Shadowing Practice: ADHD Focus Skills That Actually Work| Things I learned in Therapy - Learn English Speaking with Video

Attention regulation is a core issue for those of us with ADHD.

We often can't focus for as long as we need to on a task, we don't know how to take effective breaks,

and we are bombarded by distractions both from inside of our minds and from the external world.

In this video, I'll be sharing tips that I learned

when I was in therapy that help with focus and productivity for those of us with ADHD.

We'll be breaking down how to work with your actual attention span, how to take effective breaks, and what to do about the pesky distraction thoughts you get when you're trying to work.

Welcome back to Skills That Stuck, the five -part series where I break down everything I learned in therapy after I was diagnosed with ADHD.

If you're new here, hi I'm Anna, I have a master's degree in neuroscience and cognition, I have been clinically diagnosed with ADHD,

and I share science -backed strategies and down -to -earth tips from daily life to help all of us with busy, ambitious brains live better lives.

So let's dive in.

Just a quick disclaimer, I'm not a licensed therapist and this is not a replacement for your own therapy or professional health.

These are just the most valuable lessons that i took from

when i was in therapy so please use your discernment take what resonates leave what doesn't

and let me know in the comments what you think of

these tips first let's cover how to work with your actual

attention span most of us have heard of the pomodoro method the study method where you work for 25 minutes

and then take a five minute break repeat

that a few times before taking a longer break

but where did this whole 25 minute thing actually come from

and how come it doesn't work for a lot of us

with adhd 25 minutes is thought to be long enough for you to make meaningful progress on a task.

But in reality, it's really hard for most people to sustain their attention past 15 to 20 minutes.

And for those of us with ADHD, it may be closer to 10 minutes or even less.

Now just a caveat here, if you maintain really good self care, you can train your attention span to go a little bit longer every time.

But it's really important to start a little bit closer to your baseline in order for you to make realistic progress.

So let's figure out your actual average time for sustained focus.

The following five step exercise is one of the most helpful things I learned in therapy.

So step one is to choose a task that you have to do, preferably something boring or uninteresting or something you have a difficult time with.

Now before you begin the task, you're going to want to start a stopwatch on your phone.

Step two, start the task.

Step three, as soon as you notice that you're getting distracted or tired or you feel the urge to take a break, stop the stopwatch.

Now just note that the point here is not to try and do the task for as long as possible.

It's just to notice how long you can go before your

brain kind of gives up now note down the time on

the stopwatch step four is to repeat steps one to three a few more times

so do about like four rounds of this

and note down the time on the stopwatch every time you stop it to take a break or

because you got distracted now step five is to calculate the

mean average of all of those times to find your average

sustained focus time the first time i did this a few

years ago my average was only about seven minutes long My first round was 11 minutes, then 2 minutes, then 7 plus 7,

which divided by 4 became 6 .75 minutes, which is not very long.

Now, instead of trying to do a Pomodoro with 25 -minute sessions from the get -go, you can work a little bit closer to your average attention span and take more frequent, shorter breaks.

And I know recording these times and starting and stopping the stopwatch may seem like a lot of stuff going on, so it may be helpful to do this with a body double

when you try

and do it now let's remember my attention span was only about seven minutes the first time i did this

and i totally hear you

if you're screaming at me through the screen going anna that's

way too short to get anything done i'm not gonna get into any sort of flow

and i totally hear you on that

but the most important part of this exercise for me was actually just realizing

that i will get tired and distracted a lot more frequently than i thought

or hoped i still find this exercise super helpful to do

because for a while i did just set like 10 minute timers

and take more frequent breaks until i could work my way

up now i tend to set anywhere from between a 25 to a 45 minute timer

and i do get a little bit distracted during those focus blocks

but i'm a lot more compassionate with myself for that

and instead of using the pomodoro to get myself to focus for

that long stretch of time i actually use it to guide me to take regular structured breaks

which brings me on to the next topic how do you optimize your breaks

so we all know that we do need to be taking little breaks in between our tasks

and throughout the day to maintain a healthy balance of work and life and to be able to focus effectively anyway.

But how do we make sure that those breaks are effective and restorative?

Having just covered the Pomodoro method, we now know that we can take either shorter

or longer breaks depending on what kind of work you just did

or how long you were working for or how many rounds of focus work you've just been doing.

So short breaks, long breaks, different things.

Let's start by figuring out what you should do when you start any sort of break.

So first things first, we need to make sure that we don't get carried away when we start a break.

Just like you would set a Pomodoro style timer for your work, you're also going to want to set a timer

when you start a break so that it reminds you to come back afterwards.

I really like the app Focus Friend for this, the one that was designed by Hank Green.

I like to use that when I'm working on my own, but I often also use a structured co -working app called focus space

because the hosts of the focus sessions on there actually lead you through the breaks with active stretching

or mindfulness or they remind you to get up and get water

and they check in with you on your progress

and it's just really nice to have some interaction and accountability

so i'll leave the link in the description box below for you to try focus space and

if you decide to sign up with it then you can get a 20 discount for life using my link

so in addition to setting a timer

when you do start a break it's important to acknowledge

that you will need to spend some time refocusing when you come back to work.

I find it really, really helpful to build in a couple of refocus rituals or routines that I can rely on, but I'm going to break those down in a future video, so stay tuned for that.

Okay, what should you do during a short break?

Short breaks are usually around five minutes long, so make sure that you don't start any sort of break activities

that would take longer than that or get you sucked into something else entirely

when you need to be able to get back to work in five minutes time.

The best thing to do is to stand up and move away from your workspace and do something that's like mildly engaging, but not too engaging.

So here are some examples.

You could make a cup of tea or coffee.

You can drink a glass of water.

You could do a five minute body scan meditation.

I also like to move away from my desk to do this.

Or you could do five minutes of gentle stretching.

Basically, any easy task that's five minutes or less

and doesn't use too much brain power and won't get you carried away with

that other task and I'm begging you try not to check your phone.

Now what about longer breaks?

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What do we do with a longer break?

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Longer breaks are usually about 30 minutes long.

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You would usually take a longer break after several rounds of like focus sprints

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and then shorter break

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or after doing like an extended amount of work like maybe you got into hyper focus

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or flow and now you just need a much longer break to make up for all of that energy you just spent.

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During longer breaks you should still avoid trying to incorporate things

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that would be too engaging or get you too sucked in

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but you could incorporate activities like having a snack

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or a meal going for a short walk doing a mini workout i like to just put some music on

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and dance around for a bit or doing something restorative like a yoga nidra

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or non -sleep deep rest meditation

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or have a 20 minute power nap now just a few

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general tips for breaks as complex as it might be in this day

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and age because our devices are everywhere try not to check your phone

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and your notifications and social media when you take breaks.

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It might sound silly but actually try to schedule in your scroll time

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but when you do it it's what you wanted to do with that time.

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This way it's much more intentional and it doesn't disrupt your work day and you don't feel bad about it.

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Now again I find it super super important to step away from my workspace

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and away from my screens when I take a break.

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This helps me come back and actually feel more refreshed

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because the change of context helps me process the change of time

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and like actually experience my life

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and also just for my eye health to stop staring at a screen

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so close for a while automated routines

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and settings on your devices can actually be really helpful with this

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so my phone has a routine

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that i can put it in called focus mode where it blocks all distracting apps

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and it puts my phone on do not disturb so

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that i'm not even tempted to look at it the last

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topic we're going to cover in this video today is what to do with distractions you experience

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while you're working and how to delay distracting thoughts.

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If you have a boring or difficult task you are likely to get distracted.

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Thoughts of more interesting activities you could be doing or thoughts in general might just distract you from your work.

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These can often seem more interesting or engaging than what you have to do at the time.

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So how can you stay committed to focusing once you've decided to sit down and work on a task?

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Allow me to introduce you to the thought parking lot so

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when you sit down to work on a task grab something else

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that you can write on i like to use these mini pocket notebooks

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but you could also use like a small whiteboard

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or sometimes i just use my bullet journal

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if it's there anything you can have next to you

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that you can easily write on this will be your thought parking lot now you can start your focus timer

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and your task as per usual and as soon as you notice a distracting thought

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while you're working grab a pen

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and write it down in your thought parking lot just keep it to like one sentence do not act on it.

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Just write it down, leave it alone, and then continue with the task you were working on.

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This technique helps you let go of and move on from distracting thoughts until it's time to actually deal with them.

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Knowing that the thought is safely written down in the parking lot means

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that you don't have to worry about ruminating on it in your head so that you can remember it.

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You also don't have to act on it immediately.

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Now when it's time for you to take a longer break, you can have a look at what's on your thought parking lot.

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Go through the list that you've written down and assess your options

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if something takes less than five minutes

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and it's something you can do then just go get it done

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if it's something that's now irrelevant

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or it was just a thought you were having you can just cross it off

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and let it go and if it's something important

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that you can't do right now because of time or

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because of you know the situation you're in then schedule it into your calendar

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and block out time to do it

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or add it to your actual to -do list to deal with

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when you schedule time for that

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so to summarize what we went through in this video we

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talked about how to work with your actual attention span by finding the average

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when you're doing a really boring or unengaging task

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and then we talked about how to take effective breaks for both longer breaks

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and shorter breaks and then lastly we talked about dealing with distractions

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while you are working using the thought parking lot method thank you

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so much for spending time with me today

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and i will be doing some more videos on focus productivity

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and time management soon also i'll be making a video on those refocus routines

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that I really like to use so stay tuned for that.

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If you have any questions on this topic

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or anything else you want me to cover please write it down in the comments.

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I do read through all of the comments and as always stay curious, stay connected and turn your potential into action.

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Bye!

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 177 sentences and 2428 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:43. The speaker talks fast, about 227 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% 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

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
distract verb	/dɪˈstɹækt/	To divert the attention of.
spin verb	/spɪn/	To rotate, revolve, gyrate (usually quickly); to partially or completely rotate to face another direction.
timer noun	/ˈtaɪmɚ/	A device used to measure amounts of time.
helpful adjective	/ˈhɛlp.fl̩/	Furnishing help; giving aid; useful.
routine noun	/ɹuˈtin/	A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure.
engage verb	/ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/	To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied.
distraction noun	/dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/	Something that distracts.
topic noun	/ˈtɑpɪk/	A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest.
stretch verb	/stɹɛt͡ʃ/	To lengthen by pulling.
bore verb	/boɹ/	To inspire boredom in somebody.
sustain verb	/səˈsteɪn/	To maintain, or keep in existence.
mini adjective	/ˈmɪn.i/	Miniature, tiny, small.
suck verb	/sʌk/	To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast).
remind verb	/ɹəˈmaɪnd/	To cause one to experience a memory (of someone or something); to bring to the notice or consideration (of a person).
frequent adjective	/ˈfɹiː.kwənt/	Done or occurring often; common.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
break down verb	To stop functioning.
come back verb	To return to a place.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
note down verb	To write down, especially hurriedly; to make a note of.
carried away adjective	Made excessively emotional or excited, so that one goes too far.
get back to verb	Return to (an activity)
get up verb	To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb.
give up verb	To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone).

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	have been · have heard · you've decided
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are bombarded · was diagnosed · is thought

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 40 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/, regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, ambitious /æmˈbɪʃ.əs/
Long words — get the stress right: productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/, regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, irrelevant /ɪˈɹɛləvənt/

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 distract, spin, timer.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?