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Shadowing practice: You Need to Be Bored. Here's Why.

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

Full transcript

  1. You need to be bored.0:00
  2. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored.0:01
  3. I mean, it couldn't be clearer.0:06
  4. Let me give you the good side of boredom in general.0:09
  5. Boredom is a tendency for us to not be occupied otherwise cognitively, which switches over our thinking system to use a part of our brain that's called the default mode0:14
  6. network.0:26
  7. That sounds fancy, it's really not.0:27
  8. The default mode network is a bunch of structures in your brain that switch on when you don't have anything else to think about.0:28
  9. So you forgot your phone, you're sitting in a light, for example.0:35
  10. That's when your default mode network goes on.0:39
  11. We don't like it.0:42
  12. My colleague in the psychology department here at Harvard, Dan Gilbert, he did experiments where people had to sit in a room for 15 minutes with instructions to do absolutely0:43
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  1. nothing and there was nothing in the room to do, except there was a button in front of them that they could push and if they did, they gave themselves0:52
  2. a painful electric shock.0:59
  3. Sit there bored or get a shock.1:01
  4. A big majority of the participants gave themselves shocks instead of thinking about nothing.1:04
  5. We don't like boredom, boredom's terrible.1:08
  6. Why is boredom so bad?1:11
  7. Well, because the default mode network makes us think about things that might be kind of uncomfortable.1:12
  8. When you think about nothing, while your mind wanders and thinks about, for example, big questions of meaning in your life.1:18
  9. What does my life mean?1:24
  10. You go to kind of uncomfortable existential questions when you're bored.1:25
  11. That turns out to be incredibly important, incredibly good.1:29
  12. One of the reasons that we have such an explosion of depression and anxiety in our society today is because people actually don't know the meaning of their lives, much1:32
  13. less so in previous generations, tons of data show this.1:40
  14. And furthermore, we're not even looking.1:43
  15. Why not?1:46
  16. I'll tell you why not.1:48
  17. We figured out a way to eliminate boredom.1:49
  18. We've been able, almost completely, to shut off the default mode network in our brains.1:52
  19. How?1:59
  20. The answer is that thing in your pocket with the screen, which you take out even when you're standing on the street corner waiting for the light to change, it's2:00
  21. like, I might have to wait here for 15 seconds.2:07
  22. What are you doing?2:10
  23. You're actually trying to not be bored because the default mode network is mildly uncomfortable because it sends you to the types of questions that you can't get your mind2:12
  24. around, you can't get your arms around.2:20
  25. Well, that's a big problem.2:22
  26. That's a doom loop of meaning.2:23
  27. If every time you're slightly bored, you pull out your phone, it's gonna get harder and harder for you to find meaning, and that's the recipe for depression and anxiety2:26
  28. and a sense of hollowness, which, by the way, are all through the roof.2:36
  29. I get it.2:42
  30. You don't wanna be bored.2:43
  31. You need to be bored.2:44
  32. Be bored more.2:46
  33. Tomorrow, when you go to the gym in the morning after you wake up, don't take your phone.2:47
  34. Can you handle it?2:51
  35. Not listening to a podcast while you're working out, just being in your head.2:53
  36. I promise you you'll have your most interesting ideas while you're working out without devices.2:57
  37. It's probably been a long time since you've done that.3:02
  38. Commute with nothing, not even the radio.3:04
  39. Can you do that?3:07
  40. Start getting better at periods that are 15 minutes and longer of boredom and watch your life change.3:08
  41. Number one, you'll be less bored with ordinary things in your life.3:15
  42. If you get better at the skill of boredom, you'll be less bored with your job.3:19
  43. You'll be less bored with your relationships.3:22
  44. You'll be less bored with the things that are going on around you.3:24
  45. But more importantly, you'll start digging into the biggest questions in your life, purpose, meaning, coherence, significance, and who knows, you might just get happier.3:27
  46. People ask me all the time, is the doctor taking his own prescriptions?3:40
  47. And the answer is yes, yes I am.3:44
  48. I'm prone to the same pathologies as anybody else because I have the same brain chemistry as everybody else.3:46
  49. So what do I do to fight that?3:51
  50. And the answer is, well, I do a number of things.3:52
  51. I have no device policy after seven in the afternoon.3:54
  52. I don't sleep with my phone.3:59
  53. We don't have devices when we have meals in my family because we're there for each other.4:01
  54. We're not there for people who aren't there.4:07
  55. Three, I have regular social media and screen cleanses where I don't use my device for longer periods of time.4:10
  56. First is like children screaming in my head.4:18
  57. Well, because that's how it dopamid is saying, get the phone, get the phone, that's addiction.4:22
  58. But it calms down and I feel better and I feel sort of blessed by the end.4:27
  59. And I pick the phone up by the end because I have to check my emails and I have to be a normal functioning connected person in the world.4:33
  60. But it does remind me that my life doesn't have to revolve around these devices.4:40
  61. These protocols are really, really helpful and I recommend them to anybody and everybody.4:43
  62. Don't sleep with your phone, no phones during meals, regular social media fasts, you'll get better.4:49
  63. People worry that if they do these things, they're gonna miss something.4:56
  64. There are ways that you can remedy that.4:59
  65. One of the things that you can do is you can have your phone on, you're just not looking at it and there's only one or two numbers that can5:01
  66. reach you in case of emergencies.5:07
  67. Phones can do that, by the way.5:09
  68. If you don't know how to do that, ask your kid.5:10
  69. But don't use emergencies and it's an excuse.5:12
  70. Here's something that's not an emergency.5:15
  71. What's going on on Twitter?5:18
  72. That's not an emergency, answer, nothing.5:19
  73. It doesn't matter, the news can wait.5:22
  74. Seriously, your grandparents didn't know what was going on every single second in Washington, DC.5:25
  75. You're killing yourself with this stuff.5:30
  76. Are you kidding me?5:33
  77. It's bad for you.5:34
  78. So let me say it straight to my kids.5:35
  79. Put down your phones.5:38
  80. You need more meaning in your life and so do I.5:40

A Fast Harvard Lecture on Boredom: B2 English Listening Practice

This clip is a Harvard Business Review lecture, not a scripted scene, so you get one American voice carrying an argument in real time, with no cuts and no second speaker to lean on. The speaker opens flat with "You need to be bored." and spends the rest of the clip building the case for that line. It suits english listening practice built around a single speaker holding the floor rather than quick back and forth dialogue.

The clip is rated B2 and runs at 212 words per minute, faster than 71 percent of the catalogue, so clauses run into each other and you have to keep pace rather than mark words one by one. That speed is what makes it useful for real english speaking practice: if you can shadow this line at 212 words per minute, ordinary lectures and podcasts at normal speed stop feeling rushed.

Practising an American Accent on the Lines That Carry This Clip

American accent training works best on lines that actually turn on stress and rhythm, and this clip has a few. "You need to be bored." is delivered flat, with the stress landing hard on "need" and "bored", no rise at the end, which is worth copying before you move on to anything longer.

A little later he doubles a word inside one breath: "We don't like boredom, boredom's terrible." The repeated "boredom" is not a stumble, it's how a speaker restates an idea without slowing down, and getting the second "boredom's" to sound casual rather than read out loud is the actual challenge. The short question "What are you doing?" is worth isolating too, for the rising pitch a real question needs, something flat reading habits tend to flatten out.

  • "You need to be bored." for flat declarative stress
  • "We don't like boredom, boredom's terrible." for the repeated word inside one breath
  • "What are you doing?" for question intonation

How to Shadow This Harvard Business Review Clip Line by Line

Work through the clip in the order the argument actually builds, not by scrubbing around for easy bits.

  • Start on line 1, "You need to be bored.", alone, until the stress on "need" and "bored" feels automatic before you touch anything else.
  • Take lines 5 to 8, where he defines the default mode network, and land on line 7's "That sounds fancy, it's really not." as the reassurance beat where his pace briefly relaxes.
  • Take lines 12 to 16, the Dan Gilbert experiment, and shadow the short summary line "Sit there bored or get a shock." on its own once you have the setup down.
  • Take lines 19 to 22 and treat "What does my life mean?" as a real question, with the pitch actually rising, not read as a flat statement.
  • Finish on lines 32 to 34, the phone bit, closing on "What are you doing?" and repeat it until the frustration in his tone comes through rather than just the words.
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