Shadowing Practice: How to lock in (for real) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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A story about procrastination.
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In 1830, Victor Hugo was catastrophically behind deadline on the hunchback of Notre Dame.
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His publisher had given him only a few months left, but Hugo was a spectacular procrastinator,
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entertaining visitors, wandering Paris, and finding excuses not to write.
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Desperately, he invented a bizarre discipline system.
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He gathered all his normal clothes, gave them to his servant, and ordered them to be locked away.
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He kept only a massive wool shawl
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that draped around him like a monk's robe
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And he was too embarrassed to leave his house dressed like a hermit
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So he can find himself indoors He also bought a huge bottle of ink A literal symbol of his siege
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that would go down over time
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And each morning he sat half naked at his desk The cold air biting With nothing to do
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but face the manuscript From that point on his study became a sell According to the legend,
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Hugo would draft furiously and then slide the finished papers under the door where his servant collected them for safekeeping.
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He was so cut off that even small needs had to be negotiated through the barrier.
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Food and fresh paper were passed back the other way, so the routine never broke.
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Adele, his wife, said he had entered his novel as if it were a prison.
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It was a less jail and more self -imposed monastic cell.
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And the result was that in a feverish burst, he wrote day after day, often for 12 hours straight,
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and finished the entire novel within the lockdown months.
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By January 15th, 1831, the manuscript was complete.
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Frantic burst that birthed one of the great novels of the century without that desperate,
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almost theatrical punishment system, the book that cemented Hugo's legacy might never have been completed.
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Basically, you will be amazed at what you can complete when you have no other option.
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And obviously, the modern world is the antithesis of this.
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We have an infinite number of other things to do, parties to attend in Paris and virtual meetings that we can go to,
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even if we're not actually a participant, we're just observing them.
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I think when you commit yourself fully to one thing, and it's one of the reasons why multitasking in the macro, not even in the micro, is such a bad idea.
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When you commit yourself fully to one thing, you can really achieve an awful lot.
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I certainly know that it's one of the, if not the biggest unlocks that I've had ever with anything that I've ever tried to be good at,
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whether it was playing cricket as a kid or building my business, my first business, club promoting, trying to DJ, modeling thing,
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the fucking learning thing, the podcasting thing, the moving to America, the fucking 01 visa thing.
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Like every single big achievement
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that I'm really proud of has had it's required me to
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do some version of this hugo jail cell thing where fuck
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dude like i i bumped into a girl at breathwork a couple of days ago
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and she we haven't seen each other for two three years
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and she was like i just wanted to say like i'm
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you know i'm really i'm really happy for how everything's gone for you
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and um you know it really seems like like you've you've got on well
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because i remember when we were talking about three years ago
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and i'd be speaking to you and it would be 11 p .m at night
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and you'd just be in your office editing audio files for hours
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and hours and hours and i'd be out with my friends
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and i'd be asking what you're up to
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and i'd you'd just tell me
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that you were editing these audio file you you must have i guess you have people
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that edit the audio files now that's like yeah that yeah
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that thankfully that's not a task that I have to do anymore.
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But I had to, and so will you, up until the point at which you don't anymore.
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But you can't get to the point where you don't have to do the stuff without having been the person
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that has to do them.
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I mean, it's different from Victor because even if he writes The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it's not like he gets a ghostwriter in to write his sequel or his next book.
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But yeah, that thing in the macro, I think, which is just maybe worth lingering on is you can't multitask
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there is no such thing as multitasking like what what people think about
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when they think about multitasking is parallel processing there is no such thing as
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that even switching between tasks has a huge fucking cost in terms of what you can achieve
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but then doing it in the macro too you you miss
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out on all of the big context window a word
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that everyone knows now from ai the bigger the context window the more information it's able to pull in
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and the more connections it's able to make.
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I'm watching George Mack write his book at the moment.
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And the size of the context window he's got is fucking insane.
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Like he is, all he does is read, write.
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train, and sleep.
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That's it.
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That's all he's doing.
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He's just obsessed.
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He's so deep in this process.
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And it made me realize
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if I was trying to compete with him for writing a book while doing all of the other bullshit that I'm doing, I'm going to get eaten alive.
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I'm not going to get anywhere close to the types of insights
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because I'm not playing with the different ways that all of these ideas can lock together.
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And it doesn't matter what you're trying to achieve.
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If you commit yourself to your health.
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We're about to go into 2026.
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You would be much better off having 90 days
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or 180 days on a single goal
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and then changing it for the next three quarters
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or half of the year than you would be trying to do all of those things.
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Well, it's important to have a balanced life and you'll burn yourself out if you do too much of one thing.
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It's like, no, I fully disagree.
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Find something that you can get obsessed about, allow it to climb inside you and wear you like a fucking parasite.
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And then once you are done with that thing, you will make more progress.
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Here's a good, best example.
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You will make more progress in six months of dedicated training than in two years of half in half out training.
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And you will learn more
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and you will be spending all of your time fucking trawling forums and watching videos and doing all the rest of it.
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That is the unlock.
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There's another insight about procrastination.
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Like I've been thinking a lot about procrastination this year.
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Procrastination, as far as I can see, is often about fear.
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We like to pretend procrastination is a time management problem, but regularly it isn't.
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It's more like a self -protection strategy wearing a Fitbit.
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When we delay doing the thing we know we should do, we're sometimes not wrestling with our schedule.
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We're wrestling with our self -worth.
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And the logic goes a bit like this.
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If I try and fail, everyone will see.
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So if I never try at all, the failure is private and deniable and safe.
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This is the psychological sleight of hand at the heart of much of procrastination, as far as I can see.
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It feels like avoidance, but it functions like armor.
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You convince yourself the task is scary, or the conditions aren't perfect, or you need to feel ready first.
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But really, you're just terrified that doing your best might not be good enough.
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So you don't do anything.
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On the surface, procrastination looks like laziness, but underneath it's fear wearing a pajama top.
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And the tragedy is how elegant the trap is.
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Number one, you procrastinate because you don't want to look bad.
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Number two, this fear stops you from doing things.
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Number three, you are afraid of failure, but by procrastinating, you guarantee failure.
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You inoculate yourself from failure publicly by certifying your failure privately.
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You get to say, well, I could have done it if I'd actually tried.
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This is the safety blanket.
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It's an emotional insurance policy, the psychological loophole that allows you to stay intact while your dreams slowly starve.
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It's weirdly one of the few behaviors where we congratulate ourselves for executing a strategy
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that literally delivers the opposite of what we want.
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It's like a man who refuses to play the game unless he can guarantee victory,
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not realizing that refusing to play is the only guaranteed loss.
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Every time you hide in procrastination,
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you choose the fake safety of hypothetical excellence over the real messy human business of trying and failing and trying again.
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You choose the version of you who could have done great things over the version of you who actually might.
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And this is the uncomfortable truth.
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Procrastination is often not about indecision.
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It's a decision to live in theory rather than in practice.
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Once you see it clearly, the whole game changes.
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The question stops being
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why can't I get started and becomes what am I so afraid will be true about me if I actually try?
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That's a much harder question, which is why most people never ask it.
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They just carry on congratulating themselves for their caution while quietly guaranteeing the outcome that they fear most.
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The antidote isn't motivation.
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Motivation comes and goes.
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The antidote is surrender.
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You lower the stakes.
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You let yourself look foolish.
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You accept the embarrassment of being a beginner, the awkwardness of doing something badly, the exposure of your real effort being put on the line.
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Because once you remove the need to look good, the need to start becomes easy.
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It turns out that the hardest part of any meaningful work is not so much the work itself.
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It's the identity shift that you must endure from someone who protect their image to someone who risks it.
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If you can do that once and procrastination stops being a dragon.
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Instead, it becomes what it always was,
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which is a flimsy emotional habit built to protect a version of you that was never meant to survive adulthood.
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You don't need courage to begin.
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You just need the willingness to be seen beginning.
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Procrastination is a massive problem, and there's practical limitations, usually two, as far as I can see.
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The first one, you don't know what to do.
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You have this big project.
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You don't write a book.
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You write a sentence or you open a Word document or you do research.
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Don't know what to do.
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Relatively easy solution.
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What is the next physical action?
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I need to write a book.
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Okay, well, where are you?
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I'm in bed.
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Okay, well, I fucking throw the covers off you.
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Then you need to get one leg out of bed, then another leg out of bed, then you need to stand up, then you need to go to the bathroom, then you need to put your pants on, then you need to go into the living room, then you need to get your laptop at like
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that is the next physical action most people can go one more step
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but can't run a marathon in a single go the same
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thing is true second big practical reason is you know what to do
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but you don't know how to do it and
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that with the world of chat gpt and google and youtube
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and friends that you can ring and experts and coaches is pretty easy to fix like
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i don't know what to do break it down to next
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physical action i don't know i know what to do
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but i don't know how to do it ask somebody including a fucking ai agent uh
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but the big bit i think when asking why is it
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that i'm scared of even getting to
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that stage why do i not want to answer
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that question myself is because of this it's this identity problem it's the fact that you would rather assure your failure privately,
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inoculate yourself from failure publicly by assuring your failure privately.
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And, um, yeah, there is this bit of you that it's a kind of a coward in a way.
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Uh, it is not a coward.
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That sounds too mean.
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Look at me, look at how gentle and, uh, fucking soft signal of effectiveness I'm trying to be here.
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It is, it is maybe cowardly, but it's understandable.
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The thing that I would say is that version of you,
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that bit of you that needs protecting doesn't actually need as much protection as you probably think.
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It's quite a juvenile version of you.
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It's immature.
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It's nascent.
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And what it doesn't want is to look silly.
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It doesn't want to be judged uh it doesn't want its self -worth to be damaged
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because it's failed at something it doesn't want other people to think less of it
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because it's not performed in the manner that it should have done
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and um it's one of the ruthless things about imposter syndrome
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and especially as you progress imposter syndrome doesn't necessarily go away
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that quickly because like every higher rung on the ladder
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that you climb just gives you further to fall oh my
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god look at what my minimum level of output has to be now.
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And this means that the procrastination thing, if you're not careful, if you don't turn around and face or pick up that sort of part of you, that's worried about being seen,
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that's worried about failing, that's scared about being judged from people.
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If you don't turn around and deal with that, he will or she will follow behind you.
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And every time that you try to sort of take a step back to run at something, you'll step on them and they'll Yelp and they'll go, oh, no, what if we, what if we mess up?
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And I don't think that that's a good situation to be in.
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And, you know, the final point is, do you know about what the people,
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do you know what the tasks that you didn't go for made other people think about you?
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Nothing.
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They don't think anything about you because you didn't try.
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so the very thing that you are worried of happening
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which is becoming irrelevant and people not caring is going to happen
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if you don't go for it
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and i would much sooner maybe maybe it's a maturity thing
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it's probably going to get easier as you get older
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because people realize as they age that failure isn't
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that big of a deal and that somebody who tries and and Thank you who tries, somebody who tries, regardless of whether or not they succeed or fail,
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somebody who gives it a crack is worthy of respect way more than somebody who has this sort of sardonic, distanced, non -earnest, insincere, like cutting cool.
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I didn't need to do that, man.
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Like I don't really tried anything, man.
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All right.
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They're not the people that I want to hang around with.
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And they're not the people that my friends want to hang around with either.
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So find your tribe.
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You can be around people who have the willingness to be seen beginning,
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or the people who would rather look cool for fear of failing publicly at something that they might win at.
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Before we continue, I am a massive fan of reducing your alcohol intake, but historically, non -alcoholic brews taste like ass.
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You don't need to be doing some big reset.
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Maybe you just want to crack a cold one without feeling like garbage the next morning, which is why I am such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co.
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They've got 50 types of NAs, including IPAs, Goldens, and even limited releases like a cocktail -inspired Paloma and Moscow Mule.
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And here's the thing, you can drink them anytime, late nights, early mornings, watching sports, playing sports, doesn't matter, no hangover, no compromise.
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And that is why I partnered with them.
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You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s best -selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped right to your door.
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Right now, you can get 15 % off your first online order by going to the link in the description below
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or heading to athleticbrewing .com slash modern wisdom.
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That's athleticbrewing .com slash modern wisdom.
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Congratulations for making it to the end of a clip.
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Your brain has not been fried by TikTok.
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Watch the full episode here.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 226 sentences and 2807 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:32. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% 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 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- audio /ˈɔ.di.oʊ/ (adjective) — Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight.
- guarantee /ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/ (noun) — Anything that assures a certain outcome.
- commit /kəˈmɪt/ (verb) — To give in trust; to put into charge or keeping; to entrust; to consign; used with to or formerly unto.
- edit /ˈɛdɪt/ (verb) — To change a text, or a document.
- publicly /ˈpʌb.lɪ.kli/ (adverb) — In public, openly, in an open and public manner.
- privately /ˈpɹaɪvɪtli/ (adverb) — In a private manner.
- practical /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/ (adjective) — Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis.
- crack /kɹæk/ (noun) — A thin and usually jagged space opened in a previously solid material.
- refuse /ɹɪˈfjuːz/ (verb) — To decline (a request or demand).
- wisdom /ˈwɪzdəm/ (noun) — An element of personal character that enables one to distinguish the wise from the unwise.
- psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/ (adjective) — Of or pertaining to psychology.
- syndrome /ˈsɪndɹoʊm/ (noun) — A recognizable pattern of signs, symptoms and/or behaviours, especially of a disease or medical or psychological condition.
- climb /ˈklaɪ̯m/ (verb) — To traverse a slope or contour, either upwards (ascending) or downwards (descending).
- motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — Willingness of action especially in behavior.
- insight /ˈɪnsaɪ̯t/ (noun) — A sight or view of the interior of anything; a deep inspection or view; introspection; frequently used with into.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- go for (verb) — To try for, to attempt to reach.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
- go into (verb) — To get involved in; to investigate or explore.
- turn around (verb) — To physically rotate (usually around a vertical axis) for a half turn (180 degrees), a whole turn (360 degrees), or an indefinite amount.
- bump into /ˌbʌmˈpɪn.tu/ (verb) — To collide with.
- carry on /ˈkæɹi ˈɑn/ (verb) — To take baggage or luggage onto an airplane, rather than check it.
- cut off /ˌkʌt ˈɔf/ [ˌkɐɾ ˈɔf] (verb) — To remove by cutting.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 79 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, marathon /ˈmæɹəθən/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, theatrical /θiˈætɹɪkəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, publisher /ˈpʌblɪʃɚ/
- Long words — get the stress right: psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/
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 audio, guarantee, commit.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be locked · be negotiated · were passed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | think, which is · man who refuses · question, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been completed · I've ever tried · haven't seen |
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.