Shadowing Practice: The #1 Habit for Productivity - Dr Andrew Huberman - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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I've been thinking about this a lot this year.
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I've been thinking about this a lot this year.
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What do we need to know about the neuroscience of making habit setting more easy?
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I imagine that there must be some really interesting.
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Oh, man.
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I just had James Clear on the podcast.
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And it's so interesting when you sit down with somebody who's like the habits guy and you compare it against the neuroscience.
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And so there's two ways into this.
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And James has done a magnificent job of explaining things that people can do to improve their habits and reduce bad habits.
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The reason I'm so bullish about people understanding a little bit of mechanism behind the checklist of things to do is 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, 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 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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Okay, so in fairness to James and the incredible work that he's done, I'm gonna just kind of look at this a little bit through the lens of neuroscience.
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And I'm really glad that we're talking about this because one of the things that he said that I think is so, so true is that the thoughts and by extension, the emotions, but really the thoughts that you have right now, your ability to focus right now
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is strongly driven by the inputs you received in the preceding hours and even days.
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So one of the things that's really interesting about focus and attention, and a lot of habits have to do with, I don't want to procrastinate, I want to do this.
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We can talk about exercise, but let's talk about cognitive stuff.
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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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Let's think about it on the backend.
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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.
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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, walk into your car,
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sitting on the plane for a second, thinking about a podcast you did earlier or something you heard or a discussion 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, 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, one time and self-testing, significantly better.
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You ever had Peter C.
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Brown on the show?
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No.
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Author of Make It Stick?
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No, but I like the title.
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You need to bring Peter on.
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Peter was episode, I would guess like 30 on Modern Wisdom.
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You'll be a thousand and 30.
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And the best synopsis that I got from him, learning how to learn was 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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Fucking money.
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Exactly.
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And that's the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve.
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Guys like him, guys like James Clear, that they have a real, when I say unconscious genius, I mean, clearly they put thought into and structure into what they teach, but the neuroscience supports everything you just said, which is what he just said.
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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, is so vitally important to the anti-forgetting process.
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Okay.
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Now, in terms of actually being able to focus, actually being able to do work, it's so clear that thoughts,
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and this is the beautiful statements and work of a woman named Jenny Groh, who's spelled G-R-O-H, at Duke University, who's a neuroscientist, been studying sensory integration for a long time.
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You know, I've long thought about, and I think we now understand as a field, what sensations are.
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So sensations are the physical stimuli in the environment, photons of light, mechanical pressure, volatile odorants in the environment that lead to sight, touch, smell, et cetera.
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How that gets converted into chemical and electrical signals in the brain, we understand as a field.
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We understand sensation.
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We understand perception.
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Perception is which of those sensations you happen to be paying attention to, okay?
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We understand emotions now more as a subset of something that we think of more broadly as states that are set by your autonomic nervous system, how alert you are, how not alert you are.
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And then emotions are kind of layered on top of that, right?
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Lisa Feldman Barrett has beautiful descriptions of these and so on.
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And there's some debate about what emotions really are, but we know what they are neurobiologically and psychologically.
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And behaviors, we know what they are, right?
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It's a behavior.
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And then there's the don't go behaviors, the suppression of behavior.
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And then there are memories, right?
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But for the longest time, it's been unclear what are thoughts, like, what are they?
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Are they just like spontaneous geysering up of memories or like, what's going on there?
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And Jenny Groh, I think has the absolute best description of these.
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And this is based on experimentation.
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If we seed some idea, so let's say I say to you, let's not talk about cats because I'm a dog person, but I say, okay, Chris, and this isn't a trick question, I promise, because it's always weird when people start doing this.
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I'm not Oz Perlman or something.
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I'm not going to tell you your pin code.
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Think about a dog.
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What kind of dog is it?
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Golden Retriever.
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Golden Retriever.
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Okay.
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So as you think about the Golden Retriever, what other things come to mind about the Golden Retriever?
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It's got a little
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neckerchief on okay red neckerchief great red neckerchief like what else about golden retriever
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fluffy fluffy i'll say so there's a tactile thing okay um anything else about golden retrievers this is very specific to you
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bouncing up and down rolling on its back smells a little bit but i like it great okay so there's i like
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it you like this okay so jenny grows and others data point to the fact that 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 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, 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, which is what Jenny Groh's main work is about how you find yourself in space.
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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 Now, when you think about sitting down to do work or to learn something or 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 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 they'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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If you go back and you look at the history of attention and thinking, and I have, you can find these incredible pictures that they would give kids who had trouble, probably had ADHD or just kind of rambunctious boys in most cases.
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And they literally gave them helmets with two eye holes so they couldn't look at anything else.
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They couldn't hear anyone else, right.
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Used to be, you know, kid with the hoodie on and the cap and you'd write.
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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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Oh, wow.
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So we 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 or 15 minutes before you sat down to try to work.
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Now, in China, they're doing some very interesting experiments of having kids stare literally at a focal point on the wall for a number of minutes before beginning their work.
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It sounds a little extreme, a little military, but one thing that I've been doing before I prepared to do any writing, 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, 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 and 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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I'm going down the stairs.
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There are no phones in there.
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I'm trying to figure out how I can have no internet there.
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I have this little tent sauna that I use now with incandescent lights that I love because I couldn't use my barrel sauna where I was at.
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I think it's sauna space makes these incredible.
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I like them because they get hot right away and it's got the red light.
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I go in there.
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It's grounded and there's no wifi in there.
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The phone goes dead the moment you go in there.
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You're in a mini Faraday cage.
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Yeah, and I don't like bringing the phone into the sauna too.
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That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom.
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Thank you very much for tuning in.
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If you enjoyed that clip, the full episode in all of its glory, waiting for you.
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Right here.
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Come on, press it.
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Context & Background

In the enlightening discussion led by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a prominent neuroscientist, the focus lies on how understanding the neuroscience behind habit formation can significantly enhance productivity. Dr. Huberman emphasizes the necessity of grasping the mechanisms behind our learning and productivity habits. This knowledge empowers individuals to customize their approaches, making it easier to implement changes. He highlights fascinating insights into focus, attention, and the importance of less stimulating breaks, which can transform the way we work and learn. By integrating these principles into our daily lives, we can improve our cognitive performance and enrich our learning experiences.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

  • “Let's focus on the inputs.” - A reminder to pay attention to what influences your thoughts and emotions.
  • “Reflection is key.” - Stressing the importance of contemplating what you've learned.
  • “Boring breaks boost productivity.” - Encouraging less stimulating downtime to enhance focus.
  • “Self-testing enhances retention.” - Emphasizing the role of testing yourself to improve memory.
  • “Neuroplasticity requires attention.” - Underlining that learning new information needs focus and alertness.

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

To effectively incorporate Dr. Huberman’s insights into your English-speaking practice, consider the following step-by-step shadowing guide:

  1. Select a segment - Use a shadow speak or shadowing app to pick segments from the video related to focus and productivity.
  2. Listen attentively - Play the audio while concentrating on the phrases and intonation. Absorb the emphasis Dr. Huberman places on key points.
  3. Pause and repeat - After listening, pause to repeat what you’ve heard. Pay close attention to the rhythm, speed, and pronunciation of the words.
  4. Engage in reflection - Following each practice session, take a moment to think about what you learned. Consider how these phrases relate to your own productivity habits and how you can implement them.
  5. Self-test regularly - Implement self-testing techniques by summarizing what you learned. This can involve writing down the main ideas or reciting them to reinforce your memory.

Utilizing a shadowing site can enhance this process, providing a platform to practice daily. By incorporating these methods into your routine, you’ll not only improve your English speaking skills but also develop productive habits that align with Dr. Huberman’s neuroscience insights.

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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