Shadowing Practice: How to Lock In and Actually Get Things Done | Andrew Huberman - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If you are not good at clearing the slate before you try and focus, you're going to have a very hard time for understandable reasons.
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In fact, I'm amazed that anyone can think at all.
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I'm amazed that anyone can focus at all.
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It's very, very clear that if you have a hard time getting into a bout of work or even staying focused,
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there's a very good chance, I believe, that your breaks between work and what you were doing before work was too stimulating.
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I'm a big advocator for boring breaks.
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And I'm a big advocator for silence before and after bouts of work for a couple of reasons.
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The reason I'm
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so bullish about people understanding a little bit of mechanism behind the checklist of things to do is
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that I do think that when people understand mechanism, it gives them flexibility over the so -called protocols.
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And I think it also allows them to customize those things for themselves.
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Let's face it.
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If you want to go online now and just say, what are the top 10 things I can do to improve my sleep?
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And you get a list, you can put those on your refrigerator, you put them next to your bed.
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Why doesn't everyone just do that?
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It's because the way that people go about learning information strongly drives whether or not they apply that information.
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The thoughts and by extension, the emotions, but really the thoughts that you have right now,
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your ability to focus right now is strongly driven by the inputs you received in the preceding hours
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and even days think about a dog okay um what kind of dog is it golden retriever golden retriever okay
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so as you think about the golden retriever like what other things come to mind about the golden retriever
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it's got a little neckerchief on okay red neckerchief great red neckerchief
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Like what else about golden retriever?
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Fluffy.
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Fluffy, Osei.
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So there's a tactile thing.
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Okay.
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Anything else about golden retrievers?
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This is very specific to you.
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Bouncing up and down, rolling on its back.
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Smells a little bit, but I like it.
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Great.
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Okay.
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So there's a, I like it.
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You like to, okay.
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Thoughts basically start with some seed element, some noun, some pronoun, some thing, some event.
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And then what the brain does is it essentially starts to call on more and more sensations and starts layering those in.
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More and more prior sensory events.
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It's red handkerchief.
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Okay, it's fluffy.
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There's a tactile.
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And that thoughts really are the layering on of more and more sensory memories.
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And thoughts are really a layering of the senses in abstract thought space.
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Now, this is not meant to make something from nothing, but it's so important that we understand this because you think,
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what is the ability to think?
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Well, the ability to think is constrained by the number of different senses I'm trying to place on a bunch of different things.
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And so that's how we navigate through environments.
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I can't look at everything in this garage.
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I have to focus on certain things, find the Phillips head screwdriver, go over there.
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And you're discarding all the other information.
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Now, when you think about sitting down to do work or to learn something,
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prepare a podcast, it is so important that you limit the number of sensory inputs coming in, not just during that event, but before.
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Because the sensory stimulus that kind of sets off this cascade of layering in more
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and more sensory memories and understanding is begun before you sit down to read your book.
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This is why you read a portion of a book and then you're like, oh wait, I wasn't even paying attention.
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Your brain is still working with the sensory inputs from before.
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It's not thinking about them consciously.
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So this is vitally important.
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Now, what have we done?
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The challenge is that we've brought an infinite number of sensory experiences into the thing that you're looking at.
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So we've brought all the sensory inputs through the device that you're holding.
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So the narrowing of your perspective hasn't helped you to narrow the distractions?
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That's right.
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Cognitive space is still infinite, even though the spatial limitation of where you're placing your attention is very restricted.
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So the fact that you have so many competing thoughts has everything to do with that.
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And it also has everything to do with what you were doing in the 10
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or 15 minutes before you sat down to try to work.
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But am I supposed to take in an infinite number of novel items through this device?
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In fact, Mike Easter, the author of The Comfort Crisis, told me something super scary when he came on the podcast.
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He said that the people who developed the algorithms for social media borrowed heavily from the casinos.
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And it was one guy who watched his kid playing video games who realized
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that the kids would play video games for hours and hours and hours, and what they were playing for was novelty.
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And so they switched the slot machines in casinos, on his suggestion, to instead of just spooling numbers and fruit or whatever it was,
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because they're now electronic, you can get a near -infinite number of combinations of novel items, and people will play while losing for novelty.
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and think they're winning.
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The brain is tricked into thinking that it's winning.
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But there's this very narrow rock bridge out to the top.
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And on either side, it's slide to your death.
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Slide to your death.
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It's precarious.
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But on either side, you fall to your death.
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And I always think of the internet and much of life like this.
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On one side is numbing out by going online.
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And the other one is drama.
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So you're allowed to unfollow accounts that you're not learning from or that are pulling you into either numbing out or drama.
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The drama piece is very serious because it gives the illusion that there's something meaningful there.
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But you realize this is just like, it's nothingness.
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It is kind of the empty calories of the content world that you leave this.
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Having been given the sort of simulacrum of learning something.
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But if somebody said, okay, after watching this 10 minute, half hour, one hour expose or deconstruction,
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what do you know that you didn't know at the start?
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You go, well, I know about what this person
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and this person said to each other about each other and how the interplay.
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And look, deconstructing someone's psychological profile, understanding how human motivations work.
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I'm fascinated by the way that sort of social interaction, hierarchy, status games, all of that stuff.
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But I'm not learning that.
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I'm not reading the status game by Will Storr.
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So after you've finished consuming a thing, how do you feel?
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Do you feel enlightened, hopeful, peaceful?
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Do you want to ring your mom and say that you miss her?
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Do you want to talk to your friends?
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Or do you feel like the world's out to get you
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and that there's less than is needed for everybody
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and you shouldn't really trust people and you're a bit sort of tight
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and tense and your shoulders are up and there's a ringing in your ears?
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Well, here's my litmus test.
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After I spend a bit of time on social media, I ask myself later, do I remember anything from being on there?
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You know, the reflection, was there any learning?
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Did I learn anything?
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Thinking about your experiences is so critical to placing value on them, making them meaningful for you.
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What I'm not interested in is just an endless deluge of sensory input that goes nowhere, especially if it impedes other things.
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So a little bit more reflection, 10 minutes, one minute, five seconds of just asking, did I remember anything useful?
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Do I want to do that again?
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You know, I think that the big mistake
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that I made for a number of years was trying to find the thing
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that comes from outside that's going to change things
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and you know lord knows i love caffeine and of doing certain activities and um and learning but at some point
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you realize that the the ability to um like withhold uh like reflect reflexes
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that you don't want to have like you know getting your temper sparked
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or something you know people say no one can make you feel anything
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and i say that's crazy people can make you feel things all the time.
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You know, the ability to not speak from your first thought, but your second or your third, you know, you hear these kinds of cliches, right?
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But all of that ability comes from inside.
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It's from doing internal work.
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And it's kind of amazing how much we can accomplish.
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And I'm certainly not the first to say this, how much we can accomplish by just stopping and listening and going, wow, like my brain's crazy.
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It's like all these thoughts, all this stuff.
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Oh, oh, too much input coming into this.
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Like, I've got to shut down this thought path.
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Also realizing that, you know, because these thoughts layer on themselves, our sensory memories layer on top and we feed our thoughts.
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If you're ruminating on something that really bothers you, you probably do want to distract yourself, unless you're really going to work on that thing.
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That you really can feed thoughts like embers and a fire.
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And it's important to not do that if it's not adaptive.
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Is it truly possible to deprogram bad habits?
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Or once those neural pathways are down, is that locked in for life?
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How do you think about getting rid of bad habits, the process of overcoming those?
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Yeah, I think, you know, if we look at the data on neuroplasticity,
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it's much easier to reactivate a pathway that was laid down early in life, even if it's been suppressed.
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Breaking bad habits involves a lot of top -down control prefrontal cortex suppressing the activity of these hypothalamic
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and other subcortical neurons and how do we know this it's the structure in the brain it's
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that no don't reach for that cookie it's that no don't say
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that thing it's the don't do the thing that your hypothalamus
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and other structures are um creating some internal uh activation of the autonomic nervous system
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that kind of vibration of you want to do it it smells
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so good it tastes so good you just want to I don't know why I did it, this kind of thing.
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So that top -down control can be learned.
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And the beautiful thing, and this answers your question more directly,
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the beautiful thing is that at some point that top -down control is not required anymore, unless you do the thing you're not supposed to do.
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And then it requires top -down control again.
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One thing that I've been doing before I prepare to do any writing,
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any podcasting, any work is I try and make myself as bored as possible.
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I try and remove as much sensory input as possible.
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I might think about my breathing because it's hard to not think about anything,
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but I really have started to limit the amount of sensory information coming into my space.
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I have an entire floor of where I live now.
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I live in, I have an odd structure now, but the entire bottom floor is a no phone zone.
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Once or twice, I brought my phone down there, but it's a no phone zone.
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Going down the stairs, there are no phones in there.
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Let's say you're trying to learn something or read a book or just do something that you're not reflexively doing.
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You want to create this habit it's very clear that neuroplasticity, yes, requires alertness, requires focus.
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You need sleep later that night.
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I've been beating that drum for a number of years.
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It's also clear that reflection on what you were doing at some later time, just kind of like post -learning reflection,
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walk into your car, sitting on the plane for a second, thinking about a podcast you did earlier or something you heard or a discussion,
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strongly reinforces the memories and the ability to work with the memories of new information.
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And this is something that we've given up largely because of our smartphones.
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You're constantly bringing in new sensory information.
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All the data, I did an episode on how to best study and learn.
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I went to the data to find out because I have my methods, but that doesn't mean they're the best methods.
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Reading, rereading, note -taking, highlighting, it's all fine, but it turns out the biggest lever is to self -test at some point away from the material.
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So testing is not just something for evaluation of others, it's a way that we should think,
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you know, yeah, how much can I remember about that conversation?
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What was tricky?
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Okay, I don't remember that piece.
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I'm going to go back and look it up.
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All learning is, and this will sound like a giant duh, but all learning is anti -forgetting.
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How do we know this?
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Because if you have people read a passage one, two, three, four, five times versus one time and they self -test,
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one time and self -testing, significantly better.
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Learning is repeated recall, not repeated exposure.
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Yes.
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Beautiful.
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Right.
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And reflecting on what you were trying to do or learn or solve, even if you don't remember, even if you're still puzzled by it,
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is so vitally important to the anti -forgetting process.
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And so at some level, like I love social media, teach on social media.
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I partake in it as a consumer and a creator there.
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But I think we need to really scruff ourselves and go, okay, I need to read this book.
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I need to write this chapter.
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I need to do this drawing.
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And you'll notice once you drop into that trench, the brain has these attractor states.
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It's like a ball bearing on a flat surface.
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As you get more into a thought trench or activity trench, it's like that ball bearing drops into what's essentially a deep valley.
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And it's actually hard to leave.
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You'll notice you're walking out and unless you pick up your phone, you'll still be thinking about that.
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And this is how the brain works.
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The brain is not working in step functions.
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The brain, none of us are supposed to do the same thing all day long.
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And none of us are supposed to be able to think and focus easily.
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You just have to ride that, that sort of layering on of thoughts, going from board to sensory input to deeper and deeper,
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and then work for bouts of, you know, 90 minutes or a couple of hours, and then give yourself a little bit of time, pause, reflect.
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And it doesn't mean you can't have a conversation, but people are texting in between.
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It's unbelievable what we've done to hamstring ourselves against being able to think.
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Whitney Cummins got the best take on this.
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She says, in order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life. So good.
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And it's one of the challenges you get as people become more successful
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that their ability to generate new ideas decreases
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because their life is increasingly out of touch into the comedian who only talks about dinners,
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shows, and airports and hotels on stage because that's the entirety of their life experience.
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The reason I have my art projects, the reason I extended my book for a year to add more studies is because I like learning.
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And as my friend of mine said, he's a very intelligent guy.
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He's a tattooer, among other things.
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He's an exceptional artist.
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And he said, people with interests are interesting.
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You know what's not interesting? other people's failures, other people's minor wins.
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Like there's nothing more boring than that.
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But it hooks in the short term.
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The novelty of life, the excitement of life, the enriching parts of life are about new experiences.
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But from a selfish perspective, that widespread fragility is your competitive advantage.
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And if you're one of the people, you're not going to be able to change the world, certainly not before you've changed yourself.
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And that means that the first step is, huh, this is an opportunity for me.
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I can step into the - The good news is,
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as Goggins would say, nowadays it's very easy to be spectacularly good in pretty much any field.
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You just have to do what no one else is doing.
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Now, he's an extreme case, and I have immense admiration for David.
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I mean, he's just so David, you know, but if you want to be the best in your class at anything,
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best in class at pretty much anything, it's become so much easier now.
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You just have to not constantly be projecting things out to the world or paying attention what other people are doing.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Lock In and Actually Get Things Done”. This video has 227 sentences and 2859 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:04. The speaker talks fast, about 190 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 |
|---|---|---|
| sensory adjective | /ˈsɛn.sə.ɹi/ | Of the physical senses or sensation. |
| input noun | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | The act or process of putting in; infusion. |
| layer noun | /ˈleɪ̯ɚ/ | A single thickness of some material covering a surface. |
| habit noun | /ˈhæb.ɪt/ | An action performed on a regular basis. |
| reflection noun | /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/ | The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected. |
| infinite adjective | /ˈɪnfɪnɪt/ | Indefinably large, countlessly great; immense. |
| podcast noun | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on… |
| strongly adverb | /ˈstɹɔŋli/ | In a strong or powerful manner. |
| narrow adjective | /ˈnæɹəʊ/ | Having a small width; not wide; having opposite edges or sides that are close, especially by comparison to length or depth. |
| reflect verb | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface. |
| bout noun | /ˈbaʊt/ | A period of something, especially one painful or unpleasant, like an illness. |
| bore verb | /boɹ/ | To inspire boredom in somebody. |
| trench noun | /ˈtɹɛnt͡ʃ/ | A long, narrow ditch or hole in the ground; either manmade, or formed naturally through erosion or tectonic plate movement. |
| novelty noun | /ˈnɑvəlti/ | The state of being new or novel; newness. |
| essentially adverb | /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/ | In essence: by nature. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. |
| go over verb | To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze. |
| lay down verb | To give up, surrender, or yield (e.g. a weapon), usually by placing it on the ground. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| set off verb | To leave; to set out; to begin a journey or trip. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Do you feel enlightened, hopeful, peaceful?
- Do you want to talk to your friends?
- You know, the reflection, was there any learning?
- Do I want to do that again?
- You know what's not interesting?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been doing · I've been beating |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have we done · we've brought · hasn't helped |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is strongly driven · is not meant · is constrained |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who developed · guy who watched |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 62 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/, bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, breathe /bɹiːð/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: reflection /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/
- Long words — get the stress right: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/
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 sensory, input, layer.
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.