Shadowing Practice: How I Learn Complex Skills & Difficult Subjects So Fast with AI - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
471 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
How is it that some people can learn in just a day what other people take weeks or months to learn?
2
And how can we use AI to positively augment our learning as opposed to confuse us, reduce our focus, and destroy our attention spans?
3
Well, in this video, I'm going to show you everything
4
that you need to know about how to use AI to
5
learn anything in the modern era in just a fraction of the time.
6
I use these tactics in order to build a business that does over $400 ,000 a month.
7
I also went to a school for behavioral neuroscience, and this is exactly what we focused on.
8
It's how to use technology to augment and improve our ability to learn.
9
It was by far the subject I was most interested in.
10
And so I use this sort of stuff all the time to help people, yourself included, you know, learn things faster.
11
So before we get into how to actually use AI to learn, it's important to understand how human beings actually learn.
12
Because I feel like a lot of people, you know, they misunderstand this part.
13
And if you misunderstand this part, it will lead to a bunch of downstream issues and, you know, productive and effective learning.
14
You know, most people believe that you learn through consumption, which is where you will read something, okay?
15
You will watch something like this video, or you'll get it explained to you, say, via an AI bot or a chat bot.
16
And the issue is this feels like learning, right?
17
But the way the human beings actually learn, the way the, you know, memory encoding mechanisms in our brain and the retrieval mechanisms in our mind actually work is based off of production.
18
And so this involves recalling things actively, predicting things actively, explaining things actively, and even attempting to do things out there in the real world, okay?
19
And this feels way harder, which is why our brains, constantly trying to preserve energy, avoid that.
20
But when you understand this distinction, you also understand what leads people to being extremely effective learners versus ineffective learners.
21
You know, there have been a bunch of studies done on this subject.
22
One of them showed that, you know, if you were to reread some source document four times and then get quizzed on it five minutes later, you would remember 83 % of the source document.
23
Okay, so you'd think, wow, I've only lost 17 % of that.
24
That's pretty good, right?
25
Likewise, if, you know, you read a document once and then you are tested on that three times immediately after.
26
Five minutes later, you'll remember 71%.
27
But the thing that we're most interested in is not how much are you going to remember in five minutes, right?
28
The thing that you're most interested in is how much are you going to remember in a week
29
or a month or a year?
30
How deeply will the things that you've learned stick with you for the rest of your life?
31
And when a person rereads some source document four times, which many of us will do, right?
32
Thinking that rereading the source document will teach us things and make us learn it.
33
In a week, they only remember 40%, whereas actively producing and testing gets you closer to 61%,
34
meaning there was a decay of only 10 % in the read once test three times group, whereas there was a decay of,
35
I mean, geez, at least 50 % in the rereading it a bunch of times group.
36
Okay, so I'm sure people have probably talked all day about this sort of result to you, and it's just glossed in one year out the other.
37
But the reality is active production is ultimately how you learn.
38
And so the whole idea of using AI to learn faster and better is actually augmenting your ability to actively produce things, not just necessarily passively read things.
39
There are many different roles that artificial intelligence can play for us.
40
The issue is most people will only have ever used one.
41
They use the explainer role, which is where you've tried to understand something, you're a little bit stuck, and so maybe you paste in the source document to AI and you say, hey, I'm stuck, can you help me out?
42
Explain this in a different way.
43
The issue with that is first, as we see already, that's a passive consumption mechanism.
44
You're just reading.
45
The second is that that's only one of about 10 different roles that an AI can help you play.
46
And those other nine roles are primarily focused on your ability to produce information.
47
So if all you've ever done with AI is you've had to explain things to you in a really simple manner, not only are you only,
48
you know, scratching the surface of what is truly possible in consumption versus production, but you also have nine other fundamentally different mechanisms that you're just leaving on the table.
49
And so I'm going to cover these nine mechanisms.
50
The first is the interviewer.
51
That's when you're starting out and you're unsure of what you need.
52
You don't even know enough to know what you don't know.
53
So you just have an AI who has a shallow knowledge of virtually everything in existence, ask you questions to determine what direction you want to go, what your state of learning is right now,
54
and so on and so forth.
55
The map maker is where, you know, you're just starting a subject.
56
It feels really shapeless.
57
You don't have a defined curriculum in place.
58
And as we know, if you put a roadmap in front of most people, they'll be able to do a thing but if they don't have a roadmap, they don't know where to go, oftentimes they're lost.
59
They'll just be swimming, you know, listlessly in the water.
60
Well, the map maker can help you figure out where to go.
61
It can essentially produce a curriculum for you.
62
I'll show you guys how to do that in a moment.
63
How about the Socratic questioner?
64
This is where you think you understand a topic.
65
The Socratic questioner allows you to better develop your understanding of the topic by forcing you to actively produce.
66
Or an examiner, you know, you've covered a topic fully.
67
You want to figure out how much you actually get of a topic.
68
You want to score yourself with some percentage.
69
Well, that's what AI can do for you.
70
It can literally be essentially an oral or verbal or written examiner, just like you used to have back in the good old days,
71
you know, 16, 1700s university where you'd be doing your thesis defense in front of a bunch of people.
72
You can do that now with AI.
73
How about a checker?
74
You know, maybe as part of your learning, you've made something.
75
But you can actually have AI verify certain domains to ensure
76
that your knowledge was effective in producing the outcome that you want.
77
Maybe a listener where you explain it back, but in your own words, AI then helps you determine the gap based off of its understanding of the topic more generally.
78
There's diagnosticians where, you know, if you have the same mistake that keeps on coming up in your learning, you can now actually ask your AI agent and I'll show you how.
79
Hey, you know, I want you to go through the last five or 10 or 20 conversations we had about the subject.
80
What am I persistently getting wrong?
81
What do I persistently need to understand to patch these holes in my knowledge.
82
How about a sparring partner?
83
A lot of the time you're learning a skill because it is a real world applicable thing.
84
You want to public speak.
85
Maybe you're preparing for an interview.
86
Maybe you're trying to crush the leak code circuit.
87
Well, you can actually have a sparring partner with which to assist you on that and basically simulate things.
88
And finally, clerk.
89
How many hours have you spent just coming up with notes
90
and trying to keep track of all this information that you've digitized?
91
You don't need to do that anymore.
92
AI can do all of that for you. And
93
so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show
94
you guys how to apply AI in all of these different ways and ultimately improve your learning from a scientific perspective, not just a thing that sounds nice, like most other people will.
95
A really simple example of this is something termed space repetition.
96
For those of you guys that don't know, okay, if the y -axis here is how strong your memory of a subject is, and then the x -axis is the amount of time since you learned the thing,
97
you can see that when you learn the thing initially, you have a lot of memory for that thing.
98
You've really consolidated at that thing.
99
But when you don't review it periodically, what happens is the strength of that memory decays almost as like this inverse exponential.
100
And so spaced repetition is the process whereby you consult frequently with the thing that you learned.
101
You actively produce that knowledge.
102
Let's say you're trying to learn how a car engine works.
103
And then based off of what's called the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, which is this psychological idea developed,
104
you know, basis every now and then using, you know, AI or another tool to ask yourself, how the hell does this engine actually work?
105
Okay, the pistons, the cylinders, what are the four stages of combustion, you know, intake, and so on and so forth.
106
And then in that way, your memory actually gets extremely strong.
107
And as you see, every time you, you know, repeat this spaced repetition thing, which I'm going to talk a little bit about in a moment, two things occur.
108
One, the memory lasts a lot longer.
109
You can see the slope of this curve is actually a lot less steep.
110
And two, it never dips as far down.
111
And so the strength of the base memory just gets stronger and stronger.
112
This also means that in just a few moments of studying a topic, you can usually remember it far more than
113
if you were to like wait this whole time and have to restudy it again from scratch, right?
114
So that's just one of many ways that you can use AI.
115
AI can write your flashcards for you.
116
It can keep a schedule or you can use an app like Anki.
117
It can turn any mistakes you make during a sparring session
118
or some sort of listening session into new cards for you to review.
119
You know, I'm going to give you guys some prompts
120
and stuff like that that you can use for that sort of thing as well.
121
But the whole idea is, you know, this is one simple example of how AI can help you.
122
So if you don't know enough about a topic to even begin knowing what you know, what you don't know, let's chat about the interviewer.
123
The interviewer is the simple idea where you have a chat bot up here on the left, you have you on the right, and basically you're saying, hey, I really want to learn X, Y, and Z thing
124
and instead of just saying help me learn xyz thing you say could you drill me on anything
125
and everything under the sun to determine how much i already know about xyz thing
126
and then in conjunction with the map maker in a second
127
um what i need to learn in order to patch the holes in my knowledge
128
and this makes sense
129
that ai would be good at this right i mean it's
130
a massive uh compressed form of basically the whole internet
131
that is essentially the whole point of ai really just to
132
point you in the right direction to act as a fast way of approximating knowledge And so, you know, if you're like, hey, I want to learn, you know, coding, AI might ask you, okay, what is this for?
133
Well, it's for a job interview in three weeks.
134
Now the AI knows, okay, it's not actually that you need to learn all of coding.
135
You need to learn enough coding to make a job interview work.
136
Okay, so what do you know already?
137
Well, I know some basic Python, you know, maybe I've spent two weeks doing some bootcamp a while ago.
138
Okay, how will you be tested?
139
Well, live coding with some sort of timer.
140
From here, AI is determining a variety of different things to help you accomplish your stated goal, not just the goal that you might think you have.
141
And so in this case, the goal is not actually learn coding.
142
The goal is pass the interview.
143
You don't need to learn Python basics because that's a waste of time.
144
You've already gotten to that point.
145
In order to practice and evaluate and assess your learning, the simplest and easiest way to do
146
that is going to be some sort of timed live coding because it's going to mirror the actual examination conditions.
147
This is all stuff you would have figured out eventually if you were a perfectly rational agent, but it's stuff that you probably wouldn't know enough to know right up front.
148
So if you are starting out and unsure of what you need, you can just ask the AI, hey, you know, before you teach me anything about coding, could you ask me questions about my goal,
149
my level, everything that I need to know basically in order to make this work really effectively?
150
And the AI model will go absolutely.
151
A couple of things to watch for here, vague answers, vague plans, you know, ultimately want to be specific.
152
So it's not about, oh, you know, my goal is to pass an interview.
153
It's like, oh, my goal is to pass an interview that's going to be taking place on leak code.
154
I know a little bit of basic Python.
155
I spent two weeks getting all the way up to, I don't know, HTTP requests or something like that.
156
The timer is five minutes per question, and we're going to be pulling from this question bank.
157
You want to be more specific than just that.
158
And that takes me to the idea of a map maker.
159
So the reason why it's very important to have a map or a plan in place is because if you don't, the vast majority of your time
160
and energy will simply be spent fighting off the almost emotional anxiety of not knowing what you are going to do next.
161
And so you can eliminate that completely by just giving yourself something to do next, rather than finishing a module and then wondering, okay, what the hell am I going to learn next?
162
What fits?
163
You know, just build a plan, and then you can follow a plan.
164
Even if it's not perfect, you're going to be a lot more productive as a result.
165
So let's say you want to learn statistics.
166
That's a pretty damn broad term.
167
There's a lot that goes on in statistics, right?
168
So if you just say, I want to learn a statistic, that's pretty shapeless.
169
What AI can help you do, okay, is it can help you break that down into the core fundamental sub -modules of statistics.
170
And so maybe you'll start with averages.
171
Then you'll learn about spread and probability.
172
Maybe after that, you'll learn about distributions, sampling.
173
And then finally, loop around to some sort of A -B test.
174
This is what AI can essentially allow you to do.
175
If a subject feels really shapeless, what I will always do before I even try learning is, hey, just map out statistics for me.
176
I want the main parts.
177
I want the various things that depend on a bunch of other things.
178
And I want to know where people usually get stuck on so I can plan my time ahead of time.
179
And that takes me to the explainer.
180
Many people here are already using the explainer day to day.
181
You know, they'll have read how to do something.
182
They'll even have set up how to do something.
183
When it comes time to actually solving the problem that they initially wanted to solve, they'll be stuck in it.
184
So the explainer just helps you illuminate just that one part for you, explains, you know, how the solution works or something that allows you to then, you know, learn it faster.
185
The issue is most people don't do this next step, which is redoing the initial thing you wanted to do without help.
186
Remember that learning is almost entirely a production thing it's not a passive consumption thing.
187
If you don't know something and you ask, hey, can you help me figure this thing out?
188
And then it explains it to you and you nod along and say, yeah, that makes sense.
189
Okay, cool.
190
I've now learned the thing.
191
Without actually assessing from a baseline whether or not you know the thing without the AS help, you have not learned that thing.
192
You have merely read about that thing.
193
And there's a very big difference between the two, right?
194
So after you've gone through a whole process once, it is integral that you revert back to the very first step, which in your case might be reading about how to set this thing up,
195
and actually walk through it from first principles from the start
196
in order to go from you know zero all the way
197
up to one that's the way you demonstrate your knowledge
198
and that's the way that you actually productively remember it and
199
so anytime i'm trying to learn let's say a new ai tool
200
or something like
201
that you know i will use ai quite heavily to you
202
know interview me on my current state of knowledge to create
203
a map for me on the various concepts i need to know in order to learn it quickly
204
and then i'll actually try and
205
if i struggle i'll have ai explain things to me
206
but i don't just stop there i'll actually once i've figured
207
it out we've made it all the way to the end of whatever task I have, revert all the way back to the beginning, and then try doing it all myself.
208
This only will ever take you a few additional moments of time, 10 or 15 % of the total length of time you spent setting a subject.
209
But the end result and your ability to know, learn, and then articulate it to other people, like I'm doing to you right now, is insane.
210
It's unmatched.
211
So you need to redo things without help.
212
You can't just, you know, try and one -shot things progressively as you go.
213
You really do need to loop back.
214
And that's ultimately how to use an explainer.
215
Simple thing to say here is, hey, I tried doing XYZ.
216
I got stuck at XYZ.
217
Can you explain just that part at my knowledge level so that I understand it?
218
Once you're done with that, again, circle back and then finish the rest.
219
The Socratic questioner is also extremely powerful.
220
You know, you a lot of the time are going to think that you understand stuff, again, because AI will have explained something to you.
221
You'll have gone through it at least once and you'll say, yeah, I think I get the gist of it.
222
But the Socratic questioner is a way for AI to basically act as a study buddy with you
223
and ask you things like, okay, so why does this statistical principle work?
224
Well, the reality is, if you don't know how to answer it, it will immediately have clarified to you where your gaps in knowledge are.
225
And then if you don't know, maybe it can ask you a follow -up question like, okay, like what if the input to the statistical thing is doubled?
226
Then you'll say, okay, then that would break.
227
Now the AI is learning the gaps in your knowledge.
228
You're also seeing the gaps in your knowledge.
229
And then that can help direct you back to the explainer to learn exactly how that process works.
230
And then you can circle back and forth between Socratic questioning, explanations, creating a new map to learn new things that you didn't realize you didn't know, and so on.
231
This allows you to find the gap yourself.
232
You now know the answer.
233
It'll never just hand it over to you because it's now asking questions productively, forcing you to come up with things.
234
And then as a result, you can actually understand something, not just think you understand.
235
So how to try that is, you know, hey, I want to learn X, Y, and Z thing.
236
Don't just give me the answer.
237
Ask me questions until I find what I don't know myself.
238
Next up is the examiner.
239
Now, there are a lot of situations where you think you understand something, and then because you don't test yourself, you don't actually realize where you fall short.
240
But with an exam that is punctuated at varying levels of knowledge, what you can do is you can actually figure out, okay, I figured out level one, I understand how that works.
241
I know level two, I get level three, level four makes sense.
242
Level five, didn't actually pass that test.
243
Why?
244
And so it's another way of you figuring out where you need to go next in order to maximally direct your learning.
245
And that's all ultimately that this whole process is about.
246
It's about maximally directing your learning.
247
Human beings have so much potential buried inside of them.
248
Our brains are so incredible.
249
But simply because of like old deprecated educational institutions, formats like lectures, which were developed thousands of years ago and just do not scale into our current era,
250
and then other gaps in knowledge and so on and so forth, we're just not capable of squeezing out more than 10 or 20 % of it.
251
So this helps you do that.
252
It's very straightforward and easy.
253
A simple way to do this is saying, hey, could you quiz me on this topic?
254
I just want one question at a time, make every question harder until, you know, I don't get things right.
255
And then at that point, you'll know where the gap in your knowledge is.
256
How about the checker?
257
In this situation, there are a lot of places where, you know, you don't learn for the sake of learning.
258
A lot of the time you learn for the sake of creating something.
259
And so what the checker does is basically scores you on almost like a rubric similar to an examiner, but this time checking, you know, whether or not your process works to begin with.
260
And so the value here is you're not assessing just the end result of your knowledge.
261
What you're doing is you're assessing the process required to create the knowledge itself.
262
And so, you know, I don't know if you guys have ever taken a really introductory math class.
263
A lot of the time they don't just say, don't just give me the answer.
264
I actually want to know the process behind your work.
265
So show your work.
266
Show me, you know, how you multiply the two variables together or whatever.
267
What the checker does is it assesses the intermediate steps to determine
268
that your logic and your reasoning was correct in order to get there.
269
In this way, you know, if you have any issues, the model can figure this out.
270
So if you made something like a summary, a proof, some sort of code, math problem, or something like that, actually have it evaluate or check your reasoning to see
271
if there's a shorter and faster way you could have made it to the same point.
272
In this result, you know, maybe we could have shortened the summary down twice, got it literally to about half the length, and as a result, the next time you encounter this problem, your process itself will be faster,
273
not just the end result.
274
So in this case, you might say, hey, here's my work for determining x, y, and z.
275
Can you find what's wrong are missing and let me know if there's a faster or easier way to get there.
276
Don't rewrite any of it.
277
Next up is this idea of the listener.
278
So the end result is, you know, you've now learned something to a reasonable amount of time, but you have to understand that there are different ways to demonstrate your knowledge.
279
There's like a written way of doing it.
280
There's like a verbal way of doing it.
281
I mean, there's like five or 10 and the best learners know how to provide that knowledge in multiple different formats.
282
And so it's not enough just to, you know, say something or write something, you know, with your fingers.
283
My recommendation is if you really want to maximize all the different highways of your mind, you know, you should say something, you should visualize something with maybe some sort of graphic,
284
you should write something, you should really try and engage yourself maximally across all senses.
285
What the listener does is it compares your words across all
286
of these to the source document on all of these different
287
testing mechanisms on the verbal reasoning on like your ability to write things out on your ability to visualize things
288
and so on and so forth, to determine whether or not you were correct.
289
And so what I will typically do is when I really want to make sure I understand a topic, I will just hold down my voice transcription key and I'll just start talking into my computer.
290
After I do my voice transcription, I will try and draw a quick image of the concept to make sure I understand.
291
And in addition, I will write a much more short
292
and succinct version of my explanation since verbal voice transcriptions
293
and stuff like that tend to be a lot longer than their written counterparts.
294
I'll then compare it to the source document, whatever it is I'm trying to learn.
295
Maybe it's a new neural network architecture or something like that.
296
And now it has three different means by which to assess whether or not I understand something, the visual, the verbal, and then ultimately the written.
297
And it can compare all three of these to the source document.
298
And as a result, it can listen to me and determine whether or not I've made it.
299
So here, maybe you'll say, hey, I want to explain this idea in my own words.
300
I want you to grade it against the source and tell me exactly what I missed.
301
The diagnostician, you know, despite being kind of a tongue twister, is a very important part of understanding.
302
Essentially, a lot of the mistakes that you make in learning occur at the same fundamental roots.
303
Maybe you just don't really understand some simple mathematical operation or something, and as a result, you don't understand how to do a specific thing in statistics, you don't understand how to do a specific thing in biology,
304
and then you don't understand how to do a specific thing in chemistry.
305
Let's say you're just in a university environment trying to learn all this stuff.
306
The reality is you don't actually know what's holding you up, despite the fact that these are all templated issues.
307
So what the diagnostician does is all of these things are the result of a shared misunderstanding.
308
What you do is you just ask the model, hey, like, what is the recurring mistaken reasoning or logic that I keep on making across all of these, you know, listenings, examinations, you know,
309
checks and so on and so forth.
310
Read through my last, you know, 100 conversations, let's say, and figure this out.
311
And it'll actually go and it'll find the core reasons why you misunderstand stuff.
312
It will literally go and tell you, like, hmm, you appear to be making the same sort of logical leap from X to Y.
313
The reason for that is probably that you don't understand Z and now you, instead of trying to learn the specific outcome of each, can just learn the root thing that keeps on making you make the same mistake.
314
So, you know, here are a bunch of things I keep getting wrong.
315
What misunderstanding do all of these things have in common?
316
Just feed that to your AI agent and you will be far better off.
317
The sparring partner is extremely valuable and I personally have been using this a lot, especially as I've started doing more podcasts, interviews, and then high stakes negotiations in business.
318
So, I will often actually have AI give me some sort of back and forth Q &A.
319
You know, if I'm like, hey, I have an interview coming up for X, Y, and Z, I want to spar back and forth, you know, verify that I know what I'm doing.
320
I'm going to do this verbally.
321
And then I also am going to set a timer with every question to try and figure it out within 30 seconds, because I think that's probably how much time I'm actually going to be given.
322
Let's do it.
323
Hey, why should we hire you?
324
Well, it's because I work hard, right?
325
You send that back to an AI agent that you've pre -primed as a sparring partner, it's probably not going to be too happy.
326
And it's right, right?
327
So let's say something like, too vague, give me an example.
328
Well, last month, don't they cut our wait times in half?
329
So maybe that's what you should have ultimately led with.
330
This sort of sparring in process is, it's very difficult to do correctly.
331
And you have the ability to adjust that difficulty slider.
332
You can reduce the amount of time you have to come up with each question.
333
You can obviously, you know, force the AI model to be a higher and higher and higher level interviewer as you go across.
334
But the result is you actually end up getting a couple of reps on it but actually having to do the reps.
335
And I mean that in a good way.
336
You know, a common thing that I'll teach people how to do is I'll teach them how to do, you know, sales calls for AI and automation services, because that is part of what I sell and what I show people how to sell on this channel.
337
And so, you know, they will have never jumped on a sales call before in their entire life.
338
They'll be absolutely terrified.
339
You know, they don't know what to say.
340
They don't know how to frame the call.
341
They don't know how to like, you know, generate any perceived value for their service.
342
A lot of the time I'll say like, hey, go into a conversation with an AI agent.
343
Here is a brief like template of the call.
344
And it's going to pretend that it's a client and
345
or a prospective client and you are a prospective salesperson and you guys can just go at it.
346
This won't 100 % be the exact same thing that you are going to see in real life, but this is going to allow you to get at least a rough go through the very first rep, which will make you significantly better.
347
This sort of like
348
simulated training environment is going to be extremely important over the coming months
349
and years as AI makes us better and we make AI better in turn.
350
So use this when you're practicing a skill.
351
It's speaking, it's interviews, it's sales calls.
352
And in order to do this, all you need to say is something like, hey, I want you to play a tough hiring manager for XYZ thing that I'm trying to do.
353
Or I want you to pretend that you're interviewing me.
354
Here's a big list of all the previous interviews this interviewer has done.
355
Don't go easy on me.
356
Push back hard and make sure I fully understand it.
357
I want every answer to be generous in 30 seconds.
358
Finally, highly undervalued role of AI here is the clerk.
359
That's where you have a bunch of really messy notes or messy intermediate checking steps, which you just feed that in AI and you say, hey, can you make me a clean outline of this?
360
Or hey, can you use this to make a bunch of flashcards for me?
361
As mentioned before with spaced repetition, you can get 5 to 10x as time efficient.
362
You know, per unit time you spend, you can remember 5 to 10x more simply by organizing your information and then consulting with it on a regular basis.
363
And in this case, the reason I like the clerk is because all of the thinking is your own.
364
What you're doing is you're just organizing it a little bit better because, you know, as a human being, you're constantly juggling all these different disciplines and ideas and concepts.
365
AI really can bring those together for you into higher and higher level and more simple abstractions, which can ultimately improve your ability to to organize it mentally as well.
366
Here you might just say, turn my messy notes into a clean outline.
367
Don't add anything I didn't write, just make it clear, you know, the hierarchy of information and how I intend to, I don't know, turn this into an essay or something.
368
So that covers all of the roles.
369
Next, I just want to talk about some high -level principles behind AI, including reasons not to use AI as well for certain types of learning.
370
One really valuable thing to use AI to do is to help find stuff at your level.
371
Now, in case you didn't know, you learn the most
372
when you are pushed just a little bit outside of your comfort zone not too much
373
or too little the whole idea is you need something
374
that challenges you okay it's called the zone of proximal development in psychology
375
and it's a zone that's just a little bit out of reach
376
that consistently allows you to you know lengthen your your your reach until eventually you can grasp the subject
377
so you know here we go
378
so a simple way to do this is hey find stuff
379
at my level i want you to quiz me on statistics easy all the way up to hard stop
380
when i start guessing things and i clearly don't realize them.
381
Then I want you to tell me my level.
382
From there, you know, we can go back to these other roles.
383
Map maker, we can do interviewers, we can start checking, we can start doing evaluations and eventually diagnosticians.
384
I also want you to explain this concept at three different levels for a child, for a beginner, for, you know, a teenager, for a high schooler, for an expert, and so on and so forth.
385
What you can do here is you can determine, okay, what level of understanding do I have around the vocabulary, the nuanced subjects, and so on and so forth,
386
and what do I need to know in order to be able to communicate topics like this more diligently and better.
387
Finally, you can also say, hey, you know, I want you to find me the best possible explanations for this thing.
388
You know, in my case, I know how to do A, I don't know how to do B, I'm approximately the level of a beginner, as we've assessed earlier.
389
I want you to figure out why each one is really good.
390
And I also want you to give me a bunch of links for it.
391
The reason why this is good is because human beings are still sort of the arbiter, at least for now, of taste and our ability to explain things in simple ways.
392
I've come up with so many really simple explanations
393
that I've learned in like five seconds
394
because somebody just put it in the perfect metaphorical way
395
that makes sense for me that I never would have really found had I not had AI.
396
And as a result, you know, when you find that perfect explanation that just clicks, you can usually save yourself days, weeks, or months of trying to learn it another way.
397
And human beings ultimately are just the ones that have created the most of that so far.
398
So, you know, what I'll do is I'll basically say, hey, can you find me a bunch of resources for somebody that knows how to do this, but maybe doesn't know how to do that.
399
I give them every piece of information that they need about me in order to be able to find that information better.
400
And then they'll come back with a hit list of like, yeah, you know, neural networks easily explained was written a couple years ago by this person, probably the simplest and easiest beginner tutorial.
401
And then I'll just take
402
that tutorial instead of trying to muddle you around with like crappy textbooks
403
or crappy lectures that might be a little bit advanced or a little bit too simple for me.
404
Another great use of AI is as a simulation.
405
We talked a little bit about this in the context of interviewing.
406
So you could role play.
407
You could say, hey, could you play a tough interviewer for you know a statistics job at uh i don't know anthropic
408
or something one question at a time i want you to score me at the end
409
but you could also actually give it a realistic task
410
and then have it produce the deliverables you would need to generate
411
so i don't know maybe you have some sort of customer concern
412
or q a or something like
413
that you have to respond to it maybe that's the job you want support a customer service role
414
but you can actually have it like come up with a bunch of emails
415
and then you have to go through and navigate and then answer those questions intelligently.
416
So then it can grade you based off what you do.
417
It can grade you based off an examination, so just the end result or the checked process that gets you there.
418
And then once you have all that, you'll know a lot better about where you're learning.
419
Likewise, you can actually have Claude, Codex, other AI agents build you practice apps.
420
These practice apps make it really easy to just blitz through a bunch of flashcard style things.
421
They allow you to visualize your knowledge in a variety of ways.
422
And I use this sort of thing because it's important to have, as mentioned, not just like a textual ability to understand a subject, but you have to be able to articulate it like with your words.
423
You have to be able to like visualize it on a screen.
424
You know, hey, draw a thing that corresponds to this thing.
425
Cloud and other AI agents are actually at the level where you can legitimately do this today.
426
You don't need to like have a whole examiner doing that for you.
427
And they can do it for cents on the dollar.
428
So building practice apps and stuff like that can also be very cool.
429
Ultimately, just run it, get feedback, continuously make it harder, run it again.
430
This thing's like the hyperbolic time chamber for knowledge.
431
Finally, there is a case against AI.
432
The big case is learning tends to happen during the struggle.
433
If you think about the difficulty on this graph is the y -axis
434
and the amount of time it takes sort of as this axis.
435
Well, maybe that's not entirely correct, but the difficulty is this hump here.
436
You know, normally you would have to go through a hump of really squinting at the screen and being, what the hell's going on?
437
I can't make this work in order to learn something because, again, it's active production.
438
AI allows you to shortcut that a lot of the time, and that leads to you ultimately remembering nothing.
439
You know, if it explains something to you, it'll feel like understanding, but it isn't.
440
A very interesting scientific result a few years ago was
441
that people that use GPS apps tend to have poorer representations of their environment in their brains.
442
And I think AI is quite similar insofar that, you know, if you're not doing the thinking now, you're just shortcutting it to get to the end result.
443
It will, like a GPS, weaken the brain regions that are responsible ultimately for coming up with the logic
444
that gets you places so you know when ai agrees with you
445
when you're half right when it invents random numbers
446
and sources it turns this process of learning
447
and struggling into just collecting a bunch of notes let's say
448
on a subject this of course can actually be very detrimental
449
to your learning the important thing to realize is you don't have to use ai the same way
450
that everybody else is using ai ai at the end of the day can be a thought partner
451
and it can improve multiple areas of your life you just cannot fall into
452
that default way that people tend to you know be incentivized to use it.
453
Hey, Claude, make me a billion dollars and make no mistakes.
454
I want to be the president of the United States Codex.
455
I want you to make it happen.
456
Like you're going to need to spend a little bit more time and effort being strategic about how you deploy it until, you know, we get to the point where it's just generally a lot more intelligent.
457
So it's the same thing with any technology, right?
458
It's the same thing with social media apps.
459
It's the same thing with, you know, Facebook.
460
There are a lot of useful and legitimate uses of technology like Facebook, but the default mode, the way that most people use technology like this is pretty bad.
461
And so it's important just to understand that you have the ability to make this powerful for you.
462
And hopefully this video has helped illuminate at least a little bit about how to do that.
463
Really hope you guys appreciated the video, had a lot of fun putting it together.
464
As mentioned, I use tools like this virtually every day in my own life
465
and my own business in order to achieve what I would consider to be, you know, pretty above average results.
466
You guys want to learn how to do this sort of thing yourself practically for the purposes of a business.
467
Definitely check out Maker School in the description.
468
It's my 90 day accountability program where I help people get their very first paying customer for an AI or automation service, or I give you all your money back.
469
I developed it using the similar concepts and methodologies to what I talked about today, so absolutely give it a go.
470
Aside from that, please like, subscribe, and support the channel, and I'll catch all y 'all in the next video.
471
Thank you very much.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
✨ Recommend Video
B298
50 sentences
Psychology of Intelligence: Learn Faster Than Everyone Around You
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
257 sentences
Is AI About to Change Movies Forever?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B23
79 sentences
Can you learn English with AI?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
126 sentences
How I use AI as a senior software engineer and 5 principles of AI explained in 10 minutes
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
67 sentences
Elon Musk on Education
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2298 sentences
Forget Your Reading Journal, Do This Instead
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
329 sentences
Laziest Ways to Make Money with AI (For Beginners)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
331 sentences
Dear Higgsfield, I reverse engineered you in 12 hours
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
546 sentences
Do Elite Degrees Still Matter In The AI Era? | Jamie Beaton from Crimson Education | EP 410
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
52 sentences
The Most Effective Way to Learn as a Leader (And Break Through Faster)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
237 sentences
This Is Boring But It Will Make You Scary Intelligent
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C12
171 sentences
Learn 10X Faster In 10 Minutes
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 471 sentences and 7267 words to shadow. The speech runs for 29:35. The speaker talks fast, about 246 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| topic noun | /ˈtɑpɪk/ | A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest. |
| actively adverb | /ˈæktɪvli/ | In an active manner. |
| mechanism noun | /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/ | Any mechanical means for the conversion or control of motion, or the transmission or control of power. |
| maker noun | /ˈmeɪk.ɚ/ | Someone who makes; a person or thing that makes or produces something. |
| interviewer noun | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | One who interviews. |
| explanation noun | /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/ | The act or process of explaining. |
| essentially adverb | /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/ | In essence: by nature. |
| assess verb | /əˈsɛs/ | To determine, estimate or judge the value of; to evaluate; to estimate. |
| verbal adjective | /ˈvɜː.bəl/ | Of or relating to words. |
| examiner noun | /əɡˈzæmɪnɚ/ | A person who investigates someone or something. |
| gap noun | /ɡæp/ | An opening in anything, made by breaking or parting. |
| consumption noun | /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/ | The act of eating, drinking or using. |
| axis noun | /ˈæksɪs/ | An imaginary line around which an object spins (an axis of rotation) or is symmetrically arranged (an axis of symmetry). |
| principle noun | /ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/ | A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief. |
| difficulty noun | /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/ | The state of being difficult, or hard to do. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| start out verb | To emerge suddenly; to jump out. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| do over verb | /ˈduˌoʊvɚ/ | To cover with; to smear or spread on to. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| fight off verb | To succeed in defeating a challenge, or an attack. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you misunderstand this part, it will lead · if i struggle i'll have · if it explains something to you, it'll feel |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · I've only lost · you've learned |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is based · are tested · be tested |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | consumption, which is · harder, which is · role, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 169 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, thesis /ˈθisɪs/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, consumption /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, automation /ˌɔ.təˈmeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, examiner /əɡˈzæmɪnɚ/, difficulty /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/
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 topic, actively, mechanism.
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.