Get the app

Shadowing practice: Fighting Workaholism: You Are Not a Success Machine

Listen to the line, then say it out loud
Line 1

Full transcript

  1. As a social scientist, I'm intensely interested in addictive behaviors.0:05
  2. A lot of people watching this video right now, they're watching it because they want an edge and that's great.0:10
  3. I admire that.0:14
  4. You're strivers.0:15
  5. So am I.0:16
  6. But strivers in the striving process, they open themselves up to one of the most deleterious addictive behaviors known to mankind and that's workaholism.0:17
  7. People will work hard.0:27
  8. It will create dysfunction in their relationships.0:29
  9. They will exhibit hiding behavior where they're sneaking around.0:31
  10. You don't believe it?0:35
  11. Well, ask yourself, do you sometimes sneak into the bathroom to check your email, your work email?0:36
  12. Do you snap shut your laptop computer on a Sunday afternoon when your partner comes home?0:42
Show all 112 lines Show fewer lines
  1. Yeah, yeah, well you're doing it too.0:47
  2. People get defensive when people question how much they're working.0:49
  3. Well that's classic addictive behavior.0:52
  4. Now I have found in my own work that workaholism actually isn't the primary addiction.0:54
  5. It's a secondary addiction.0:59
  6. The primary addiction for most strivers is an addiction to success.1:00
  7. Success is achieving something of merit and being rewarded for it.1:04
  8. Many strivers, many of my students, me, look, I'm guilty here.1:09
  9. We feel fully alive when amazing things are happening and we're able to create value.1:15
  10. We don't feel fully alive when we're not doing those things, quite frankly.1:20
  11. It's a real reward to see something come to fruition, to get that deal, to finish that book in my case, to teach a class that goes incredibly well, to1:23
  12. get that compliment.1:33
  13. A lot of that success addiction behavior is neurophysiological as a matter of fact.1:34
  14. You find that people actually get dopamine in a way, that's a neuromodulator that's implicated in all forms of human addiction, that they get dopamine specifically when they feel that1:40
  15. they're succeeding at work.1:50
  16. While they keep seeking those rewards, they keep seeking success and seeking success is hard.1:51
  17. You have to excel and you have to excel compared to other people and that means you need to outwork other people and that leads to the work addiction.1:57
  18. The underlying problem is success addiction.2:06
  19. Behind that there's actually something even more profound which is a tendency to reduce yourself to nothing more than a success machine.2:08
  20. That's a problem.2:16
  21. That's a moral problem as a matter of fact.2:17
  22. You're more than a success machine.2:20
  23. You're not a robot, neither am I.2:22
  24. But when you see yourself as the most excellent person, so very special, you've objectified yourself.2:25
  25. You've taken away a big piece of your humanity.2:30
  26. Here's basically how I sum this up.2:34
  27. If you're exhibiting workaholic behavior, you need to deal with it.2:36
  28. But then the next question is, okay, how do I stop?2:39
  29. How do I stop?2:41
  30. Is there a 12 -step program?2:42
  31. Is there some detox center that I can get into?2:44
  32. And the answer is no, although a lot of people do need to seek help from mental health professionals for this.2:47
  33. The answer to this is to actually build your team on the people who are going to give you the opportunities to do things that are actually more satisfying than2:53
  34. that.3:01
  35. You need to actually take the people that you love the most and that perhaps you've been neglecting and ask them, what do you think I should do?3:02
  36. What do you actually think I should do to instead of that?3:10
  37. For workaholics, the primary relationship, love relationship in their life is with work.3:15
  38. That's not a good love relationship because work can't really love you back.3:22
  39. Work takes.3:26
  40. Work doesn't give.3:27
  41. That means usually you need to cultivate the relationships with the people that really can love you back.3:29
  42. Who are these people?3:33
  43. Well, I recommend that people actually start to develop a serious spiritual life, a serious spiritual practice, whether it's a religious experience or not.3:34
  44. That depends on different people.3:43
  45. Maybe that means reading the wisdom literature, getting in touch with the stoic philosophers, you know, studying the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.3:44
  46. I don't know.3:52
  47. Going back to the faith of your youth, but something that gives you a relationship with the divine.3:53
  48. People who are married is doubling and tripling down on the metaphysical beauty that actually can and should be your marital relationship.3:58
  49. That might be the first time in years.4:07
  50. You've actually been able to work on that with your children.4:08
  51. That was a big one for me.4:12
  52. I'm telling you.4:14
  53. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times that I spent that 14th hour in the office instead of my first hour with my kids when they were4:15
  54. little.4:21
  55. Why?4:21
  56. Because I had to be special instead of happy, right?4:22
  57. Workaholic special, that's for sure.4:26
  58. And they got, you know, they got revenge.4:28
  59. You know what they did?4:31
  60. They grew up and I wasn't there for a lot of it.4:32
  61. Well now, now it's not going to be that way.4:36
  62. I have deeper friendships than I've ever had before and I recommend that people actually start to develop these real friendships.4:39
  63. You know, the problem the CEOs have is they have lots of deal friends, but not so many real friends.4:45
  64. Deal and real.4:50
  65. You know the difference.4:51
  66. Deal friends are incredibly useful.4:53
  67. Real friends are useless.4:56
  68. They're just people who love you.4:58
  69. Cultivating those friendships can be the most exciting adventure that you've had in a really, really long time.5:00
  70. The bottom line is basically this.5:04
  71. What substitutes for work?5:06
  72. The answer is love with humans.5:07
  73. That's what it comes down to because happiness is love, full stop.5:10
  74. Okay, how?5:14
  75. Give me the algorithm, man.5:15
  76. And I get it.5:17
  77. You know, I want that too.5:18
  78. And so I do have a lot of rules of thumb that I suggest.5:19
  79. Real friendship has to extend beyond your spouse, for example.5:24
  80. So real friends are people that you just love.5:29
  81. You don't need anything from them.5:31
  82. They don't need anything from you.5:33
  83. You really are not going to be getting the benefit that you need from your relationships if your only real friend is your spouse.5:34
  84. And that's typically the case with a lot of strivers.5:40
  85. So making real friendship, what we call companion at love with a spouse is critically important, but you need at least one more, at least one more person.5:43
  86. And so working on that is critically important.5:52
  87. Only one more is, it might be the right number for introverts.5:54
  88. Extroverts, on the other hand, need more friends than that.5:58
  89. Start with your spouse, if you're married, then move on to one or two or three people with whom you can make a real connection and start investing in that6:01
  90. relationship.6:10
  91. And that means if, you know, that person lives in Atlanta, get on the plane, man.6:12
  92. Get on the plane.6:16
  93. Say, let's go do something for half a day.6:17
  94. What do you say?6:20
  95. And they'll be like, you're coming here to do that to see me?6:20
  96. You're like, yep, it'll be super fun.6:22
  97. I guarantee that you actually do that.6:24
  98. But that's where the investment starts.6:26
  99. And those are the numbers that we're trying to talk about.6:27
  100. And anybody can do that.6:29

American accent training with a Harvard Business Review talk on workaholism

This clip is a lecture, not a conversation. One American speaker from Harvard Business Review argues that strivers do not become addicted to work itself, they become addicted to the feeling of success, and workaholism follows as a side effect. The transcript sits at B2, and the pace, 212 words per minute, is faster than 72 percent of the catalogue, so this is not a beginner warm up. He builds full argumentative sentences, the kind you get in a real talk, not the short lines of a scripted ad.

For english listening practice that also trains your mouth, a dense lecture like this earns its place because it does not slow down for you. Practise english speaking against this clip and you are training for the speed native speakers actually use, closer to a meeting or a podcast than a slow dialogue.

The language in this talk, and how to pronounce english words like these

Take "But strivers in the striving process, they open themselves up to one of the most deleterious addictive behaviors known to mankind and that's workaholism." The subject gets restated with "they" halfway through, a habit of spoken English that written English drops, and "deleterious" rewards a slow, separate pass before you try the whole line at speed.

Two more worth your attention. "Well, ask yourself, do you sometimes sneak into the bathroom to check your email, your work email?" is direct address, aimed straight at the listener, with the self correction at the end landing as its own beat. And "You have to excel and you have to excel compared to other people and that means you need to outwork other people and that leads to the work addiction." repeats "excel" and chains four clauses with "and", the kind of rhythm that trains you to speak english fluently in longer stretches instead of short, safe sentences.

  • "But strivers in the striving process, they open themselves up to one of the most deleterious addictive behaviors known to mankind and that's workaholism." for the restated subject and the word deleterious
  • "Well, ask yourself, do you sometimes sneak into the bathroom to check your email, your work email?" for direct address and the self correcting repeat
  • "You have to excel and you have to excel compared to other people and that means you need to outwork other people and that leads to the work addiction." for the chained clauses and the repeated word excel

How to shadow this line by line for english shadowing practice at B2

Work this clip in a fixed order rather than playing it straight through once. It rewards a second and third pass more than most, because the sentences are long enough that your first attempt will lag behind.

  • Start with line 1, "As a social scientist, I'm intensely interested in addictive behaviors." It is short and sets the register: shadow this line until the stress falls on scientist and behaviors the way his does
  • Move to line 6, the deleterious line, and split it into two halves at "they open themselves up". Say each half on its own before joining them at full speed
  • Take line 11, the bathroom question, and practise it as a real question, rising at the end, not as a flat statement
  • Drill line 29, the excel line, for pace. Say excel twice at the same speed he does before you attempt the rest of the sentence
  • Finish on line 35, "You're not a robot, neither am I." It is the shortest line in this stretch and a good check that you have not lost the contraction "you're" under speed
Download on the App Store