Shadowing Practice: This ONE AI Agent Will Make You So Productive It's Almost Unfair - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I have spent many years as a CEO

and board member in tech companies and AI companies and here's what I am seeing.

One AI tool that knows you really well is better than 10

that don't and the longer you use it the more productive you become.

So in this video podcast I will show you how to build

that one personal AI agent whichever platform you use

and we will use that personal AI agent to defeat the four forces that drain your productivity.

The first three forces steal your hours, but the last one steals your years.

The best AI tool is the one that saves you from opening another one.

Whatever you're trying to accomplish, your time and your attention are limited by default.

The more you spend managing the little things, the less you'll have left for the things that matter.

So here's the challenge.

Instead of one great AI chief of staff, we end up hiring a crowd of AI interns.

And you end up spending more time managing them and you become their chief of staff.

And that needs to change.

So what makes these personal AI agents different from the chatbots that you've already used?

Well, there are three things.

How do you remember them?

The easiest way to think about it is what I call ACT, A -C -T.

First, they're autonomous.

So you give it a goal and it figures out how to get the job done.

It runs on its own computer in the cloud.

It can work with other tools, other agents, other apps.

It can browse the web.

It can take actions.

Second, it's continuous.

So it doesn't stop working when you close the tab or you close the chat or you close your laptop.

It can orchestrate a task that can run for hours.

It'll come back to you when it's done.

And third, tailored.

It is crafted and trained with personalization in mind.

So it remembers your goals, your preferences, and how you like things done.

And by the way, I'm going to use ChatGPT's Dots, which is their personal AI agent, for the demos in this video.

But the principles apply to all personal AI agents, whether you're using Claude Cowork,

or Google's Gemini agent, or Meta has

Muse now, or Grok has GrokBot.

So you can pick your favorite tool.

The approach is the same.

Now, one rule to remember, let them manage, let them execute, let them partner with you, but it's you who makes the final call.

Otherwise, your agent might end up posting your bank statement on your Instagram story.

So be careful.

Let's start with the first force, fragments.

There is a job you do 1 ,200 times a day and it's not in your job description.

Sometimes all these AI tools make me feel like I am a tool.

In 2022, researchers published an article in Harvard Business Review.

They tracked employees of Fortune 500 companies over a month,

and they tracked and logged every time someone switched from one app or website to another.

The average person switched nearly 1 ,200 times a day.

Now, each switch costs only about two seconds, so that's about 40 minutes a day.

But that's as long as a lunch break.

But there's something more alarming in terms of hidden costs.

So fragmentation damages the quality of your attention.

Why?

Because the information we need is scattered everywhere.

So you spend time hunting for the information you need to do the work before you can actually do the work.

That's the first force.

Your personal AI agent has to fight that force.

And that AI agent needs to become the glue

that connects all your apps and information islands so you can focus on harvesting the info, not hunting for it.

Let's go through an example.

Imagine you have landed an interview for a job you have wanted for years.

This could change your career.

But now what?

Because your resume is in Google Drive somewhere, your notes from previous interviews sit somewhere else, the job description is somewhere else.

Your conversations with the recruiter are in some emails.

The company background is out there somewhere.

The evidence of your best work is actually scattered across the entire drive in presentations and documents and emails.

So this would take days to consolidate.

How do you position yourself for this interview?

Why not try something different?

You can go for a walk.

with your personal ai agent you can prompt it you can say

i've got an interview for a job

i have wanted for years help me walk in as the

most prepared candidate they've ever seen use my resume my past work my emails company background and research the company's interview process

Now, this could be any company, but here's what companies are doing right now.

McKinsey, for example, is testing AI agents that play a client in interviews for entry -level consultants.

So the candidate has to work through the client's problem live while the human interviewer is watching and scoring them.

That's the world we're walking into.

So your interview prep has to move up a level too, right?

You tell your AI agent to simulate that interview.

The prompt would be something like, now simulate the interview based on what you've learned about me and the role and the company.

Ask me realistic questions.

Challenge my answers.

And push back when my reasoning is weak.

Don't make it easy.

And then when you're finished, you can ask it to critique your performance, your answers.

You can write up notes and you can do it again.

Now, here's the best part.

If the interview goes badly, hey, who cares?

That was just a rehearsal.

Do it again and again.

At least you got your 10 ,000 steps in.

So your agent gathers everything.

It visits seven different tools and apps and acts like your interviewer.

And you focus on just one thing, getting better and getting that job.

Now, remember that these agents can get information from other places only after you connect them to those specific apps and tools.

Now, let's move to fighting the second force that slows down productivity, flood.

117 emails, 153 chat messages every single day.

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The best thing your AI agent can do might be what it never shows you.

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In 2025, Microsoft surveyed about 31 ,000 people.

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The average worker received 117 emails and 153

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Teams messages a day.

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Most of those emails got less than a minute of attention, sure, but that's the flood of information.

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And that's not even including the social media stuff that comes at you from every direction.

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And somewhere in there is that one message that actually mattered.

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And also the things that matter are usually pretty complex.

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So researchers at Carnegie Mellon tested

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Americans with private insurance on four basic terms like deductible

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and copay and only 14 % got all four definitions right

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so you're fighting two floods really too much reaches you all the time

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and at times it is too dense to act on

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and this is where your personal AI agent comes in handy it can filter the noise

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and decide what deserves your attention and simplify what deserves your judgment

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and that's exactly what a chief of staff would do right of course there's also the risk whoever

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or whatever is the gatekeeper decides what you get to see.

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So don't stop at setting the goals.

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Check the work and keep refining.

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So let's create that filter.

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Prompt your personal AI agent something like, I want to protect my focus and I want to only get pulled away for what truly needs me.

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So at 10 a .m., 1 p .m., and 4 p .m., check my emails, my messages,

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my calendar, and flag only decisions waiting for me.

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Deadlines that moved or changes that I need to know about park everything else for a 5 p .m summary.

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And this is a great prompt.

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I use it all the time

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Because you'll be surprised how much of your urgent work can wait until 5 p .m.

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And some of it can even wait until you retire.

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And, okay, what about the complexity?

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Well, this is how you untangle it.

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Let's say you're reviewing the lease for your new apartment.

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Okay, get it and give it to your personal agent and it will help.

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You can say something like, I'm about to sign this lease and I want to know exactly what I am agreeing to.

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You see, in all of these prompts, you're giving objectives, not just instructions, goals, not just guidance.

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Flag anything that could cost me money or limit what I can do and show me the exact clauses.

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Great prompt, you now have a translation layer between complexity and simplicity.

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You can quickly move from consuming information to making decisions.

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And that brings us to the third force, frequency, the work that keeps coming back whether you're ready or not.

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You remember to eat dinner every night.

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It's a habit.

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You'll remember you're flying to Paris with the love of your life three weeks from now

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and you can't wait to start packing.

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You're counting days.

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It's a headline event.

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But why do you have trouble remembering to take

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that vitamin once a week i do for two reasons first a habit is built by repetition

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and a weekly task doesn't get enough repetition to become a habit second

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we all need a trigger to remind us about those infrequent

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but recurring tasks no habit no headline no hope of tracking

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it unless of course

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you have your friendly neighborhood AI agent let me give you a real example a few weeks ago

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I bought my iPhone 18 you know I usually buy my iPhone every four years

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or so there's no reason to upgrade it otherwise

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but two days ago my agent reminded me hey your trade -in kit arrived about 14 days ago

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so today is the last day for you to return your old iPhone for your trade -in.

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I was like, oh wow, thank you, capes.

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That's her name, by the way.

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In my mind, she's a superhero who can juggle a hundred things at once, and I can't remember where I left my phone.

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So here's another example.

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My jaw used to block my airwaves when I used to sleep.

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So I would wake up 34 times every hour because my brain would jolt me awake every time I stopped breathing.

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So it's fixed now, but the other day I sent Capes a quick line saying, when was the last time I saw my pulmonologist,

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the sleep disorder specialist and of course she came back

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and said it's been a year so i asked her to set up an appointment

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and then this is the most important thing i said make sure

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i see my doctor every three to four months

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and that's how you make your agent your trigger

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and here's another thing to keep in mind my ai agent only set the appointment

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it did not have my health records or any financial information.

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Now, I am not comfortable sharing any of that with AI.

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That's my choice.

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For now, you can make your own judgment.

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So, here's your action item.

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Pick one thing in your life with no habit and no headline and hand it to your agent this week.

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And by the way, if you like these ideas, you'll enjoy my newsletter as well.

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It goes out every Tuesday.

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One insight, one tool, one practice and it's free.

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I love writing it.

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The link is right below.

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So far, these agents are helping you earn back your attention, your evenings, your peace of mind.

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But that leads us to a bigger question.

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What are you going to do with it?

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That's the fourth force, future.

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The first three forces steal your hours.

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This one steals your years.

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I'll do it later is how life slips away.

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There is a famous video on YouTube called The Last Lecture.

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You may have seen it already.

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It's by computer science professor Randy Pausch.

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And he gave it many years ago when he knew that he only had a few months to live.

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He had pancreatic cancer and he also gave another lecture before passing away

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and that was on time management in that one he talks about how

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Americans as a culture are very interested in money how much someone earns how they spend it their net worth

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and so on and on but we're not that interested in time

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We make a budget on how we spend money.

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but we don't budget how we spend time.

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And Randy's insight was, we have it backwards.

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He passed away less than a year after that lecture.

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He was 47, and he knew the value of time.

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So he spent it on what mattered the most.

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So here's the real question.

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AI agents will give you back time.

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What are you gonna do with it? productivity is great only

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when it helps you achieve your purpose

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so here's the action item write down three things you keep saving for the future

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and then tell your agent these are the priorities every Sunday evening review my calendar

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and work from this week tell me what I did to achieve these priorities and what I should change next week.

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Now your agent moves you to what matters to you and toward your future.

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The strange thing about time is that it feels precious only when there is less of it left.

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So take a look at your watch.

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Really, look.

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you know what time it is?

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It's your time.

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Thank you and I love you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “This ONE AI Agent Will Make You So Productive It's Almost Unfair”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: agent, interview, personal, tool, force. This video has 213 sentences and 2284 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:24. The speaker talks at a steady 139 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
prompt verb	/pɹɑmpt/	To lead (someone) toward what they should say or do.
habit noun	/ˈhæb.ɪt/	An action performed on a regular basis.
steal verb	/stiːl/	To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it.
flood noun	/flʌd/	An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water.
productivity noun	/ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/	The state of being productive, fertile, or efficient.
lecture noun	/ˈlɛk.t͡ʃə/	A spoken lesson or exposition, usually delivered to a group.
headline noun	/ˈhɛd.laɪn/	The heading or title of a magazine or newspaper article.
earn verb	/ɝn/	To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.
priority noun	/pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/	An item's relative importance.
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
remind verb	/ɹəˈmaɪnd/	To cause one to experience a memory (of someone or something); to bring to the notice or consideration (of a person).
calendar noun	/ˈkæl.ən.də/	Any system by which time is divided into days, weeks, months, and years.
cape noun	/keɪp/	A piece or point of land, extending beyond the adjacent coast into a sea or lake; a promontory; a headland.
filter noun	/ˈfɪltɚ/	A device which separates a suspended, dissolved, or particulate matter from a fluid, solution, or other substance; any device that separates one substance from…
judgment noun	/ˈd͡ʒʌd͡ʒ.mənt/	The act of judging.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
come back verb	To return to a place.
pass away verb	To die.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
go out verb	To leave, especially a building.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
move up verb	To promote, put onto a higher level.
push back verb	To refute or argue against a position or an accusation; to express one's own view on a situation.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

How do you remember them?
It'll come back to you when it's done.
How do you position yourself for this interview?
What are you going to do with it?
What are you gonna do with it?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have spent · you've already used · have landed
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is crafted · is scattered · is actually scattered

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 33 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, you'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, specialist /ˈspɛʃəlɪst/, instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, complexity /kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/, continuous /kənˈtɪn.juː.əs/, autonomous /ɔˈtɑnəməs/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like prompt, habit, steal.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: This ONE AI Agent Will Make You So Productive It's Almost Unfair - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?