Shadowing Practice: Future You: Unconventional Ways in which Your Future Self Benefits You - Learn English Speaking with Video
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One of the best ways to achieve our goals and better ourselves is to not just focus on the present, but the future.
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My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.
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Today, I look forward to speaking with Hal Hirschfeld.
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Hal is a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making, and psychology at UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
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He is the author of Your Future Self, How to Make Tomorrow Better Today.
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Hal, thanks for joining me.
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Hey, thanks so much, Matt.
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I'm excited to chat with you.
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I'm super excited as well.
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Should we get started?
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Let's do it.
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Excellent.
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Your most recent work focuses on our future selves.
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I'd love for you to describe what you mean by future selves
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and share with how thinking about our future selves can help us in the present.
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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So when I say future self, I really mean any version of us that exists at some later point in time.
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I mean, so look, that could be tomorrow.
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But for the most part, we're really talking about a self that's tied to some goal later on.
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So if I want to be healthy in five years so
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that I can continue to play roughly with my kids or whatever, that's a goal in five years.
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That's a future self in five years.
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But there's multiple selves along the way.
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Your question about how that relates to well-being now, the big idea is that if we can sort of tap into the feelings of our future selves,
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then we can do more that benefits them, which may make our lives easier now and later.
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So it's really the next step or the next several steps.
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And then we can think about that and make changes today that'll help us in the future.
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That's exactly right.
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And I think, you know, it needs to be said that some of those changes aren't necessarily easy.
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I mean, this, this falls into anything we talk about when we think about self-control, right?
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Um, I, I do like to consider how the changes we make now, especially in the self-control realm,
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um, they don't have to be just sacrifices now, right?
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There can be benefits to doing the, you know, quote unquote, harder thing right now.
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It's not just that it's like all pain now and then gain later.
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Right.
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I think that's a really poor framing.
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That's not going to get anybody to do the things that they say that they want to do.
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Right.
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Right.
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One of the ways you frame this whole discussion is time travel.
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And I love that idea.
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We have to think of time travel.
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And you mentioned now one of the mistakes we make in
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time travel is we feel like everything now is pain for the future game.
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Are there other mistakes that we make in this future forecasting time travel that you're talking about?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Right.
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And so, I mean, probably we should just clarify when I say time travel, I really mean mental time travel.
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And of course, you know, I think that's obvious, right?
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I think it needs to be said because it's a weird concept.
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But yeah, there's a bunch of mistakes.
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You know, one mistake is that we almost fail to even consider the future.
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It's not like people don't know that it's coming, right?
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But like, you know, if pushed, there are many times when we may actually sort of ignore it to some degree.
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There are other times where we do consider it, or we tell ourselves that we're considering it, but we don't do it on a very deep level.
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Right.
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So procrastination is a great example of thinking about the future, but doing it at a very surface level.
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I tell myself, like, I will do my taxes next week.
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Next week keeps coming, and I haven't yet done them, and eventually I'm going to have to do them.
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And then there's another version of this mistake where we do think about the future, but we don't consider that our future interests may change.
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And we almost overly project our present-day feelings onto a future self in a way that's unfair to the future self.
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It's like the analogy is like getting a gift for a friend or partner that represents something we'd want, but not something they'd want,
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because we're not really thinking about them deeply.
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Right.
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So how do we avoid that?
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So I know I procrastinate at times.
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Many people listening are procrastinators.
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What's your advice on how to manage that
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and the other thing of not really considering the changes that happen to us in the future?
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You know, one of the first things to recognize, I would say, is that I think it's okay to actually think of our future selves as
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if they're different people from who we are now.
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You know, in my book, I talked to this guy, Tim Pickle, and he had this great thing he said to me, which is that, you know, if I don't want to do the thing now,
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there's no way that future me is going to want to do it.
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And in some ways you compound the pain by putting things off
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because procrastination by definition is not doing something and recognizing that you're harming yourself by not doing it.
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Right.
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So when I put off doing my taxes, when I put off cleaning up the desk area in our house, I'm picturing it right now.
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I know that I'm making life worse because it's getting harder
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and harder to do the thing I said I was going to do.
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And I'm making life more difficult for my future self.
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So it's like if I just do the thing now
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and then I can save my future self some pain and I can save myself some pain right now.
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And it's obviously it's like a lot easier said than done.
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Right.
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Right.
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But I do think that part of the solutions here are the recognition that the future self is another person.
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And it's hopefully someone who we should care about and feel some responsibility toward.
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You know, would I inflict pain on a loved one?
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Right.
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that future me is sort of like that loved one.
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I like that idea of seeing ourselves as not ourselves, but somebody else.
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I use this technique and recommend it to people when they have to watch recordings of themselves and then give feedback.
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It's much easier to imagine that somebody else and what feedback would you give that person versus yourself? And you're right.
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We would treat that person with kindness in a way that we might not ourselves.
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So I think that's a great idea and one that I can deploy a lot.
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I have found in my life that procrastination actually has a built-in incentive.
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It gives you an excuse, right?
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So when I put off preparing for a communication or a presentation I have, and then it doesn't go as well as I like, oh, the reason it didn't go well is I didn't prepare.
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So there's this built-in advantage that I have, and I have to get over that because part of that gets in my way as well.
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Yeah, and I think that concept of self-handicapping is so interesting.
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And I've done it to four presentations, you know?
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Right, right.
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Well, I know I should be practicing.
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I should be doing whatever.
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And it's like, it didn't go as well as I thought.
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Well, you know, I didn't give myself the best shot, so it's not on me, right?
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Right, exactly.
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And then I can attribute whatever, quote-unquote, failure to the situation and not to myself.
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And somehow that's an easier pill to swallow.
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That's right.
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Right?
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In some ways, it's the type of time traveling you're talking about, but in reverse.
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I'm saying, well, only if I would have.
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Yeah, that's interesting.
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Exactly.
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When it comes to getting in touch with our future selves, do people vary in their abilities to do this?
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I know when I was in college, in school, I studied with Phil Zimbardo, who was a guest on this show, and he studied time perspective, and people are oriented differently.
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Some people focus more on the past, present, or future.
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Is it temperament, experience? how can we get better in touch with ourselves?
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Yeah, I think it's so interesting that you brought up his work because it's closely related.
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You know, in my own work, we've found that people do differ in how connected, how emotionally invested they feel in their future selves.
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The way I think about it is, it's sort of like any other trait that we have.
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Some of the input is almost innate, if you will, like we're born a certain way.
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Some of the input though is our experiences.
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Who's modeling certain things for us and what do we sort of absorb over time, right?
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And so I think those things all do help explain the varying relationships that exist with future selves.
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Are there things we can do to get better in touch?
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So there's a couple of techniques that I really like.
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If we're thinking practically speaking,
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one technique that I particularly love is a conversation that you can create between your self now and your future self.
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So I love the exercise of writing a letter or an email
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or a note or whatever it is to your future self and then writing one back.
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When I do teaching, especially for adult learners, I often have people start by writing a letter to their past self.
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So I'll have them write a letter to themselves 10 years ago to almost grease the wheels, because it's a weird thing to do this.
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And I fully recognize, you know, this is slightly uncomfortable to have this, like you're stepping back, you're confronted with like,
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values and mistakes that I may have made and also things that I might be proud of.
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So I like to have people write a letter to their past self and then write a letter to their future selves, call it in five years or 10 years, and then do the reverse, write a letter back.
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Give me an example of what you might put in one of these letters.
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What are some of the mistakes you've made?
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What are some of the things that you're proud of?
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That's looking back, right?
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Moving forward, what do I want to accomplish?
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What are some of my goals?
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But not just that, what do I want my life to look like in 10 years?
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Because there's a danger in this exercise of being too anchored on the present, which is why I think it's really important to do the letter back.
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But part of what's really important here is to make it concrete, right?
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So what do I want that future self's life to look like?
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And then in the letter back, really talk about, okay, how are you spending your day days, you know, not a general, Oh, I'm happy.
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And things are good with my family.
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That's just too abstract.
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Like what does a day in the life look like, right?
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Of your future self in 10 years or 20 years or whatever, whatever time period we're talking about.
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The reason I think that's important is because we know
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that vividness is the type of thing that really provokes emotions and emotions are the things that drive behavior.
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And so if we, if we can just turn the dial up on a vivid perception of your future self,
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that can really help connect who you are now with who you will eventually become.
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So being very concrete and specific.
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I love this idea.
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I mean, obviously, as somebody who studies communication, of having communication with yourself.
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And I like the idea of writing to the future self and then imagine the future self writing back.
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And I can see how that one help separate me from my future self, but also can help me focus on what's important.
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I think you hit the nail on the head, right?
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Because I think, um, to some extent, this boils down to a conversation of, you know, there's urgency and there's importance, we know, this dichotomy, right?
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And it, you know, I think so often it's easy to get sucked into what's urgent, right?
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And we can just, we, we are really good at making exceptions for the day by day.
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I didn't get to the important things today, but you know, there was five fire drills, you know, five fires that I had to put out.
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But then those days add up over time.
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And then we look back and suddenly say, it's been months and I haven't done anything important.
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And so I think the conversation, the communication between current and future selves can help us really step back and focus on like, what are those important things?
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But then you have to do the extra work and say, all right, well, how can I specifically start doing those important things, right?
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And dedicating the time that's necessary to them, right?
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I certainly want to come back to this notion, because part of what you study is how do we set goals and achieve them?
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And I want to come back to that, because that is a goal.
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I love that we're having a conversation about the communication we have with ourselves.
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We so often on this podcast focus on the communication we have with others, and the communication we have with ourselves, as you're demonstrating, can be very helpful.
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I see a potential concern, though.
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What happens if I have this vision of my future self and I don't achieve it?
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Right.
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That to me could be disappointing and maybe make it so that I don't want to continue to have those aspirations.
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Have you looked at having those goals that don't come to fruition for whatever reason?
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I love this question.
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So, you know, from a reason, look, I'm a research scientist and I haven't, I should say, I have not examined that in, in like an empirical way.
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Right, right, right, right.
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Just let me give you an anecdote that I think is really interesting.
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Sure.
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So, Anne Napolitano, she's a author.
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She, she just wrote this book, Hello Beautiful.
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But I had come in contact with her a couple of years ago around one of her books called Dear Edwards.
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She had, she had written an op-ed in the New York Times.
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And in this op-ed, she talked about how starting at the age of 14, she would write a letter to her future self in 10 years.
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And she would hold that letter and carry it with her.
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And then she started this tradition of every 10 years, she would write a letter.
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She would read the letter she had written and then write a new letter.
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And one of the interesting things that came out from this exercise is realizing just how rare it was
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to have things work out the way that she wanted them to.
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And now obviously this is just an anecdote of one, right?
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But she talked about how she has this beautiful moment in this essay where she says when she was 34,
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nothing about her life was the way that she wanted it to be when she was 24.
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And yet she was so much happier than she had been.
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She said, oh, my God, my goals were so focused on externally relevant things and rather than like what I wanted.
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And so I think what's so nice about
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that example is it highlights how just because a goal doesn't work out the way you want it to work out,
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it doesn't mean that that's failure necessarily.
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Like I would almost think of that as growth or an opportunity for growth, right?
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And an opportunity to revisit those values of importance to call back to what you were saying earlier.
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Yeah, I think part of what it does is it highlights how the metrics we're using for success
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or what we want change over time.
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Yes.
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And highlighting that and becoming open to the fact
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that my future self might want things very different and assess things very differently.
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I certainly see that in my parents as they age.
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What's important to them has changed dramatically and what's important.
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And if I can remind myself of that, it can be helpful.
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Yeah.
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So let's tap into the other areas that you research in terms of decision making, goal setting, and motivation.
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What are things that your research and the research in your field share with us
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that can help us achieve some of these things that we aspire to in our future selves?
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What are things we can do?
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So we already talked about the letter writing exercise, which I think is really useful.
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Another strategy that I think is really important is a little bit different.
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And it recognizes that a lot of times when we have these sort of goal setting exercises, there's a tension between me now and me later, right?
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And the tension is that the person who has to do the hard work is me now.
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And the person who benefits is me later.
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And so one solution then is to try to figure out any way we can to make the sacrifice, quote unquote, of me now feel easier.
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so I love strategies that try to break things down
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so um you know we have work on what we call temporal reframing
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which sounds like a fancy term for basically like can I break something down in a smaller
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and smaller like time units right so it's not
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that I save 150 a month but I save five bucks a day it's not
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that I volunteer 12 hours a month but it's three hours a week or whatever it is
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anything I can do to make the pill easier to swallow right now.
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I'm not going to go on a 30 minute run.
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I'm going to go on a five minute walk and see if I can turn that into another five minutes.
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And I think, you know, there's something that's slightly like intuitive.
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There's very, it's very intuitive, right?
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But I think it's important to recognize that exercises
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that we can put into place that do make the sacrifice easier will be beneficial to us.
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So I also love along those lines, Katie Milkman has great work on temptation bundling.
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Can I pair the sort of painful thing with the pleasurable thing to make the painful thing easier?
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There's newer work by my colleague at UCLA, Allie Lieberman, on what's called tangential immersion.
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The idea there is you have to be specific about the match between the painful thing and the pleasurable thing.
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So, you know, she uses the example of brushing your teeth.
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You're supposed to do it for two minutes.
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A lot of people don't.
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And it's a really important thing because there's all sorts of other health benefits to doing this, right?
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And so she talks about, you know, if I pair brushing my teeth with like a really engaging movie, I'm going to stop brushing my teeth because the movie outweighs the teeth brushing.
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If I pair it with something that's like not that engaging, that's also not going to work. And
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so it's like trying to find the right level of engagement
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for the task can help me sort of maintain whatever the thing is that I'm trying to do.
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Right.
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So I think that's really relevant.
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Um, if you want to talk about other practical strategies, another one that I really like is trying to think about commitment devices that I can put into practice.
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I think a lot of, I think a lot of your listeners probably have, you know, heard of commitment devices, right?
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You know, but one of the things about commitment devices and what they are is they're putting guardrails on your future behavior.
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So you don't screw something up.
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Right.
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We've known for decades that they're really successful if they're adopted.
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Right.
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The hard thing is to try to get people to adopt them.
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So I'm working on this exact thing, this exact problem now with one of my PhD students, Megan Weber.
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One of the techniques we're using right now is to remind people
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that the obstacles they've faced in the past will be the same as the obstacles they'll face in the future.
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Right.
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So we'll ask people, think about the things that made it difficult for you to study
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or to finish your presentation or whatever before check off the list now
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which of these things do you think will be present in the future
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and i think people have this aha moment where they say
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oh yeah right right it's gonna be the same the future
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isn't somehow gonna be a magic time you know uh
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and then from there they're more likely to want to adopt commitment devices we're trying to see
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if this holds in like real world settings, right?
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But that's sort of cutting edge way to think about this.
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So I like that, again, it's doing what you said.
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It's that time travel.
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Take yourself from the present to the future and you have that aha moment.
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So a lot of this is framing.
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A lot of this is how can we pair what doesn't bother us as much with something that is more difficult.
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We've definitely talked to Katie and Su Chi Huang and others about how we do that kind of thing.
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This has been an awesome conversation.
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We end every one of these episodes with the same two questions and I come up with one unique for you.
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Are you willing to answer those questions?
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Let's do it.
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So I noticed like me, you wear a biometric ring and I'm fascinated by this as somebody who talks about our future self and our goals.
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Talk to me, not specifically necessarily about the ring,
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but what do you do in terms of knowing yourself today to help better in the future?
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This helps me know a little bit more about myself in terms of health.
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I'm curious.
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I mean, And it seems interesting to me that you do that.
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You've now opened up the floodgates, right?
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My wife has basically put a moratorium on me talking about, oh, my sleep score wasn't good last night.
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Right, right, right.
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So just specifically to the biometric ring, I think it's exactly what you said.
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I love the way that you can actually get a full picture of your data right now, right?
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And the reason I love that is because it goes back to something I said earlier, which is that I think it's really easy for us to make exceptions out of any one day
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or any one night or whatever it is.
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And part of the value of tracking your behavior is
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that you see how the different points in time connect to each other.
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Right.
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And you can see how, you know, I didn't, I didn't, I ate late last night.
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Like it's not just impacting me last night.
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It's impacting me over time.
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Right.
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Right.
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So, um, look, this is an area like outside of the ring.
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It's an area where I'm trying to improve, you know, like, so, you know, one thing I'm trying to do more of is, um, almost like a, an audit.
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Yeah.
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Every, I'm trying to do it more quarterly.
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Um, cause too often it's easy to, to not do it.
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Right.
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Um, you know, so I'm trying to do this at home.
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Right.
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Right like, how are things going?
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We have two little kids and it's like, you know how it is.
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There's all the different stressors that arise and let's do a check-in and see like, okay, how are things going?
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What could I be doing differently?
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I need to, I haven't done it yet.
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I need to do that professionally too.
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It's something I would love to do.
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And so I think that's a good goal to have.
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Well, and I'm sure you'll find lots of ways to support yourself in achieving that.
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I appreciate your candor there.
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You know, when I look at this, I am somebody who is a big fan of reflection.
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And in order to reflect, you need data and you need information.
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And you also need your feelings as well.
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And things like biometric rings and other things, give data that can then help you inform the decisions you make.
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And so I find it useful and I appreciate you sharing.
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Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why?
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okay I'll give you I'll give you one this is on the academic side sure
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so Wendy de la Rosa she's a professor at Wharton a relatively new professor
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and she has become I think one of the go-to experts
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in figuring out how to communicate information to get people to
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change their decisions for the better specifically people who are on the lower income end of the spectrum
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um and i think she has really brilliant insights into how best to communicate
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so i'll give you just one quick example and this is a project
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that i'm on but this is wendy is the the leader of this um
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you know millions of people apply for government benefits sorry there's
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millions of people who don't apply for government benefits who are eligible for them
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and you start wondering why don't they apply or
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when do they drop off the application process
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and in one of our this one project she realized
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that the way
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that benefit applications ask people to report their income is often not congruent with the way
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that people earn income
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so they say how much money do you make per year well many people are hourly employees
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and if you get that question and you're worried that
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if I don't answer it right I'll get kicked out what
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you do is you you bury your head in the and you drop off, right?
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And so she started saying, okay, how do you make your money?
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Is it hourly or are you salaried?
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Now let me ask the question.
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And I think what's so nice about this from a communication standpoint is
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that she is doing the perspective taking of how would someone understand this information?
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How would it be received by them?
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Let me ask a question in a way that matches that.
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And then what you're finding is that people are more likely to go through the application, which to me is just a great example of the big picture of communication.
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Thanks for sharing Wendy's work.
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It's really fascinating.
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She's actually a GSB alum.
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That's right.
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And we very much appreciate the work she does.
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Yeah.
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Let me ask my final question, question three.
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What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?
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Perspective taking, clarity, and simplicity.
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We just talked about perspective taking, very clear.
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You've been very clear throughout our conversation.
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Talk to me about simplicity.
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I think it's so easy to make ideas overly complex from a good intention perspective, right?
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We think, oh, my audience needs all the information out there.
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That's how they'll make the best decision.
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That's how they'll fully get the big picture.
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And the irony is that in doing so, we may lose a lot more folks than we would if we were to just keep things succinct, right?
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Right.
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You know, when I was in, sorry, when I was in grad school,
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one of the older grad students was a guy named Danny Oppenheimer.
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Danny is now a professor at Carnegie Mellon.
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And he had done this great work on this really sort of ironic finding
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that more complicated language actually makes you sound less intelligent.
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but people, especially undergrads, think that if I make something sound lofty and big and use multi-syllabic words, I'm going to impress my audience.
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And the irony is that the exact opposite happens.
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And I think it's so true with any form of communication.
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By the way, I do a lot of work with financial advisors and I find that from the best place,
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they want to try to give all the information possible to their clients.
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And that just ends up turning the clients off.
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So it's trying to keep it simple.
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Yeah.
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The notion of just focusing on the bottom line.
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And when we had Dan Pink on as a guest, he said, just talk like a human.
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You don't need to impress.
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You don't need to use good words.
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Just talk like a human.
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And Hal, you've done a great job of talking like a human, keeping things simple and clear.
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I really appreciate having you on.
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The idea of having
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conversations with our future selves to better our current selves is one
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that I personally am going to reflect on and work on.
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And I encourage everybody listening.
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Thank you for your time.
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Thanks, Matt.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Future You: Unconventional Ways in which Your Future Self Benefits You”. This video has 401 sentences and 4923 words to shadow. The speech runs for 26:26. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start. 63 of its 401 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| biometric adjective | /ˌbaɪ.oʊˈmɛt.ɹɪk/ | Of, relating to, or using biometrics. |
| procrastination noun | /pɹəʊˌkɹæs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/ | The act of postponing, delaying or putting off, especially habitually or intentionally. |
| unquote | Used in speech to indicate the end of a quotation. | |
| anecdote noun | /ˈæn.ɪkˌdəʊt/ | A short account of a real incident or person, often humorous or interesting. |
| fascinate verb | /ˈfæsɪneɪt/ | To evoke an intense interest or attraction in someone. |
| pleasurable adjective | /ˈplɛʒəɹəbəl/ | That gives pleasure |
| intuitive adjective | /ɪnˈtjuːɪtɪv/ | Spontaneous, without requiring conscious thought. |
| hourly adjective | /ˈaʊ̯ɚli/ | Occurring every hour. |
| obstacle noun | /ˈɑbstəkəl/ | Something that impedes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress, either physically or figuratively |
| simplicity noun | /sɪmˈplɪsɪti/ | The state or quality of being simple |
| overly adverb | To an excessive degree. | |
| irony noun | /ˈaɪ.ɚ.ni/ | The quality of a statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean something different from, or the opposite of, what is written literally; the use of… |
| swallow verb | /ˈswɑ.loʊ/ | To cause (food, drink etc.) to pass from the mouth into the stomach; to take into the stomach through the throat. |
| impress verb | /ɪmˈpɹɛs/ | To affect (someone) strongly and often favourably. |
| pill noun | /pɪl/ | A small, usually round or cylindrical object designed for easy swallowing, usually containing some sort of medication. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| put off verb | To postpone, especially through procrastination. | |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
| drop off verb | To fall asleep. | |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). | |
| step back verb | /stɛp ˈbæk/ | To stop what one is doing and evaluate the current situation. |
| bring up verb | To mention. | |
| check off verb | To mark items on a list (with a checkmark or by crossing them out) that have been chosen for keeping or removal or that have been dealt with (for example… |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- What are some of the mistakes you've made?
- What are some of the things that you're proud of?
- Moving forward, what do I want to accomplish?
- What are some of my goals?
- What are things we can do?
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 found · I've done · we've found |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who we · present, which is · somebody who studies |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be said · are oriented · be received |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 107 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: procrastination /pɹəʊˌkɹæs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, pleasurable /ˈplɛʒəɹəbəl/, aspiration /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃən/, fruition /fɹuˈɪʃən/, immersion /ɪˈmɝʒən/
- Long words — get the stress right: biometric /ˌbaɪ.oʊˈmɛt.ɹɪk/, procrastination /pɹəʊˌkɹæs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, pleasurable /ˈplɛʒəɹəbəl/, intuitive /ɪnˈtjuːɪtɪv/, simplicity /sɪmˈplɪsɪti/
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 biometric, procrastination, unquote.
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.