocol of becoming
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a minimalist even your home fill it with just a few
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things right even your work life just a few projects even your clients just the highest leverage clients
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and especially your days focus focus focus on just those few priorities
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that when you roll up your sleeves and go deep in them and invest what I call the trinity of your assets,
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your focus, your energy, and your willpower on those few things, they will allow you to birth art into the world,
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which will allow the world to call you world class.
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Hi, it's Robin.
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I invite you to subscribe to this podcast and definitely go over to robinsharma.com for more information, tools and resources on mastery,
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elite performance and living a world-class life.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “A Method To x100 Your Productivity”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: productivity, focus, brain. This video has 135 sentences and 1835 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:29. The speaker talks at a natural 160 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| productivity noun | /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/ | The state of being productive, fertile, or efficient. |
| autobiography noun | /ˌɔː.tə.baɪˈɒɡ.ɹə.fi/ | A self-written biography; the story of one's own life. |
| performer noun | /pɚˈfɔɹmɚ/ | One who performs for, or entertains, an audience. |
| exponential adjective | /ˌɛk.spəˈnɛn.t͡ʃəl/ | Expressed in terms of an exponent (power of a base), the base often being 10 or e. |
| minimalist adjective | /ˈmɪn.ə.məl.ɪst/ | Believing in or seeking a minimal state; seeking to minimize or reduce to a minimum. |
| subconsciously adverb | Below the level of conscious awareness. | |
| mastery noun | /ˈmæs.tɚ.i/ | The position or authority of a master; dominion; command; supremacy; superiority. |
| distract verb | /dɪˈstɹækt/ | To divert the attention of. |
| distraction noun | /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/ | Something that distracts. |
| bubble noun | /ˈbʌbəl/ | A spherically contained volume of air or other gas in a liquid, commonly a soapy liquid. |
| minimalism noun | /ˈmɪn.ə.məl.ɪz.əm/ | A style of art that emphasises extreme simplicity of form. |
| neuron noun | /ˈn(j)ʊɹɑn/ | A cell of the nervous system, which conducts nerve impulses; consisting of an axon and several dendrites. Neurons are connected by synapses. |
| behave verb | /bɪˈheɪv/ | To conduct (oneself) well, or in a given way; to conform. |
| peer noun | /pɪɹ/ | Somebody who is, or something that is, at a level or of a value equal (to that of something else). |
| adopt verb | /əˈdɑpt/ | To take voluntarily (a child of other parents) to be in the place of, or as, one's own child. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| go off verb | To explode. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| pick up on verb | To notice, observe, learn, or understand, especially something otherwise overlooked. | |
| roll up verb | To dominate by accumulating; to become dominant by accumulating. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Here's a brain tattoo for you to consider.
- Here's another brain tattoo for you to consider.
- I've worked with true titans.
- Here's one thing I've observed in them.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has never been · I've become · I've taught |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are addicted · being distracted · you've been distracted |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | one, which is · people who attend · people who are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 26 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/, notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, addiction /əˈdɪkˌʃən/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, autobiography /ˌɔː.tə.baɪˈɒɡ.ɹə.fi/, exponential /ˌɛk.spəˈnɛn.t͡ʃəl/, minimalist /ˈmɪn.ə.məl.ɪst/, minimalism /ˈmɪn.ə.məl.ɪz.əm/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like productivity, autobiography, performer.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.