Shadowing Practice: Why Can't I Just Start? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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you have a productivity hack, an easy productivity hack.
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Instead of spending time getting in the mood to work, just start working.
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Confront the work.
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People think they need perfect conditions to start when in reality, starting is the perfect condition.
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I'm married to that.
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I love that.
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Because if you think, I obviously am somebody who always wants to optimize how much work I do per unit of time.
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And so I was, you know, there was definitely times earlier in my life I was really romanticized by these like very extensive morning routines
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and supplement rituals and like all this stuff of mental masturbation around the work that needed to be done.
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But when I looked at two hours later and nothing had actually gotten done, the moment you begin working is when your output per unit of time goes up.
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And so that makes beginning the single greatest hack that you can have for everything else that you do and work.
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Because the thing is, when you start working, you start getting in the mood to work, right?
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Like everything else is procrastinating around the work that you think you should do.
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But like, I have noticed for me, at least, I have some big mental tasks, you know what I mean?
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Like big content piece or big thing that you need, like, you know, it's gonna take real mental effort.
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It takes me like five minutes of actually being in it
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to then get a little bit of a lay of the land to then get into it.
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But I used to take hours to delay to start the first five minutes.
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And so my time compression of when I thought I should start doing something and when I started doing it over time, it's just compressed to the point where it's like the moment I think that I need to start doing it.
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Sometimes I just start it because then what happens, I get this open loop.
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And so rather than complete work at like, cause a lot of people were like, I want to complete it at this really nice, clean point.
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Stop halfway through the sentence.
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Cause it'll drive you mad.
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That's the Zygonic effect in full work.
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Do you know this story?
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Zygonic?
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Oh, wow.
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This is way more than I do.
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That's what you're leveraging here.
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The Zygonic Effect was a study originally done on servers in restaurants.
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And they realized, you've ever been at a restaurant
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and a server comes up and stands with their hands behind the back and go, what would you like tonight, sir?
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And you say, I'll have the lobster roll and a glass of red wine and a blah blah.
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And you're like, this motherfucker's not, he hasn't got a pen or a pad of paper.
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He's crazy.
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And then they go off and what they realized was servers in restaurants were unbelievably good
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at being able to recall exactly what a table's order was while that table's order was still open.
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So guys in table 16, they want to swap the peas out for a little bit of extra rice, and they're doing this thing.
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As soon as the table was closed, they couldn't remember anything.
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So this is an open loop, closed loop system and it's built into the brain.
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The brain abhors an open loop.
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It's the same reason why Netflix cliffhangers at the end of every episode guarantee
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that you'll watch the next one because you can't bear the fact.
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There's even novels in the dark romance genre that make guarantees that there won't be cliffhangers.
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They put it on the front or the back of the book and they say no cliffhangers guaranteed, which is people have so much distaste for it
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that it's a selling point that you get the closure at the end of it.
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And finishing halfway through a sentence reduces the activation energy required to begin that sentence the next day.
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And it keeps it in your mind too overnight.
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So I think, yeah, whether you've stumbled on it or whether you knew about it, you've managed to leverage a pretty powerful piece of psychology there.
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Sick.
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Going back to the work thing, another one from you that I absolutely adore.
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It just takes work, shitloads and shitloads of work.
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Every time I try and dress it up or cut a corner, I get brutally reminded the work just needs doing.
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The work doesn't care who you are.
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It just cares that it gets done.
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I'm actually going to reverse quote David Goggins on this one.
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but I love this quote that he has, which he says, there's no shortcuts for you, David, or there's no shortcuts for you, Goggins.
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I heard him say that.
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And I just love that as a refrain, which is that a lot of people look for a shortcut, but the idea that you say like, they're not for you, you don't get to use them.
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You are immune to shortcuts.
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I just love it because then it just further shortcuts the path to the work that needs to get done.
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And I wrote that tweet on my, I don't know, 11th run of this presentation that I'm doing, because that's a recent one.
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And so it was like 11 o'clock at night.
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And so right now I'm working triple shifts, which is not common for me.
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I usually do two, not three.
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So for me in normal work days, I wake up, I start working at six or seven, and then I go until about six-ish.
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So it's like 10 to 12, really concentrated hours work.
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And that I can do six and a half days a week.
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I usually take Saturday afternoons off.
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And it's really just because at that point I can't work anymore
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and my brain's due and then I get my one half day and then I'm good to go.
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And I'm rearing to work on Sundays.
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My triple shift is I go to dinner
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and I come back at 7.30 and then I work from 7.30 until 11.30 or 1 or whatever.
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And when I'm putting in triple shifts is when I know I'm really gassing it.
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And that's when I'm repeatedly doing 16, 17 a day of actual productive work.
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And I hear the same thoughts that everyone does, which is like, it's not going to matter.
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It's fine.
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It's good enough like i hate
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that like it it makes me sick to even say
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that right because the thing
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that i like david goggins right he's got like there's no shortcuts for you i would say the one
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that i have two that are like my internal ones one
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that is probably the most common is i will do what is required
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and this work needs doing and there's just no way around it
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and it's just it's just just looking at the face of the work and it's like smiling back at me, like no one else is going to do it.
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Um, and like, I love that one.
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Like when we're recording content in the early days, we're doing like a hundred shorts every time we did it.
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And it was direct to camera
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and it was the only time I could fit it in with all the portfolio stuff they were doing.
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And so I was, it was always like, I will do what's required.
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And that's been a really helpful refrain for me when I'm confronted with, especially when you know what needs to get done.
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And the second one is, but I'll know.
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And so like, even if it does go well, and even if everyone else says it's great, but I'll know.
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And it'll then rob me of all of the joy of all of those moments in that experience, because I'll know that I could have done better.
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And the thing is, is like to quote myself from earlier, like I've never regretted working harder ever, not once.
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And some people are like, on your deathbed, you're like, no, because I lived every moment of my day doing what I wanted to do.
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And I remember I had a boss when I, my first boss after college, she said this thing, I had had a particularly good weekend.
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And she said, I'm pretty sure happiness is stringing as many of those days in a row as as you possibly can.
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And although I hated the job, that piece of advice has actually been probably what has been my blueprint for how to live, which is like my birthday,
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it looks the same as my Tuesdays, which looks the same as my Sundays.
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You know what the original name pool for this podcast was?
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This is the only time in history, I've done branding my entire adult life.
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And with club nights all you're doing is coming up with
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brands paradiso oh it's it's tropical there'll be a flamingo a
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skint oh it's a cheap night it's for people to get
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fingered in the corner like it's we all i did was
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branding right i was a branding guy i'm pretty good at
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copywriting all i did was branding the one time i've had
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divine inspiration three in the morning wake up with the name was modern wisdom the one time out of every business, every night, every brand I've ever come up with, that was the one time.
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But on the list of the others, mind and matter was one of them.
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The other one was a quote from Tim Ferriss.
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It was called Crushing a Tuesday.
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And he said that what you should aim for in life is for your average Tuesday.
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Not the spectacular one-time private jet with the friends to go for the whatever,
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whatever, not the UFC power slap launch party staring at the back of Dan Bilzerian's dirty mullet.
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Not that.
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You want your average Tuesday to look the way that you want most of your life to do.
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And when I think about the days
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that I look back on at the end of my day and think today was a good day, invariably, it's the same few things.
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I worked very hard on something that I felt was worth doing, I worked out and I spent time with people that I enjoy being around.
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If I do those three things, I had a good day.
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And so that's been my, you know, Alex's simple blueprint for doing things.
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And I think the point that you were making earlier, I think it's worth hitting on again, which is just that like most people's definition of work is a negative one, which is why they abhor it, which is also why they misunderstand so many people who quote,
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I'll say quote here, are successful or head of them or whatever, is that both people, one person says the word work and the other person hears the word pain.
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And so the first step to like becoming more successful is understanding the language that the people who are successful are using.
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They're actually defining the word differently.
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And so whatever that thing is that you actually enjoy doing, where you lose track of time when you're in it, even if it's challenging, but usually it is challenging, right?
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Like it's not easy because then it's boring, right?
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Which is also why the uncertainty thing is so key, right?
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To not knowing if it's gonna work or not.
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You are gonna work though either way.
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Is that the people who are quote, addicted to work make it easy to be addicted to work because they do things worth doing.
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And I think a lot of it is coming down to making sure
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that you take the few precious seconds
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that we have to do the few things that are worth doing for the rest of your life.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 136 sentences and 1986 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:59. The speaker talks fast, about 199 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| loop noun | /luːp/ | A length of thread, line or rope that is doubled over to make an opening. |
| server noun | /ˈsɝvɚ/ | A program that provides services to other programs or devices, either in the same computer or over a computer network. |
| guarantee noun | /ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/ | Anything that assures a certain outcome. |
| triple adjective | /ˈtɹɪp.əl/ | Made up of three related elements, often matching |
| mood noun | /muːd/ | A mental or emotional state, composure. |
| productivity noun | /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/ | The state of being productive, fertile, or efficient. |
| halfway adverb | /ˌhæfˈweɪ/ | Half of the way between two points. |
| leverage noun | /ˈlɛv.(ə.)ɹɪd͡ʒ/ | A force compounded by means of a lever rotating around a pivot. |
| confront verb | /kənˈfɹʌnt/ | To stand or meet facing, especially in competition, hostility or defiance; to come face to face with. |
| addict noun | /ˈæd.ɪkt/ | A person who is addicted, especially to a harmful drug. |
| refrain noun | /ɹɪˈfɹeɪn/ | The chorus or burden of a song repeated at the end of each verse or stanza. |
| finger noun | /ˈfɪŋɡɚ/ | A slender jointed extremity of the human hand, (often) exclusive of the thumb, and the corresponding part, irrespective of including a thumb, in many other… |
| happiness noun | /ˈhæpinɪs/ | The emotion of being happy; joy; elation. |
| helpful adjective | /ˈhɛlp.fl̩/ | Furnishing help; giving aid; useful. |
| output noun | /ˈaʊtpʊt/ | Production; quantity produced, created, or completed. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| come down to verb | To reach by moving down or reducing. | |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go off verb | To explode. | |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 49 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I'll, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, closure /ˈkloʊ.ʒɚ/, activation /ˌæktəˈveɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, psychology /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, repeatedly /ɹɪˈpiːtɪdli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like loop, server, guarantee.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who always · guaranteed, which is · refrain, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have noticed · you've ever been · you've stumbled |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was really romanticized · be done · was closed |
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.