Shadowing Practice: How to Build Unfair Advantage in your 20s - Learn English Speaking with Video
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most productivity advice on the internet will tell you to wake up at 5am, take freezing cold ice showers, whisk your iced matcha until somehow you become a millionaire.
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But as someone who saved over £100,000 in my ISA before the age of 23,
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I've built businesses, I've lived in seven diverse countries between the age of 19 and 23, I've hired teams, I've campaigned governments,
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and I've built a life I'm so proud of.
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I can honestly say
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that the advice you need as a young person has nothing to do with aesthetics
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or routines that that are working for other people, but not for you.
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Hi, my name's Jade.
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I'm on a mission to transform the education system.
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I'm 26 and this is a video I wish I'd had when I was 20.
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Today, I'm not only going to tell you how to get ahead in life, whatever that means to you, but all the skills that I'm going to be sharing are future proofed in the age of AI.
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Some of you guys might know we have the lowest number of entry level jobs in human history.
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And a lot of people are scared of AI taking their jobs, of staying employable.
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So I really wanted to do my research and make sure
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that everything I'm telling you today will ensure that you have the skills needed to survive no matter what happens with AI.
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So I've done some reading and all my insights will come from the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report, 80,000 Hours' amazing new book, PwC's Global AI Jobs Barometer,
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and Indeed's analysis of which human skills are most important.
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So as you watch this video, I dare you to choose just one tip
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and comment down below how you are going to action it in your life
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and I promise it will set you up for more success.
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Number one, in the words of my good friend, Mia McGrath, being invisible is expensive.
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I know it feels so cringe to post about yourself online,
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especially on LinkedIn, but the single biggest predictor of success in your twenties is how visible you are.
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When the leaders of the Education World Forum sat in their big boardroom a few months ago, somehow when they were discussing the first ever press,
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the first ever young person they wanted to allow attend this event my name came up
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and that is not
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because i have a million qualifications in the education space i don't even have a bloody masters in it
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but what i am is visible i talk proudly
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and openly about my interest in education online
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and i was visible enough for them to invite me and
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that led me to being the first ever press in
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that room to meeting malala to meeting the education minister of england of all these ministers from around the world
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and to be successful in life you need luck
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and most people think luck is something that you can't control
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but what you can control is your surface area for luck
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to find you your surface area for good serendipity being visible
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increases your surface area for luck equally guys last week i was hiring an editor for a documentary
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that i'm making kind of slay i can just make a documentary come on
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and i received 230 applications in two days i had
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so many amazing candidates but the ones who really stuck out were the ones who were visible online, the ones who I could go and do a deep dive on and get a sense of their values,
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their personality, the stories that they tell about themselves and what they care about.
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Because nowadays it's genuinely not about the degree you have, even sometimes the experience you have, but more who you are, what you bring, your proactivity.
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A lot of the time the working world comes down to having Zoom calls with people.
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Are you going to be the kind of person in a Zoom call who increases the positive energy, who increases the vibes, or someone who drags it down.
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Being visible online allows you to showcase your personality, your values.
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All the evidence echoes this.
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The World Economic Forum's report shows
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that 81% of global employers now value direct evaluation of your work experience way more than a university degree.
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But why is it so hard to do?
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Because we're scared of judgment, because we're scared to be seen.
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It's so normal.
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It's so human.
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Yesterday, I met this incredible youth campaigner who really wants to post more on Instagram,
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but he was scared of his friends thinking that he's cringe.
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He wasn't even scared of what strangers on the internet were going to say.
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He was scared about the people in his life and that resonates for so many of us.
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But the thing is guys, even if your friends think it's cringe for a bit, if you stay consistent, the results will eventually come and maybe you'll even inspire them to start.
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Be so visible, it's annoying and watch the luck find you.
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Number two, learn how to learn like a generalist.
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Anyone who knows about me and my channel knows
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that I have been so passionate about evidence-based study methods since I was 16, 17, because imagine you're finally putting the time in to read a book.
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You're putting the time in to listen to a podcast, but unless you leverage the science of learning, you're probably going to forget what you've just read.
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You've got to learn the simple hacks, the simple tricks to learn in a way that really deeply embeds that changes your life.
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I recommend any of the books on the screen, but I also want to highlight a concept called deep work.
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There's an amazing book called Deep Work by Cal Newport.
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And the concept is that you need to learn how to do undistracted work where you enter that flow state.
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You know, sometimes when you're working, you kind of forget all your other problems.
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You forget what's going on around you because you're so engrossed in a task.
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Now more than ever in the world of AI, in the world of distraction and social media, you need to learn how to access that flow state, that deep work.
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And even if you can do one hour of deep work a day, the difference that that is going to make to your quality of work, to a quality of thinking,
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to a quality of learning is going to exponentially improve all the outcomes for your life.
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So definitely learn how to learn and learn how to do deep work.
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And what does it mean to be a generalist?
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In our parents' generation, it was assumed that they would have one career for their whole life.
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They'd probably be in one company, in one specialist role.
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But nowadays we have portfolio careers.
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it's very likely that we are going to leapfrog from one industry to another across our lives.
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And we know that as young people, we can now literally code an entire app on our own.
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We can go on an AI tool and learn whatever we want to.
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It's never been more accessible to create an entire business alone.
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Today, all the evidence shows that the market values interdisciplinary thinkers, someone who has a library of knowledge across domains.
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If you're anything like me and you raised in the English education system, we were taught to specialize very young.
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We literally had pick three A-level subjects right
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and one of the most important things I did to be successful was studying a broad range of subjects in my life.
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I went on to do a liberal arts degree where I got to do a minor in business, a major in cognitive science, an elective in philosophy, in literature.
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I learned how to code and how to analyse poetry
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and there's an amazing book that I'd recommend to learn how to become more of a generalist.
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It's called Range by David Epstein which is a very unfortunate name
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and it dives into how to become a generalist but also why it's so important in today's day and age.
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Often the best solutions come from cross-domain thinking, such as creating a cure for cancer with a concept from the arts.
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So keep being curious.
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Number three, do you know what the single biggest predictor of workplace fulfillment is?
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You might think that it's income, salary, or maybe you think it's commute time.
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If you have a short commute, you enjoy your work life more.
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It's actually whether or not you feel you're having a positive impact on the world.
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This entire book of research that I read last week tells you how to do that.
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I cannot recommend it enough.
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I found out about the organisation 80,000 hours in my second year of uni
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and it genuinely transformed the way that I see my career.
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On average, each of us is going to work for 80,000 hours.
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That's a lot of hours
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and where we decide to invest those 80,000 hours is one of the biggest decisions we will make in our lives?
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Where do we invest our skill set, our time, our energy, and what impact is that going to have in the world?
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When we think about positive impact, a lot of us think about becoming a doctor, a nurse, a teacher.
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But what I really love about 80,000 Hours, all the articles on the website and this book, they really challenge that notion.
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And they show you
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so many different examples of how the people who had the biggest impact in the world were doing careers
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that seemed quite unexpected.
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For example, if you imagine that you're a doctor and you're treating patients with lung cancer, you're obviously going to save a lot of lives.
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But if you were a strategic lobbyist and campaigner who managed to make tobacco and cigarettes illegal,
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imagine how many lives you would indirectly extend and save through somewhat eliminating one of the biggest causes of lung cancer.
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So as you're approaching your career in your 20s, I cannot recommend enough thinking, how am I going to make a positive impact in this world?
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How can I do that?
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And go read this book.
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80,000 Hours also have a job board that me and my friends use during uni.
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And it's so amazing.
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They list jobs that are guaranteed to have some of the biggest impacts for the most pressing problems of our time.
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Go do good in the world.
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It'll make you happy.
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Four, learn how to connect with humans.
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My parents met on a plane.
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They were complete strangers.
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My mum's from the Netherlands.
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My dad was from England.
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And they sat there and very easily nothing could have happened, right?
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I could never have been born if they didn't know how to connect with each other.
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But because my dad is one of the chattiest, most charismatic people I've ever met, he obviously struck up that conversation.
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They got talking and hearing that story has completely transformed how I approach strangers.
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And I made it my mission
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when I was a young person to get over my fear of people and to learn how to talk to adults, to talk to strangers.
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And I have met some of the most incredible people on public transport.
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Like I once sat next to a guy in economy on a plane who was the founder of YouTube Shorts.
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Isn't that mad?
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Like he works for YouTube and he pioneered that idea.
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When you're curious, you can learn so much from conversations
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that then propel you in future conversations and help you deeply connect with whoever you're talking to, no matter what their walk of life is.
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In an increasingly tech-driven world, it has never been more important to learn the basic human skills of listening, empathy, and making people feel seen.
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People often misunderstand the point of networking.
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They often think that it's transactional.
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You network in order to get a job or you network to increase your social standing and reputation.
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But the biggest piece of advice that I got was networking is not transactional.
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It should be transformational.
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You should be giving just as much value to the other person as they are giving to you.
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That value could be an interesting insight, an interesting article or something as simple as making them feel seen, having an enjoyable chat.
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Go read these books and learn how to talk to people.
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Number five, develop an introspective mindful practice.
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On a panel the other day, someone asked me, Jade, what was the most transformational moment of your career?
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Some people might assume that I would say, the moment that I earned over six figures, or the moment I worked with the Obama Foundation,
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or the moment I met the Education Secretary of England.
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But instead what I said was, when I did a 10 day silent meditation retreat.
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I spent 10 days for free in this place in England, learning how to meditate.
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No eye contact, no talking to people, no reading, no writing, just 10 hours of meditating a day.
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And that has taught me more about myself and the world than any textbook or any work experience ever could.
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You have to sit with yourself.
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You have to learn who you are beyond the stories that the world tells about who you are.
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And guys, we know that over a certain salary point, I think it's £85,000.
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When you earn over that amount, there is no significant increase in happiness.
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You could earn 100K, 200K, 500K.
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You're not gonna be that much happier.
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You need to learn how to become happy.
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You need to learn the practices that work for you, whether that is journaling, yoga, meditation, dance,
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anything that forces you to reflect on what it means to live a good life
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and how to be present in your day-to-day.
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And let me tell you, when you are able to do that, you will bring good energy no matter where you go, no matter which team you're in.
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Be someone people want to work with.
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Number six, stop overthinking and just act.
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There's an amazing concept called design thinking.
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It's a human-centered approach to solving problems and I highly recommend taking an hour to watch this deep dive on Stanford.
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It's a free Stanford lecture, kind of goes through the basics of design thinking, but the biggest point of design thinking is that it's not about having the best idea.
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It's about having the most ideas, thinking the most divergently as possible, picking some, trying them out and seeing if they work or not.
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And if they don't work, you iterate, you go back to the beginning, you try something else and you fail fast.
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And when I look at the most successful people in my life, they are all biased towards action, biased towards failing quickly, learning quickly.
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And I think this applies to all areas of your life.
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For example, when I realised that I might be queer, you know, I was questioning my sexuality,
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I easily could have just kept that as a thought and not done anything about it.
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But that is a hypothesis that is very difficult to get an answer to unless you try it.
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Unless you're biased towards action.
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It took me so much courage to finally kiss a girl.
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But then I realised, oh my God, I could even have a relationship with a girl, right?
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Like, oh my God, I think I actually am queer.
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But it's so important to dare to try, dare to fail, dare to ask questions and to do it quickly.
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Stop overthinking.
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Number seven, personal finance.
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My dear friends, you've got to learn how to budget.
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You've got to learn how to invest.
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One of the single most important things to do as a young person is to learn how to invest.
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I know it is terrifying, right?
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If you have no idea about the stock market, if you've never heard of an ISA savings account, it all just sounds like jargon that's really terrifying.
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But the thing is with investing, in order to do it, to be successful, you need two things.
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You need money, but you also need time.
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And when you're a young person, you might not have as much money, but you have a lot of time.
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And that's why it's really important to start investing as early in life as possible.
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Because if you put even 10 pound a month into a stocks
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and shares ISA every month from the age of 18 onwards, you would have over a million by the time you're 60.
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But if you start investing when you're 50 and you put a thousand pounds a month in, you're not gonna have that much by the time you're 60 because you don't have this element of time.
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So I highly recommend listening to these podcasts on screen, reading these books and guys, just do it.
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I personally have a Vanguard Stocks and Shares ISA.
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This is also not financial advice.
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I have an amazing business bank account with Tide.
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I'd highly recommend it if you're looking to create a business bank account.
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It's so easy to sign up.
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It's like genuinely the best service that I've found.
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I also have a referral code in my description.
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This is not sponsored, but yeah, I think you get like a discount or something if you use it.
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And I use Free Trade for all my individual stocks.
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And again, I think if you click the thing in my description, you can get a free share, which is nice.
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But yeah, definitely spend even 10 minutes a day learning about it
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or one weekend learning about personal finance
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and it's the kind of thing you do once you set
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up a direct debit to funnel money into an account every month
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and then for years later you'll be so grateful you did it.
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Number eight, experience the real world.
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How on earth are you meant to know what you want to do with your life?
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Unless you have representation of it, unless you can imagine all the options available to you.
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Guys get out there and just do as many random work experiences as possible.
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Working in a cafe is amazing, that's teaching you so many human skills, it's teaching you to deal with stress.
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It's teaching you how businesses work.
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But equally, if you have a hypothesis that you might want to work in tech, go test the hypothesis.
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Go on LinkedIn, find people who work in big tech, find people who are product managers, message them and say, hey, can I have a 20 minute informational interview?
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I would love to hear about your life, hear about your job, what got you into this role, what you like about it, what you don't.
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And equally, I cannot recommend this enough go travel go experience new cultures i know
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when you're like 20
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and you're just trying to survive uni sometimes the thought of traveling is like it just feels impossible
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because like i can hardly even eat my dinner every week
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but there are so many amazing opportunities to travel abroad whether
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that is work away where you stay somewhere for free in exchange for a few hours of work a day
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or being an au pair where you look after someone's kids
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in return for a free stay Nothing propelled my success and my sense of self more than traveling, solo backpacking, but also studying abroad.
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Number nine, I've never seen people give this piece of advice, but it has genuinely been one of the most transformational things I've done in my 20s.
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And that is learn how your parents have affected you.
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Learn how your childhood, your upbringing, your culture has affected who you are.
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In many ways, that is the basis of therapy.
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Therapy will make you introspect about the forces that shaped you growing up and how those now manifest in your behaviours,
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your decision making, your values.
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But guys, every relationship you have in your life, your relationship with your manager, your relationship with your romantic partner,
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all of that will be affected by how your parents raised you.
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Understand those links in yourself.
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You can just make far better decisions.
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Have you heard about something called attachment styles?
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If not, go read this book because it will affect you in every romantic relationship
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that you have until you can choose better patterns for yourself.
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And finally, number 10, embrace your unique path.
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On purpose, I have not been very prescriptive in this video about following a certain type of career.
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I haven't told you to start a business and become an entrepreneur.
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I haven't told you to become a teacher.
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I haven't told you to travel for sure.
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And that is because the unique path that we all go on is extremely valuable.
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If you have never traveled in your life until the age of 40, you have still lived an incredibly valuable life full of so many rich experiences.
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For example, getting to know your neighbor teaches you a lot about the world.
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If your neighbor is a new mother, being able to understand about things about her life experience, that will teach you a lot.
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It will teach you how to talk to an adult.
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It might teach you things about the difficulties in romantic relationships, the loss of identity that comes with becoming a mother, things about governmental policies and how they shape women's journeys.
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Or if your neighbor is an elderly man, being able to talk to him about mortality, grief, loss, loneliness.
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Asking those kind of questions will teach you an immense amount about the human experience and what is needed in this world.
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Also, as the 80,000 hours book points out, AI really struggles with messy, complex tasks.
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And so one of the most important human skills that you can develop is taste.
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And taste comes from experiencing a lot of the world, from introspecting it, from having conversations with many different types of people and developing empathy.
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And no matter what life you've lived, I can guarantee you have extremely valuable experiences that are worthwhile.
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And it's also never too late to go out and get more types of experiences.
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It's all about learning to own them and to own your unique story.
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So I need you to comment, which of these 10 are you going to focus on?
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Which of these 10 skills are you going to invest the time in researching, in reading more books, in going out and getting work experience? whatever it is,
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comment that down below so that we can hold you accountable and you can also learn from everyone else on their journeys.
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Thank you guys so much for watching
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and I'm in awe of you for not only clicking on a video like this
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but getting to the end because it really means that you care.
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You care about your life, you care about your own success and you're being intentional and that's all that matters.
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Success means so many different things
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and it's up to you to define it thank you
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so much to 80 000 hours for sponsoring today's video i
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highly recommend checking out their articles their book down below and i hope you have a gorgeous day bye
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you’ll practice understanding and mimicking conversational English from a dynamic video about building success in your 20s. You’ll focus on natural speech patterns, including casual phrasing and emphasis, while learning key strategies for personal and professional growth. This is a great opportunity to improve English pronunciation and fluency by engaging with real-world content—perfect for learners ready to move beyond textbook dialogues.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Surface area for luck: The opportunity for positive, unexpected events to find you (e.g., "Being visible online increases your surface area for luck").
- Serendipity: The occurrence of happy accidents (e.g., "Good serendipity comes from putting yourself out there").
- Visible: Noticeable or recognizable (e.g., "The biggest predictor of success is how visible you are").
- Proactivity: Taking initiative (e.g., "Employers value proactivity over just experience").
- Direct evaluation: Assessing someone’s work through examples rather than credentials (e.g., "81% of employers prefer direct evaluation of work over degrees").
Practice Tips: Shadowing for Fluency & Confidence
The video’s tone is energetic and conversational, with natural pauses and emphasis—ideal for shadowing practice. Here’s how to use it to improve:
- Start with short clips: Pause after 5-10 second segments and repeat Jade’s words, mimicking her pace and stress (e.g., "I dare you to choose just one tip"—stress "dare" and "one" to match her enthusiasm). This trains your mouth to form English sounds naturally.
- Focus on connected speech: Notice how she links words (e.g., "I don’t even have a bloody masters" becomes "I don’t even have a bloody masters" with a relaxed "don’t even"). Shadowing these links will make your speech sound more native.
- Emphasize personality: Jade’s confidence comes through in her tone. When shadowing, practice conveying that same energy—this helps you build fluency and the ability to connect with others, a key skill for real-world interactions.
- Use a shadowing app: Record yourself shadowing and compare it to the video. Apps can help you identify areas where your pronunciation or rhythm differs, making practice more effective.
Remember: Shadowing isn’t just about copying words—it’s about absorbing the feel of English. By practicing with this video, you’ll not only improve your language skills but also learn to communicate with the confidence that gets you noticed—just like Jade.
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 | I've built · I've done · have been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who saved · ones who really · someone who drags |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be seen · was assumed · were taught |
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.