Shadowing Practice: How to manage your time more effectively (according to machines) - Brian Christian - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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The Earth is a great day.
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In the summer of 1997,
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NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars and began transmitting incredible,
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iconic images back to Earth.
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But several days in, something went terribly wrong the transmissions stopped.
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Pathfinder was, in effect, procrastinating,
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keeping itself fully occupied, but failing to do its most important work.
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What was going on?
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There was a bug, it turned out, in its scheduler.
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Every operating system has something called the scheduler
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that tells the CPU how long to work on each task before switching and what to switch to.
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Done right, computers move so fluidly between their various responsibilities,
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they give the illusion of doing everything simultaneously.
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But we all know what happens when things go wrong.
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This should give us, if nothing else, some measure of consolation.
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Even computers get overwhelmed sometimes.
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Maybe learning about the computer science of scheduling can give us some ideas about our own human struggles with time.
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One of the first insights is that all the time you spend prioritizing your work is time you aren't spending doing it.
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For instance, let's say when you check your inbox,
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you scan all the messages,
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choosing which is the most important.
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Once you've dealt with that one, you repeat.
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Seems sensible, but there's a problem here.
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This is what's known as a quadratic time algorithm.
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With an inbox that's twice as full,
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these passes will take twice as long,
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and you'll need to do twice as many of them.
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This means four times the work.
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The programmers of the operating system Linux encountered a similar problem in 2003.
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Linux would rank every single one of its tasks in order of importance
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and sometimes spent more time ranking tasks than doing them.
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The programmer's counterintuitive solution was to replace this full ranking with a limited number of priority buckets.
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The system was less precise about what to do next,
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but more than made up for it by spending more time making progress.
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So with your emails, insisting on always doing the very most important thing first could lead to a meltdown.
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Waking up to an inbox three times fuller than normal could take nine times longer to clear.
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You'd be better off replying in chronological order or even at random.
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Surprisingly, sometimes giving up on doing things in the perfect order may be the key to getting them done.
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Another insight that emerges from computer scheduling has to do with one of the most prevalent features of modern life, interruptions.
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When a computer goes from one task to another,
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it has to do what's called a context switch,
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bookmarking its place in one task,
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moving old data out of its memory, and new data in.
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Each of these actions comes at a cost.
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The insight here is that there's a fundamental trade-off between productivity and responsiveness.
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Getting serious work done means minimizing context switches.
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But being responsive means reacting any time something comes up.
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These two principles are fundamentally in tension.
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Recognizing this tension allows us to decide where we want to strike that balance.
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The obvious solution is to minimize interruptions.
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The less obvious one is to group them.
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If no notification or email requires a response more urgently than once an hour,
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say, then that's exactly how often you should check them.
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No more.
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In computer science, this idea goes by the name of interrupt coalescing.
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Rather than dealing with things as they come up,
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oh, the mouse was moved,
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a key was pressed, more of that file downloaded,
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the system groups these interruptions together based on how long they can afford to wait.
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In 2013, interrupt coalescing triggered a massive improvement in laptop battery life.
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This is because deferring interruptions lets a system check everything at once,
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then quickly re-enter a low-power state.
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As with computers, so it is with us.
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Perhaps adopting a similar approach might allow us users to reclaim our own attention
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and give us back one of the things that feels so rare in modern life— rest.
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Are you interested in improving your own time and task management skills?
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If so, we highly recommend you check out Algorithms to Live By,
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the computer science of human decisions.
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You can download an audio version of the book for free at audible.com slash ted.
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And every free trial created encourages Audible to continue supporting TedEd's nonprofit mission.

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Why practice speaking with this video?

Practicing speaking through the video "How to manage your time more effectively (according to machines)" presents an excellent opportunity for English learners to enhance their language skills in a practical context. Listening to the nuanced discussion about time management, machine algorithms, and human productivity can not only expand your vocabulary but also improve your overall speaking fluency. By engaging with the content using the shadowing technique, learners can mimic the speaker’s intonation and pace, deeply embedding the grammatical structures and expressions in their memory. This practice enhances your ability to articulate complex concepts clearly and confidently, a vital skill in both personal and professional settings.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

  • Past Simple Tense: The speaker uses the past simple tense to narrate events, as in "In the summer of 1997, NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft landed..." This structure helps convey clear timelines, which is essential for effective storytelling.
  • Conditional Structures: Phrases like "If you check your inbox, you might prioritize incorrectly..." introduce hypothetical situations, urging learners to understand how conditions affect outcomes. Utilizing conditionals in your speech can make your arguments more compelling.
  • Comparative and Superlative Forms: The video discusses prioritization through comparisons, which might involve phrases like "more time spent..." This helps drive home the point that understanding efficiency can lead to better time management.

Common Pronunciation Traps

While watching and shadowing the video, learners may encounter several challenging pronunciations, particularly with technological terms and compound nouns. Words such as "scheduler" and "context switch" may pose difficulties due to their unique sounds and syllable stress. Focus on practicing these words, breaking them down into manageable parts to improve your English pronunciation. It may also be beneficial to listen for the speaker's use of intonation when emphasizing key points, as this can enhance your ability to convey meaning effectively when you shadow speak.

By implementing techniques like shadowspeak and consistently practicing with resources like this video, you can significantly improve English pronunciation, making your speech more clear and engaging, while also gaining a greater understanding of complex concepts that may arise in everyday conversations.

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.

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