Shadowing Practice: Creating more than you consume will change your life. - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Okay, let's start with a mini experiment.
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I'd like you to think of the last five pieces of content that you watched before watching this video.
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Can you summarize each of them in a sentence or tell me anything about them?
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And no, don't go to your watch history or scroll back.
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That's not the point because if you can't remember what you just watched, you're not alone.
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I probably can't either.
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And that's the sad irony of modern life that I've been grappling with
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because the average adult spends hours and hours every single day watching content and taking things in.
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But a lot
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that time we come away with barely anything to show for it barely remembering what we even watched
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or what it meant to us and what
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if instead of all this endless kind of mindless consumption instead you end your weeks having created something that's yours
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and taken action on something
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and you actually feel like you're genuinely living your life for me as a 90s kid
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i remember those younger years when there wasn't
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so much content online i didn't have a phone i didn't have an ipad
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and i would just spend my days genuinely engaging with the world actively creating things taking action
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And that muscle is in every single one of us, we just need to wake it up again.
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If you're new here, I'm Izzy, a mum, Cambridge trained doctor and founder of Dream21,
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which is a science -backed challenge community for ambitious women who want to create a life that they love in every dimension.
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Today I'll show you the psychology of creative suffocation.
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Three simple lenses to unleash your creativity and how to actually make it stick
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and practical tips to make it happen in your life starting today.
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I've also come up with a free list of creative activities, apart from the ones that I'll be mentioning in this video,
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so you won't be running out of any ideas anytime soon.
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I've left the link to this free guide that I made just down below so feel free to click.
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Without further ado, let's dive in.
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Your creative brain is suffocating every time you scroll mindlessly.
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Our brains can only actively hold a few things in mind at once.
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So when you take in reel after reel and post after post, most of it doesn't really have anywhere to go.
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It feels interesting maybe for a brief moment and then it disappears.
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And that's why we can watch something that we genuinely enjoy
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and then maybe just even just a day later remember almost the none of it.
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So our saved folders might start looking a bit like a graveyard of content
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that we've momentarily engaged with and then swiftly forgotten about.
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And there is a reason for that.
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In 1972 psychologists Craig and Lockhart proposed the levels of processing model
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which basically says that how well you remember something depends on the depth of processing that happens in your brain.
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When you simply just mindlessly watch something
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or just save it your brain engages with it on a very superficial surface level just quite light engagement.
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But if instead on the flip side you pause, you put it into your own words, or you connect it to something that you already know,
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it goes a lot deeper.
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You're no longer just letting the information wash over you
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and you're actually doing something with it and deriving meaning from it instead.
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To summarize their levels of processing model, depth of processing is what predicts memory.
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And so it's no wonder that most social media content, especially the fast or entertaining type, tends to leave us just a little bit creatively uninspired
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and not really having anything to show at the end of a session.
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And on top of social media time generally being not particularly memorable or meaningful,
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there are all the gaps that we have filled with social media over time.
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Because in a world without social media, we would spend the time maybe waiting in a lift
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or in a queue or maybe walking on our way to work
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or to get somewhere
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or even time spent on the toilet just with our thoughts rather than constantly consuming and constantly filling our brains.
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And so you know how some of your best ideas
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or realisations probably happen in the shower or on a walk
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while you're doing something quite mundane and not really doing anything actively
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that isn't random chance because
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when your brain isn't busy responding to inputs the default mode network can actually activate
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which is a system that is linked to reflection imagination
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and creativity and this actually has space to get to work
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but now we're constantly listening to music scrolling while we're waiting
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and putting on podcasts during every single walk which means
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that the part of the brain that connects these ideas
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that we have and creates this opportunity for creativity through connecting different concepts or ideas that we've picked up over time,
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rarely gets much airtime to actually run.
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And for me, everyday admin can actually annoyingly fill in that space too.
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And so as much as I try to stay on top of my inbox, almost daily it can become quite overwhelming quite quickly.
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I'll open it just intending to answer a couple of important emails and then ending up searching for information, trawling through email chains, writing replies,
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following up with people and trying to schedule meetings.
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Which often means, and maybe you can relate if you also have a slightly overwhelming inbox, that much more time passes than I initially expected,
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when really I'd much rather be working on something creative or taking action in my life, being present with my family,
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or simply allowing myself to rest and relax and be unhurried for a moment.
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And that's where superhuman mail comes to save the day for me.
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Superhuman mail is part of the superhuman productivity suite and it's designed to make email much easier to manage.
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What I like the most is that it doesn't just help me to clear my inbox once,
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it actually just makes staying on top of my emails much more sustainable in the long run.
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Since they recently celebrated inbox zero day I thought I'd show you two of the features
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that make reaching inbox zero feel much more manageable.
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The first feature is the split inbox.
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It automatically organizes my emails into separate prioritised views.
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So instead of searching through everything, I can go straight to the messages that genuinely need my attention and deal with those first.
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This makes the whole inbox feel much less intimidating
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because I'm not trying to process every type of email at the same time.
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The second feature is autodrafts.
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Superhuman Mail can remind me when a response is needed and help to prepare, literally draft up a follow -up for me.
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So instead of starting from a blank page, I can quickly review the draft that's written in my own style of email already for the person
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that I'm sending the email to with all the context from my inbox and calendar.
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And then I can go ahead and confirm that the message says what I meant to send.
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What I found very helpful here is that this saves time in the moment
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but it also means fewer loose ends sitting in the back of my mind while I'm trying to focus on something else.
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It closes some of those loops more quickly.
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So if you'd like to make email feel easier and lighter
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and get back to what really matters faster then you can sign up for Superhuman Mail today
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and get one month free with my link in the description down below.
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Now let's get back into the video.
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A lot of us talk about creativity as though it's something
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that you either are born with or you weren't
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but actually the science says creativity isn't about a specific gene deciding your fate genetics may play a part
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but actually your environment your habits and whether you actually practice being creative matter enormously
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and probably much more creativity is a fundamentally human experience and
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so nobody is born completely locked out of being a creative person
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and you can see this quite clearly with children
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if you give a small child a paper clip let's say
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they might turn it into maybe jewelry they might turn
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it into a tiny sword a tool part of an imaginary machine
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or maybe even give it a personality and a whole life of its own.
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Meanwhile an adult will usually just say it holds paper together, it's a paper clip.
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I've seen this firsthand with my own daughter who's one
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and a half years old now and she can turn anything into something fascinating
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and do something totally unexpected with it that I wouldn't even have thought to do.
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In 1968 psychologist George Land
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and Beth Jarman wanted to test the creativity levels of 1
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,600 children between the ages of three to five who were enrolled in a Head Start program.
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They used the same creativity test
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that George Land had designed for NASA themselves to help choose the most innovative and creative engineers and scientists.
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The assessment he designed worked so well that he decided to try it on children to see what the result was.
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And what they found was
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that 98 % of the children aged between three to five initially scored at what they defined as a creative genius level.
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By the age of 10 that fell to 30%, by the age of 15 that was just 12%.
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And in adults only around 2 % of people score at that creative genius level.
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And while the definition of creative genius is by its very nature somewhat subjective.
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One thing I have seen firsthand and if you have any young kids in your life I'm sure you can relate,
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is just how creative my baby is.
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My one and a half year old baby girl literally pick up anything and be so creative with it,
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come up with so many new ideas for ways you can combine it with other items, things you can do with it,
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and so much curiosity around what sound to make, what does it taste like unfortunately,
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which I often have to run across the room and take things out of my mouth.
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And the best way I've found to describe this is divergent thinking
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and children generally think much more divergently than adults who tend to think more convergently.
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Divergent thinking is essentially being able to brainstorm many different ideas and possibilities without judging them first,
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without having prior expectations of what things should be like.
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But as we grow older education systems
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and societal rules train us to use convergent thinking which instead focuses on finding the single correct or socially accepted answer.
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And so somewhere along the way from the ages of three until adulthood.
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We become much more concerned with finding the correct answer according to society
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and the expectations that we've learned and we stop practicing all the other answers
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and all the other ways to be creative and connect things.
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The cognitive scientist Margaret Bowden defined creativity in three different categories and I'll walk you through each of them.
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Maybe some of them could even become hobbies if you enjoyed them enough.
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The first category is combinational creativity.
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This is about recombining familiar things into something new.
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This is the lowest barrier and the best starting point for creativity.
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You're just instead giving familiar things a new relationship.
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If you've travelled somewhere, maybe cook a dish from a place
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that you've been and write the memory of it beside the recipe.
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Another idea is, while playing a podcast or listening to music, sketch what you hear and draw out some kind of abstract
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or non -abstract representation of your experience instead of just listening passively.
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If you're into journaling, like me, I'm a huge journaling fan,
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maybe you can write about your ordinary day as if it were a memoir or a fairy tale or a documentary.
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Or maybe you pull out a tarot or oracle card and you just freely journal about wherever that takes you.
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Or another idea could be taking a month of your camera roll
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and picking a couple of your favourite pictures and making a little bit of a narrated collage in your journal about them.
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Printing them out, sticking them in and then writing about some of the memories there.
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The second is exploratory creativity.
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This is where you take something that you already know how to do
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and you play around with the edges of it and push the boundaries.
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The basic form stays the same but you keep seeing what else it could become and evolve into.
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This one is very simple to incorporate into almost anything you do.
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For example you could cook a dish that you often make
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but change one rule
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or one ingredient every single time just run a small experiment maybe take a new route on your usual walk
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or commute and just notice one thing that you've never really seen
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or paid attention to properly before or if you're drawing sketching the same view
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or the same item at different times of the day
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or from different angles or maybe taking a day to go into your own city
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and take pictures of it as if you were a tourist.
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I spent years living in London and then Cambridge for my medical studies
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and for so long I just went through life without really looking up or appreciating the space around me.
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Only when I've gone back years later I'm like wow I lived in such an amazing place this is
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so photo worthy I can see why all the tourists were coming here
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and taking pictures of these things that to me at the time were so normal.
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The third type of creativity is transformational, where you stop following the usual rules altogether.
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And this is the boldest version because you aren't exploring inside an existing structure or framework, you're actually just coming up with your own.
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This could be something like inventing a recipe with no reference, just guided purely by taste or vibes.
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It could be just doing whatever art you actually feel like
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and not actually limiting yourself to what you think it should be like, rather just following your energy.
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Or it could even be inventing a game with your own rules and getting your friends to play it.
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The key solution to all this creative constipation and suffocation is all about balancing our inputs and outputs.
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If you currently spend far more time consuming than creating, you may need to overcorrect the other way for a little while.
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And not forever, not because consuming is inherently bad,
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actually often consuming when balanced with creating is such a great source of inspiration and ideas and reflection.
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But for most of us, the balance has simply been leaning in one direction for a very long time
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and so it may take a deliberate push to bring it back.
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Books, films, music and other people's ideas all give us raw material to get inspired by
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and to create with or take action on.
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The problem is when input becomes the default and nothing ever actually happens or comes back out of it.
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Nothing is actually created or actioned in the real world.
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So the aim here is really to consume with a bit more intention.
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Know why you opened the app, pay attention to what you chose to see and then actually do something with it.
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And here are some practical ways
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that you can implement in your life starting today to actually start creating more than you consume.
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The first one is to create first thing before you consume.
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Make or do one tiny thing before your first scrolling session of the day.
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So whether that's one sentence, one sketch, one photograph, one voice note, one doodle, it doesn't need to be impressive,
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it doesn't need to be a magnum oak.
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You're simply reminding your brain that before you passively consume, you're also someone who makes things.
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For me, I love to journal every single morning after my meditation.
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I love journaling as a form of writing
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and I do genuinely believe it's a form of writing as I can express myself freely to clarify understand
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and organize all of my thoughts
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and feelings right after a meditation i often have some kind of insight
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or reflection that's come from within from the middle of the meditation
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and i just love to be able to write some of those thoughts down
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and put those out on paper the second tip is to thin your inputs unfollow unsubscribe
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or mute what you no longer choose deliberately
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and this comes back to having good mental nutrition
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but we can choose to think about what we put into
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our brains just like how we think about what we put into our mouths
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and bodies and just like there's nutritious food
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that helps your body to thrive and be healthy
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and be happy there is equally good mental nutrition
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and I like to almost put everything that I input
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and consume mentally through a good mental nutrition filter of is
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this actually helping my brain to shape into the brain
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that I want for the life that I want
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and it's not just about the content itself it's also about the volume
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and the quantity of it just like with food
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if you eat way too much food
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and are over nutritioned that's going to cause problems for you and the same is true of our brains.
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If all day you just spend consuming passively
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that's not particularly great for your brain either to actually create a life
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that you love and so actually choosing to have fewer competing voices leaves more room for your own thinking and creativity.
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Third tip is to find a creative community,
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a group of like -minded people who are doing and creating similar things to what you would like to do.
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So whether that's maybe joining a calligraphy club or an art club
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or even joining a community of people who are working on personal growth
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that could be something that would be really supportive to actually take action
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and create change in your life and this is because having
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that community of people who are doing the thing helps to inspire you to do things a different way,
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to be creative, you see examples of what they're doing
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and you can incorporate that into what you're doing
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and additionally it provides that motivation and energy to actually commit to it and keep showing up for it.
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It's way more enjoyable to do things in a community with other people doing a similar thing
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because you feel that progress together and you can really connect over what you're working on.
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Speaking of community, I run 21 -day science -backed challenges in a community of ambitious women aiming to create a life that they really love.
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Right now our challenge is actually around clarity and
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that includes physical clarity in our environment and creating the space in which to live a life of our dreams.
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I participate in these challenges right alongside everybody else.
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We do them together and stay in touch every single day of like what we're doing, what we're up to, what we did each day
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and ultimately trying to create a balanced life for ourselves where
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we achieve progress in our lives together in an unhurried fashion, unhurried progress.
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And one thing that I found really inspiring and motivating is actually seeing some of these women creating,
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literally building things with either 3D printers or designing their homes,
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thinking about the setup that they want that would actually like be able to give themselves the clarity, the inspiration that they want every single day
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and actually genuinely helps to keep me motivated as well to keep going with it.
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Each month the challenge is focused on a different key area of life
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and so as we rotate through we'll hopefully improve and creatively improve
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and take action in different parts of our life to level it up.
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If you're curious to check it out I'll leave a link down below
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and finding any kind of community like this
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or even in person finding a local pottery club can be
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so nourishing and supportive to help you create more than you consume and actually take action in your life.
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The next tip is to actually reflect
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and leave some evidence behind after you consume something useful
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or valuable so after a book podcast or video write down one idea
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that it gave you and maybe one way that you might use it
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and this moves you from passively watching to actually producing something yourself
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there's actually even a phenomenon called the generation effect
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which was first documented and named by cognitive psychologists norman slameka
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and peter graff back in 1978 where they basically found
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that we remember information much better when we've had to generate part of it ourselves
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so even the act of writing down our core takeaway gets us to reflect on what we've consumed
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and synthesize our own highlight from it related to our own lives
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and this helps us to remember more of these important reflections
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from our experiences the next step is to make the starting
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point for creating actually embarrassingly small even just 10 minutes just one paragraph just one rough sketch
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because our brains actually change much more quickly through repetition not
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through just one enormous burst of motivation once in a blue moon
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so a tiny pocket -sized creative habit
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that you actually keep doing will take you much further than an ambitious project that you've made way too intimidating.
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And finally, one of my favourite tips is to leave some gaps in your life unfilled.
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Take a walk without headphones in silence or commute with nothing playing in your ears.
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Leave your phone behind when you next go to the bathroom.
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These low demand moments actually give your brain room to activate the default mode network and connect ideas in the background.
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And so with all these tips, as a broader meta reflection point, every so often just ask yourself, am I creating
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or consuming right now you don't need to judge the answer the point is simply to notice the balance
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and on this one i would actually define taking action as a form of creation
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and at first
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when we start putting this into practice we may need to actually push ourselves to create way more deliberately
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because we've spent years practicing pure consumption over time the aim is simply a healthier balance where there's inputs giving
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you raw material and inspiration
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and outputs helping you to turn it into something of your own your own reflection and experience because every single human being,
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you and me, we have a creative spark inside of us that's just waiting to be lit up
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and it's one of the joys of being human where we can create things in our lives,
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whether that's something overtly creative like art or if it's just creating action, creating a different change in your life, levelling up in some way.
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So at the end of every video I always like to invite you to choose two action points right now
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and write them down and this is part of actually creating, you're creating action and movement in your life
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and to make two potential suggestions for you you could maybe pick an activity
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that you actually want to commit to start trying this week
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and the second thing is maybe the next time you watch something educational write down just one idea
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that it gave you and one way that you'll use it
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if you enjoyed this video I think
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you might like this one over here where I talk about
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why hobbies are your best defense against brain rot until then thanks
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so much for watching take care of yourself and remember
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that the journey is the destination I'll see you in the next video or maybe in our challenge community bye
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Creating more than you consume will change your life”. This video has 296 sentences and 4068 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:04. The speaker talks fast, about 225 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| creativity noun | /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/ | The ability to use imagination to produce a novel idea or product. |
| consume verb | /kənˈsum/ | To use up. |
| inbox noun | /ˈɪnbɑks/ | A container in which papers to be dealt with are put. |
| input noun | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | The act or process of putting in; infusion. |
| genuinely adverb | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/ | In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| reflection noun | /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/ | The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected. |
| scroll noun | /skɹoʊl/ | A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll. |
| inspiration noun | /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/ | The drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm, as part of the act of breathing. |
| genius noun | /ˈd͡ʒin.jəs/ | Someone possessing extraordinary intelligence or skill; especially somebody who has demonstrated this by a creative or original work in science, music, art… |
| default noun | /dɪˈfɔlt/ | The condition of failing to meet an obligation. |
| actively adverb | /ˈæktɪvli/ | In an active manner. |
| nutrition noun | /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/ | The organic process by which an organism assimilates food and uses it for growth and maintenance. |
| sketch noun | /ˈskɛt͡ʃ/ | A rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not intended as a finished work, often consisting of a multitude of overlapping lines. |
| ambitious adjective | /æmˈbɪʃ.əs/ | Having or showing ambition; wanting a lot of power, honor, respect, superiority, or other distinction. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. | |
| draw out verb | To make (something) last for more time than is necessary; to prolong; to extend. | |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Today I'll show you the psychology of creative suffocation.
- Without further ado, let's dive in.
- You're just instead giving familiar things a new relationship.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been grappling · has simply been leaning |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've also come · I've left · we've momentarily engaged |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is linked · be unhurried · is needed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | women who want · walk which means · someone who makes |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 74 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, I'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thin /ˈθɪn/, worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: reflection /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, ambitious /æmˈbɪʃ.əs/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: creativity /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/
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 creativity, consume, inbox.
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.