Shadowing Practice: What Was I Thinking - Learn English Speaking with Video

For the last 10 years, I've woke up at 5 a.m every single day.

And I can say at the start, it was single-handedly one of the best things I ever did and the only reason why this YouTube channel even exists.

But nowadays, waking up that early pretty much serves me no purpose, yet I still do it every single day.

And in this video, I want to talk about why that is.

But to do

that, we need to go all the way back over 10 years ago before I even started waking up this early.

I used to be someone that actually stayed up incredibly late.

When I was in high school and into college, I would stay up well past midnight nearly every single day.

In high school, I worked for a movie theater and I would often have to work rather late hours, easily 10, 11, 12 o'clock every single night, and then I would go to the gym afterwards,

so I sometimes wouldn't get home until 1, 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning, and then I would maybe stay up for an hour or two before I finally went to bed.

So I was very often staying up until 3 o'clock in the morning because of work, and then when I went to college, I would again often stay up well past midnight, 3, 4, sometimes even 5 o'clock in the morning,

just doing whatever, whether it was working on schoolwork, hanging out with friends, doesn't matter what it was.

I was doing stuff late into the hours of the morning, and then I would wake up rather late, maybe 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the morning.

I would finally get up, go to my classes, and just rinse and repeat that over and over again.

This didn't actually change until around my junior or senior year of college.

This is when I met my wife, girlfriend at the time, and she went to bed much earlier than I did.

And since she would often come over and stay at my place, I lived in just a dorm, just one single room.

So if you're sleeping, everyone in that room is sleeping

because no one else can do anything without waking up the person that's sleeping.

So when she would go to bed around, let's say like 9.30, 10 o'clock, I just started going to bed with her.

And if I was going to bed at 10 o'clock at night, it didn't make sense for me to sleep until 10 or 11 like I used to be doing.

So I just started getting up earlier.

At first I was getting up around like seven and six o'clock, whatever it is.

But over time I realized that I didn't need that much sleep.

Like I was getting too much sleep by sleeping in that late.

So I decided I was going to start getting up at 5 in the morning

because that's when it naturally felt good for me to wake up based on going to bed so early in the night.

So now that I started going to bed earlier, I started to wake up earlier.

And that happened throughout my college.

I was getting up earlier, going to bed earlier, but really this whole pattern of waking up this early wasn't really something I stuck to.

I just kind of did it for a while whenever I went to bed early, but I would often still stay up late and then sleep in late.

It wasn't until I decided I wanted to start this YouTube channel

that I really started waking up really really early by getting

up consistently at 5am every single day i was able to get to my day job

and work through that day job

and be done working by like three o'clock every single day and

that meant i had from three o'clock all the way to

whenever i wanted to go to bed to spend time making videos

and creating content on the side

while i was still able to do my full-time job in the morning hours of the day

and if i wanted i could flip-flop this

and i could do youtube stuff in the morning

and i could work in the afternoon

but for me it made the most sense to go in in the morning and work because nobody else was there.

I could get tons of stuff done

and then I was able to leave before any traffic or anything that I had to worry about.

Now at first when I was doing this getting up early and working on YouTube in the evening, I would still sleep in and go to bed later on the weekends, but I actually changed that entirely

when I really wanted to take YouTube much more seriously and turn it into a full-time job.

So I started waking up at 5 a.m on the weekends as well.

That way I could get a ton of work

and I could get like four hours of work in the morning between like 5 and 10 o'clock, whatever it was, before almost anyone else even got up and got ready for the day.

So before everyone else was ready for the day, I was able to get in essentially a half of a day's worth of work on Saturday and Sunday, which really allowed me to propel my YouTube channel quite far

without actually sacrificing the time I wanted to spend with people on the weekends.

And this worked out really well because my wife, girlfriend at the time, she was in PA school, which was a very, very tough schooling where there's lots of studying and stuff that you have to do.

So she was often having to study a ton on the weekends in the morning, and I would just get up and I would work on those days while she was studying.

So I was able to do YouTube stuff while she was studying for PA school.

And it worked out really well for us in that time period.

And for that, like I said, first, like two, three years where I was getting up super early 5am on the weekends and the weekdays, I was able to get so much done with the YouTube channel

that eventually after only being with the YouTube channel for about two, two and a half years, I was able to go and actually take YouTube entirely full time.

And from there you may think, okay, well now that I'm doing YouTube full time, why would I wake up early?

Because I don't need to spend time in the evenings doing additional stuff.

And obviously there's no point in getting up early on the weekend

because I'm not working on the weekends anymore since I'm able to work full time during the week on YouTube.

But I still continued to get up at five o'clock in the morning every single day.

Again, part of that is because my wife, she goes to bed quite early.

So for me, if I go to bed at the same time as her, it's just natural for me to wake up much earlier.

But it's also something that I find that I'm more productive in the morning.

Like I said, I used to be a night owl.

I used to do all my work super late at night, you know, 1am, 2am, 3am.

I would get tons of really good work done.

But I think something that most people don't realize is

that this night owl versus early bird kind of thing is somewhat malleable.

You can kind of shift and change between them.

I was very productive as a night owl when I was staying up late and going to bed late, but when I went to bed early and I got up early, I was able to be productive in the mornings.

It really just depends on what amount of sleep you get.

If you're going to bed late and waking up early, obviously your mornings are going to suck.

And even if you do the opposite and you go to bed really early and you sleep in really late, you're also going to feel kind of off because you're getting way more sleep than your body actually needs.

So you need to find this healthy balance of getting the right amount of sleep, and it doesn't really matter when you wake up or

when you go to bed as long as that amount of sleep is correct between them.

That's what I think a lot of people that think

that they're night owls or think that they're early birds are really mixing up is

that the people that really think

that they can't get much done in the morning maybe aren't getting enough sleep

when they wake up early and the people that think

that they're really good early bird people are probably just people

that get plenty of sleep and also happen to wake up relatively early.

So obviously for me productivity was the main reason I started waking up super early

but the reason that I continue to do it is because it gives me much more flexibility in my day.

If I get up at five and I start work by at 6 a.m every single day, that means if I work a full eight hour day, so we're going from 6 a.m all the way to 3 p.m.,

and that's assuming a one hour lunch in the middle, that means I'm done with work at 3 p.m., which means I have the whole afternoon and evening to do whatever I want,

whether it's running errands or doing something else for enjoyment.

And the nice thing about this is, at least where I live, in the winter, it gets dark relatively early.

It'll be dark around like 4.30, 5, maybe as late as 5.30 in the early winter, which means if you work a standard job where you're getting off of work at 5 o'clock

because you spend time sleeping in until eight o'clock or so, that means you never essentially see the sun because you're working during the entire daylight hours of the day.

So for me, getting off at three o'clock, for example, instead of five or six o'clock means

that I at least have like an hour or two of sunlight

that I can go out and enjoy if I want to, while most people that are sleeping and working normal hours don't have that ability.

Now, obviously I know not everyone can change their work schedule and they don't have flexibility, but a lot of times if you're working in like a programming space, you have the flexibility to work more flexible hours

because it's really a matter of do you get the job done and you don't really have to be, you know, beholden to hours and opening hours and customers.

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You kind of just need to program, get the work done, and you can do that during whatever hours you want.

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So I'd recommend just try it out.

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See if getting up a little bit earlier and going to bed a little bit earlier is something that you might enjoy.

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At first, it's going to really, really suck.

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Trust me, the first few weeks of you doing this are really hard to adapt to, but once your body kind of gets used to shifting your time earlier and earlier, it'll become second nature.

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And for me, honestly, I just automatically get up super early without even thinking about it

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because my body just naturally gets up at that time.

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I don't need to set an alarm and even if I stay up kind of later, my body is so used to getting up at this time, it just automatically gets up between five and six o'clock every single morning, sometimes even before five o'clock.

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So if you haven't given it a shot, just spend one month and trial this out.

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See if getting up earlier and going to bed earlier is something that'll work for you and something that you actually enjoy.

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And don't force yourself to do it.

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If you go through that whole month process and you really hate it, just swap back to what you were doing before because if you don't enjoy it.

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It's going to feel miserable the entire time.

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If you don't see the benefits of either productivity or open time in the evenings and weekends, it's definitely not something for you.

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But for me, the extra productivity and the extra daylight I get in the winter is 100% worth it for me.

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 Practice: What Was I Thinking - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?