Shadowing Practice: It Sucks for 3 Days But It Makes Waking Up Early Effortless - Dr Andrew Huberman - Learn English Speaking with Video
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How can people become a morning person or learn to get up early more easily and more regularly?
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Yeah, three days of pain, the rest is easy.
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So it takes about three days to shift the biological mechanisms to make you a morning person.
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Now, if you are a very strongly genetically determined night owl.
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That's a thing.
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That's a thing.
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So there are genetic mutations, they call them polymorphisms, that make some people night owls.
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They feel best psychologically and physically going to sleep at about 1, 2 or 3 a.m and waking up somewhere around,
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you know, 10, 11 a.m or noon.
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That exists, not just during development or teen years, but that exists, not just for social reasons.
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Other people are true morning people.
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They feel absolutely best going to sleep around 8 p.m or 9 p.m.
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10 p.m will be late for them, and they feel great waking up at 4, 5, or 6 a.m.
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Okay.
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Most people feel best going to sleep somewhere between 10
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and midnight and waking up somewhere between 6 a.m and 8 a.m or so, maybe 5.30 to 8 a.m.
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Okay.
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So those are three bins of the night owl, the morning person, and then the more typical schedule,
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but it's heavily weighted toward that typical schedule if you look at the general population.
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So if somebody wants to get up earlier, you need to stack the four primary, what are called Zeitgebers or timekeepers.
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So named because some of the early chronobiologists that discovered this stuff and the underlying mechanisms were German, as it were.
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So the number one Zeitgeber, the number one way to shift your circadian clock, which is this cluster of neurons that sits a few centimeters above the roof of your mouth,
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is to view bright light at a time when you want to be awake, aka the morning.
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Okay.
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So that's why I say, get outside, look at the sun, toward the sun.
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Don't force yourself to stare at it, don't damage your eyes, blink as needed, no sunglasses, eye glasses, corrective lenses and contacts are absolutely fine, even if they have UV protection.
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Okay.
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However, if you combine that with another Zeitgeber, the second most powerful Zeitgeber is exercise or movement.
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So if you do some jumping jacks, you skip some rope, or even just take a walk while facing the sun, now you're starting to stack different Zeitgebers.
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And I'll explain the mechanisms in a moment.
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If you then also add caffeine, Now this spits in the face a little bit of what I said a few minutes ago, but if you were to add caffeine,
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you can entrain as it's called the circadian clock to be alert at that time a bit more.
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And I'll be honest, if I'm going to exercise first thing in the morning, I need caffeine.
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I can't wait that 60 to 90 minutes.
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If I need to jump right into exercise, I find it's easiest for me to do 30 minutes after waking, three hours after waking or 11 hours after waking.
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And a lot of people find that the same, but of course exercise when you can, because it's that important but if you want to quote unquote, optimize your energy levels for exercise,
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typically people will notice that has to do with your temperature rhythm.
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Okay, so we've got sunlight, we've got exercise or movement of any kind.
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It could be jumping jacks, could be walking.
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You don't have to do a full workout.
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And then caffeine and in some cases food.
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I'm not big on eating first thing in the morning.
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I don't like to eat until 11 a.m or noon.
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That's when my first meal arrives.
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For me, just naturally, that's when I get hungry.
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It's all caffeine and hydration prior to that.
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But if you were to eat something first thing in the morning, that's part of the way you entrain your circadian clock to wake up, to essentially wake you up earlier.
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And then the fourth one is a social rhythm.
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If you're interacting with other people, you are going to entrain your clock to that as well. So, yes.
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So there's a social component to circadian entrainment.
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Now, the pathways for these are from the eye, in the case of viewing light, to the circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
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In the case of caffeine, it's more general.
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In the case of exercise, there's literally a brainstem to circadian clock connection,
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a big superhighway of neuronal connections that then so-called entrains your circadian clock.
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Remember your circadian clock generates an intrinsic 24 hour rhythm, such that if we put you into constant dark or constant light, you would still sleep for a given bout
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and then be alert for a given bout with a little bit of a nap.
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It just is what we'd call free run.
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It would drift a little later each day.
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This is what happens when you go to Vegas.
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This is what happens when you're in an environment without a lot of cues about the day, the sunlight rising and setting cycle.
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So sunlight, exercise, caffeine and eating and social interactions bring your circadian clock into alignment with all of those zeitgebers.
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So when I said it takes three days, if tomorrow you want to start beginning the process of becoming an early riser, you'd set your alarm for 5 a.m.
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No matter what time you went to sleep the night before, you're going to get up and you're going to do the four things that I described.
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Maybe leave out food if you don't want to eat.
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Maybe leave out caffeine if you want to delay by 90 minutes.
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It's going to hurt.
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And then by the early afternoon, you'll be dragging a bit.
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And you just have to be careful to not overindulge in caffeine, which will then cause you to fall sleep later.
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Then you want to go to sleep at your now naturally slightly earlier sleep time.
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The next day, you'll notice it'll be a little bit easier to do the morning routine I just described.
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And by the third day, you ought to be waking up with or before the alarm by a few minutes or moments.
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because your circadian clock has phase shifted.
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Okay, it's phase advanced, as we say.
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Your circadian clock intrinsic to you generates a 24.2 or a 24.3 hour rhythm.
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It's not perfectly 24 hours.
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And that we believe, we don't know, but the just so story is that it's such
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that you're able to then shift that clock in one or the other direction.
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You can phase advance.
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You wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier.
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You can phase delay.
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How do you phase delay?
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Well, you're probably doing this already.
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Everyone nowadays pretty much qualifies as a shift worker by the strict and not so strict criteria of shift work,
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which is, are you doing any kind of cognitive activity after 9 p.m.?
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Are you viewing any kind of bright lights after 9.30 p.m.?
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Most people would say yes.
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So the diabolical thing about the circadian timing system is that it requires a lot of bright light,
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ideally from sunlight, but a lot of bright light early in the day to make you a morning and daytime person.
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But it requires just a little bit of bright light, even from an artificial source after the hours of about 9.30 p.m till 4 a.m to quash your melatonin
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and make it difficult to sleep or if you sleep to make that sleep not as effective.
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There's a simple remedy, however, which is, and this is a beautiful study published in Science Reports in 2022.
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If you view sunlight in the afternoon, even for five minutes or so, could be late afternoon, could be sunset,
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take off your sunglasses, look in the direction of the sun.
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So now looking west, you adjust the sensitivity of your retina, the neurons in the back of your eye,
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such that bright light later at night doesn't have quite as much effect to suppress melatonin.
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It reduces the melatonin suppressive effects by about 50% or offsets those.
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So I think of this afternoon viewing as, well, first of all, it's nice to look at a sunset.
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If you're indoors in an environment like this, even if there are bright lights on, get outside for a few minutes before the sun sets.
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This is especially important in winter.
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Even if you can't see the sun as an object, get some sunlight light in your eyes, and that will at least partially offset the effects of bright light in your eyes at night, partially.
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And I refer to this more or less as your Netflix inoculation
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so that that night you can be on your phone
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or watch your Netflix and it's not going to disrupt your sleep as much, but it will still disrupt your sleep somewhat.
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But let's, you know, unless like Rick Rubin's very diligent about wearing the red lens glasses, I've started doing that as well.
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But if you don't do that, well, I'm guessing he also sees the sunset in the evening.
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He's very attached for good scientific reasons to the sunlight thing.
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But these are little things that take just moments, right?
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They're essentially zero cost that can really improve your sleep.
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But that's how you become a morning person.
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If you wanna become a night person, you do the opposite.
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You view bright light between the hours of 4 p.m and 10 p.m.
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And then you will phase delay or phase shift in a delayed way your circadian clock, making you wanna wake up later the next morning.
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I wonder if dogs count as a social interaction.
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Absolutely.
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And they have all of the same mechanisms we just described.
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So I just think, how can we stack that everything first thing in the morning, morning walk, if you're in a place that's not Iceland or somewhere that's super high north,
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dog, social interaction, moving around, and then caffeine if you do or if you don't want it.
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But, uh, if you have a dog that likes to run, you're even better off.
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Cause it'll force you to run.
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You're gonna have to chase after it.
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If you have an English bulldog, like I did, you'd be lucky if you get out of bed by 10.
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Yeah.
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You're in their eyes are droopy.
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They don't, and, um, uh, they don't like to move, but it is the case that dogs will naturally orient toward the sun,
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you know, and people always dogs have the same mechanisms?
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Absolutely.
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Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, the one that project to the clock and carry all of this thing about circadian entrainment to sunlight,
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are present as far as we know in every extant mammalian species, every mammalian species that's alive today.
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And this is a system that evolved from bacteria that's very similar to the opcins,
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the light absorbing molecules that are in the insect eye.
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It's a very primordial system.
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It's organized very differently anatomically in the retina.
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And to me, it's actually one of the more beautiful systems in all of us.
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In fact, the one thing that no one can seem to defeat, you're never going to biohack away is circadian biology.
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This 24 hour fluctuation in energy and focus.
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Some people require less sleep, but we're all more or less a slave to these mechanisms.
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And it's a good thing that we are because it forces us to rest.
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Neuroplasticity occurs during sleep.
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They push down adenosine.
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It takes us through these natural ebbs and cycles of cognition.
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I'm obsessed by the idea that in sleep, the conscious mind obviously is not in control.
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The unconscious mind can geyser up thoughts.
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The brain is organizing things more in terms of symbols.
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Time and space are organized very differently in dreams.
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And there's a lot of information to be gleaned from dreams.
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It's just that we don't yet understand what the symbols mean, and the kind of classic Freudian Jungian interpretations are certainly not gonna be complete,
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but I'm so grateful that we get this thing called sleep.
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And I think thanks to the great Matt Walker, we now understand that the whole thing about sleep when I'm dead is a really dumb mindset.
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And my team at the Huberman Lab Podcast, we sometimes joke that we win by sleeping.
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When we're in the peak of things, we all encourage each other to like get rest, get rest, like we really prioritize sleep.
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Travelling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I have been using Nomatics Backpack and Carry On Pro for over a year now.
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This thing is the best backpack on the planet.
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I did an entire month on tour on just hand luggage alone.
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It's like the Swiss army knife of travel packs.
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They've got pockets for your laptop, your clothes, your snacks.
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It is so well organized that even your toothbrush feels important.
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And the amount of thought that they've put into every pouch and zipper is incredible.
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It's beautifully designed.
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It's not over-engineered and it will literally last you a lifetime with their lifetime guarantee.
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So this is the final backpack that you will ever buy.
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Plus, they also offer international shipping, free shipping on orders over $49 in the United States.
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And if you don't like it for any reason, you can return or exchange it within 30 days.
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So you can buy it completely risk-free, fill it with all of your possessions.
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And if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back.
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Right now, you can get a 20% discount by going to the link in the description below
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or heading to nomadic.com slash modern wisdom using the code MW20 at checkout.
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That's nomatic.com slash modern wisdom and MW20 at checkout.
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Thank you very much for tuning in.
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If you enjoyed that clip, you will love the full-length episode with Dr. Huberman right now.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 169 sentences and 2337 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:13. The speaker talks fast, about 191 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- clock /klɑk/ (noun) — A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day.
- caffeine /ˈkæfiːn/ (noun) — An alkaloid, C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, found naturally in tea and coffee plants, which acts as a mild stimulant on the central nervous system.
- sunlight /ˈsʌnˌlaɪt/ (noun) — All the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun; especially, that in the visible spectrum and that bathes the Earth.
- mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/ (noun) — Any mechanical means for the conversion or control of motion, or the transmission or control of power.
- delay /dɪˈleɪ̯/ (noun) — A period of time before an event occurs; the act of delaying; procrastination; lingering inactivity.
- rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/ (noun) — The variation of strong and weak elements (such as duration, accent) of sounds, notably in speech or music, over time; a beat or meter.
- organize /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/ (verb) — To arrange in working order.
- naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ (adverb) — In a natural manner.
- interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/ (noun) — The situation or occurrence in which two or more things act upon one another to produce an effect; the effect resulting from such a situation or occurrence.
- stack /stæk/ (noun) — A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
- sunset /ˈsʌnˌsɛt/ (noun) — The moment each evening when the sun disappears below the western horizon.
- backpack /ˈbæk.pæk/ (noun) — A knapsack, sometimes mounted on a light frame, but always supported by straps, worn on a person’s back for the purpose of carrying things, especially when…
- essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/ (adverb) — In essence: by nature.
- lifetime /ˈlaɪf.taɪm/ (noun) — The duration of the life of someone or something.
- alert /əˈlɝt/ (adjective) — Attentive; awake; on guard.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- wake up /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ (verb) — To stop sleeping; to awake.
- get up (verb) — To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- leave out (verb) — To omit, to not include, to neglect to mention.
- carry on /ˈkæɹi ˈɑn/ (verb) — To take baggage or luggage onto an airplane, rather than check it.
- do with (verb) — Only used in to do with
- get out of (verb) — To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of.
- light on (verb) — Synonym of light upon.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 57 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/, pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/, toothbrush /ˈtuːθ.bɹʌʃ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, partially /ˈpɑɹʃəli/, possession /pəˈzɛʃn̩/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/
- Long words — get the stress right: mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/
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 clock, caffeine, sunlight.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you don't like it, they'll give · If you enjoyed that clip, you will love |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | clock, which is · caffeine, which will · however, which is |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are called · are organized · be gleaned |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've started · they've put |
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.