Shadowing Practice: the paradox of being ambitious but lazy - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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I want to do everything, so I do nothing.
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I want to do everything, so I do nothing.
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I know you.
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You think you're gonna do something great with your life.
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Young.
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Ambitious.
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I know because there are 16 taps open in your browser right now.
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That New Yorker article.
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The sourdough recipe you never got around to.
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Your conversation with chat about the pros and cons of going to law school.
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The flights to Japan.
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You keep clicking between them.
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You keep promising yourself you'll come back to each one.
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But you don't.
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I know because you tried to read two pages of Crime and Punishment and gave up after 10 minutes.
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Again.
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I know because last night at some point you ended up on the floor rotting.
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I know because the list of lives you want to live keeps getting longer.
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Writer, lawyer, chef, C-suite exec,
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someone who can speak Chinese,
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French, and Italian, someone who bakes pastries in the south of France.
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Here's the thing.
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I've spent most of this year wanting things.
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I've wanted to write a book.
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I've wanted to start a company.
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I've wanted a different version of my apartment.
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I've wanted to film.
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And in all those wantings,
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I was very productive in my head.
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The actual gym attendance is a different story.
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The page has a bookmark on page 47 that hasn't moved since February.
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The apartment looks the same, maybe even worse.
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I still burn my chicken and my Chinese has disintegrated to the level of a six-month-old.
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The truth is, since college, options have only multiplied.
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Every life I scroll past looks possible.
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Social media makes all these lives feel close enough to touch but too far to actually reach.
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So how are we supposed to choose?
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I am addicted to the feeling of being motivated.
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There's this adrenaline, this high,
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this buzz that comes when you get a new idea in your head
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and suddenly I can see how my life is supposed to go.
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Every time I get a new idea,
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the first 48 hours are a blur.
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It feels like the best version of me has arrived.
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I start a new Notion page.
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I pour my heart out onto this freaking page.
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I imagine the first day of doing it,
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the first week, how it feels when I finally accomplish the idea.
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And I lay it out beautifully in my own head.
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And the dreaming feels like working.
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That's a trick.
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the mapping out, the planning, the imagining.
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I'm genuinely productive in those 48 hours.
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I'm producing dopamine and not much else.
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Then it gets hard.
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You have to sit down and maybe write the draft for the millionth time.
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You need to go to the gym when it's freezing and you just wanna stay inside and order a burrito.
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By the end of the week,
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the energy that I had on Monday has completely been depleted.
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And then the dream dies.
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But when I say I'm doing nothing,
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I'm not actually doing nothing.
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I'm scrolling TikTok.
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I'm watching the people who are doing the things that I said I was going to do.
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I'm watching them shoot their videos in their penthouse apartments.
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I'm watching them ride the hajong loop.
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I'm watching them live the life that I planned so perfectly in my head 48 hours ago.
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My eyes are open.
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My phone is hot.
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The dream is still in there somewhere.
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It's just being pummeled hour by hour by the spectacle of other people doing it instead.
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And that's a cycle that I keep getting trapped in.
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The dreaming, the dying, the rotting.
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Every few weeks, new idea, same arc.
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And here's what I think is underneath it.
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The dreaming is escape.
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The first 48 hours of a new idea are rare hours where I don't feel like I'm trapped in my own life.
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I'm not in this apartment with this body with the same routine
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that I've been doing day after day it feels like a
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new world a new possibility a new path has opened up there is a gap
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that exists in all of us the version of us
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that imagines and the one
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that does i've tried a few explanations for this i've done
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a little bit of research none of them are wrong
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but none of them feel quite right either
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so i want to walk through it and talk with you guys about my findings and just my thoughts on
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feeling stuck and what that actually means.
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Here's what people usually say.
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This is their stereotypical advice.
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They will tell you that it's decision paralysis.
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You have too many options.
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It's modern life.
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The world has gotten too big and the choices have gotten too many and the brain cannot pick.
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They will reference Sylvia Plath.
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Like every Tumblr turned subset girl,
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this quote will be pinned to the Pinterest.
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Esther sees her life branching out before her like a fig tree
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and on every branch is a different version of who she might become.
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A husband in a happy home,
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a famous poet, an editor in Europe,
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an Olympic lady crew champion.
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She wants every fig, but choosing one means losing all the rest.
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So she sits in the crook of the tree,
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starving to death, while the figs wrinkle and go black and drop one by one to the ground at her feet.
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It is a beautiful and terrible passage,
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and it's somehow on every 20-something-year-old's mood board.
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They will quote that passage and tell you that's why you can't move.
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That's a perfect visualization of it.
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They will also tell you to just start.
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Take the first step.
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Done is better than perfect.
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They will tell you discipline is the answer.
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They will reference grit and willpower in that one study about marshmallows.
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They will tell you to choose joy.
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Pick the thing that lights you up.
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Trust your intuition.
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Your authentic self knows what's best.
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I have read all of these.
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I followed all of these.
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None of them have actually fixed it.
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Not because the advice is wrong exactly,
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but because the advice assumes a few things that doesn't seem to be true.
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The first thing it assumes is that I don't know to just start.
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I do, but knowing doesn't actually fix it.
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The second assumes that being stuck is just one thing with one fix.
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Stuck is not one thing.
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I have come to realize that feeling stuck isn't one thing.
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It's around four.
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They overlap, they feel similar,
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but they have completely different exits.
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Now let's talk about what Stuck is.
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The first one, too many options.
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This is the fig tree,
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the version where the world has too many possibilities and every choice forecloses the other.
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Pick the editor in Europe and you don't get the husband and kids.
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Pick the husband and kids and you don't get the famous poet.
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So you sit at the bottom of the tree and just watch the figs rot.
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This version of Stuck, it's real.
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I think we've all felt it,
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but I think it's much rarer than we make it out to be.
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Most of the time, what we call too many options isn't actually that.
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It's comfort we don't want to leave.
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It's the relationship that's fine but going nowhere.
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The job that we've been meaning to quit for two years.
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That Sunday night where we said we would finally start writing the book but just watch Law and Order instead.
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Or maybe it's a refusal that we haven't really admitted to ourselves yet.
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When we said that we really wanted this thing in life
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but for some reason we just never seem to have time for it or get around to it.
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Or maybe it's just the rumination and the loop
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and the overthinking in our brain that just keeps going
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and going in circles before we could even get to the picking part.
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These are three different conditions and they're all living under this choice metaphor.
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All of them are not a problem of options,
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which is why the standard advice,
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just pick one, pick the one that lights you up,
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trust your gut, often doesn't actually land.
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This advice is built for a version of stuck where decision is the actual problem.
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But most of the time,
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decision isn't the problem at all.
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The second one, too much comfort.
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There's a 19th century Russian novel called Oblomov.
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Oblomov?
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I'm butchering that.
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It's about a young nobleman who,
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over the course of hundreds of pages,
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cannot get out of bed.
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Not because he has too many options,
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but because his bed is warm,
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his apartment is quiet, his life is fine.
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The cost-benefit of doing anything looks bad.
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The Russian critic who reviewed it coined a term for this.
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Oblomovism.
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The seductive pull of complacency.
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And I think this is a version of Stuck that gets misdiagnosed as a fig tree the most.
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People say, I have too many options,
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when what they actually have is too much comfort.
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The exit isn't choosing between options,
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it's choosing to get out of bed.
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The third one, a quiet refusal.
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There is a story by Herman Melville called Bartleby the Scrivener.
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Bartleby is a clerk in a 19th century Wall Street law office.
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His job is copying legal documents by hand.
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He's good at it.
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But then one day, his boss asks him to proofread a document.
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Bartleby looks up and says,
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I would prefer not to.
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The boss is confused and he lets it go.
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But the next time, same response.
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Then Bartleby stops copying altogether.
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Then he stops leaving the office.
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He sleeps there.
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He barely eats.
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The boss tries reason.
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He tries threats.
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He tries offering money.
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Nothing works.
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Bartleby keeps saying, I would prefer not to.
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He never raises his voice.
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He never gives a reason.
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He doesn't argue.
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He just refuses.
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The boss eventually moves the entire firm to a different building to escape him.
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Bartleby stays.
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He gets arrested for vagrancy.
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He dies in prison, still refusing to eat.
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He wasn't depressed in any way.
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He wasn't paralyzed by abundance.
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He was refusing.
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And his refusal was impossible to argue with because there was nothing to argue against.
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He didn't say no. He just said,
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I would prefer not to.
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And I think there's a version of Stuck that works exactly like Bartleby's.
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It's the version where you keep saying that you want to do something,
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you want that identity, you want that life,
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but somehow you never do it.
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The book that you've been meaning to write for three years,
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the career change that you've been researching since 2022,
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the conversation you've been needing to have with your family for six months.
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You plan it, you think about it,
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you make outlines, but you don't actually do it.
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You are the boss in the story,
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the version of you that wants it,
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that keeps trying every approach,
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reasons, threats, new systems, discipline,
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but none of them actually work.
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You keep telling yourself that the problem is willpower or focus or finding the right system,
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but the consistency is informational.
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If you've been not doing the same thing for years across every system that you've tried,
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the not doing is telling you something.
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The version of you that decides is the boss.
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The version that acts is Bartleby.
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The boss keeps trying again, Bartleby keeps refusing.
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And Bartleby doesn't argue, he just doesn't move.
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Maybe you don't actually want the thing.
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Maybe you don't want it enough.
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Maybe you want the identity of the person that does the thing more than you want the work of getting it.
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you've wanted it once and you don't want any more and you just haven't realized that yet.
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That's what your Bartleby has been refusing.
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You just haven't asked him yet.
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See, the exit for this one is a motivation.
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The boss in the story tried motivation.
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It didn't work.
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The exit is honesty.
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Maybe you don't actually want this thing.
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Maybe this path isn't for you.
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Most of the time it's telling you something that you already know or half know.
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You just didn't want to know it yet.
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The fourth one is for the overthinkers.
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If you're the type of person that can describe your stuck in seven different ways
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and still can't move This one is for you
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You are ruminating the morning when you've been at your desk for two hours
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and the cursor just hasn't moved The conversation that you've been replaying
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so often in your head that you can't actually remember what was said anymore
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And the looping isn't neutral I think we treat sitting with a thought as healthy reflection
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But it isn't the longer you stay in the loop the worse you feel
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and the loop itself is what's doing the damage There is a part of the brain called the default mode network.
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It's a circuit that runs when you're not focused on a specific task.
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In a healthy brain, it cycles in and out,
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but in a stuck brain, it gets stuck on.
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It runs on its own seam,
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way after the original feeling has actually passed.
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It runs even after you've forgotten why you've started,
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which means the loop isn't deciding.
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It's just looping, and you can't think your way out of a loop because the thinking is the loop.
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This is the version of stuck,
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where everyone telling you to just decide is being useless.
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Deciding requires the loop to break.
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The loop will not break by being talked to.
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The loop breaks by being moved through A walk,
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a friend that you can call,
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cold water on your face,
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some breathing exercises Anything specific enough that the loop can't fall back into.
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The exit for this one isn't more thought,
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it's less So if you were to ask me which type of stuck that I'm stuck on,
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I would say I'm stuck at different ones at different times Sometimes I'm in two versions at once.
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Sometimes I'm just switching in a single afternoon.
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But this is the whole point of the video.
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Stuck isn't just one thing and it doesn't just have one solution.
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When I am in the fig tree version of stuck,
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I try to ask myself,
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what really are my options here?
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Do I actually have all these options or am I just imagining these options?
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Usually a couple of the figs aren't even real.
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I just thought that I was supposed to want these figs.
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When I'm in this comfort version of stuck,
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I think that's when I try to just do one small thing,
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truly just take it day by day.
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When I'm in the refusal version,
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I think it takes me a while to realize that the thing that I'm stuck on,
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the thing that I want,
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might not actually be what I want at all.
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But I think it's good to just be present that this option could always be there.
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And when I'm in this loop of stuck,
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I think doing physical activities really helps.
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I think the worst you can do is just be rotting and thinking and cooped up in your apartment.
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but we can try.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice your English listening and speaking skills through the shadowing technique. By engaging with a thought-provoking transcript about ambition and laziness, you will enhance your vocabulary, improve your pronunciation, and develop a better understanding of natural spoken English. This lesson encourages you to reflect on your personal aspirations while practicing English expressions related to motivation and productivity.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Ambitious - having a strong desire for success or achievement.
- Motivated - driven to take action or achieve goals.
- Options - available choices or alternatives.
- Procrastination - delaying or postponing tasks or decisions.
- Productivity - the effectiveness in producing desired results.
- Dreaming feels like working - the sensation of being productive while only fantasizing about tasks.
- Adrenaline - a hormone that increases excitement and energy levels.
- Burn out - becoming exhausted from overworking or stress.
Practice Tips
To make the most of this lesson using the shadowing technique, follow these tips:
- Start Slow: Begin by listening to the transcript at a slower pace. This will help you grasp the nuances of pronunciation and intonation.
- Repeat and Imitate: After listening, try to shadow speak along with each phrase. Pay attention to the rhythm and emphasis of the speaker.
- Use a Shadowing App: Utilize a shadowing app or a shadowing site to replay segments easily. This will allow you to practice multiple times without interruption.
- Challenge Yourself: As you become more comfortable, increase the speed to match the original video. This will improve your fluency and help you speak more naturally.
- Record Yourself: Use your phone or a recording device to capture your practice sessions. Listening back will help you identify areas for improvement in pronunciation and pacing.
By dedicating time to practice with the shadowing technique, you'll see significant advancements in your ability to express your thoughts clearly in English, just as the speaker navigates complex feelings of ambition and laziness.
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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