Shadowing Adam Grant

Summary

Adam Grant examines why people stay attached to goals, identities and routines after circumstances change. Stories about a dangerous mountain hike, his former identity as a diver and his teaching habits show how persistence can become resistance to reconsideration. He recommends regular opportunities to rethink and leaders who demonstrate openness to criticism. The familiar boiling-frog story frames the talk, but Grant ultimately reveals that the story itself is a myth people should question.

Key points, in order

1. On a hike in Panama, Grant and his friends ignored signs that their plan was wrong because they had already invested time. He uses this to explain escalation of commitment and the danger of narrowing success to reaching a summit.
2. Leaving competitive diving helped him distinguish a particular activity from deeper values: growth, excellence and contribution. Trying research, coaching and performance opened paths that the single identity had obscured.
3. A student's criticism exposed how fixed his teaching routine had become. Inviting students to shape a class produced new activities and led him to schedule an annual review of his teaching.
4. Grant calls for confident humility: acknowledging weaknesses while remaining secure enough to learn. Publicly engaging with critical feedback can make it easier for others to raise concerns and reconsider their own assumptions.

Five useful phrases to practise

Choose a caption line to open Repeat mode. Listen, then say it after the speaker.

1. 3:45 It's hard to admit that we were wrong and that we might have even wasted years of our lives.
2. 4:57 "Never give up" doesn't mean "keep doing the thing that's failing."
3. 7:44 I realized that diving was a passion, not a purpose.
4. 10:24 Your initial feelings are just a rough draft.
5. 14:40 Confident humility is being secure enough in your strengths to acknowledge your weaknesses.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: Adam Grant: What frogs in hot water can teach us about thinking again | TED · TED.

Everyday phrases from this video

• so far
• when it comes to
• we need to
• give up

• Level: B2–C1
• Accent: American
• Length: 16 min · 202 lines to practise
• Speed: about 173 words a minute (faster than most talks)
• Words: about 2,720; the talk asks 4 questions

What to focus on in this talk

Compare the opening explanation with its correction near the end.

What this talk trains

Adam Grant speaks for about 16 minutes: roughly 2,720 words in 202 caption lines. The pace eases off as the talk goes on, from about 188 words a minute in the first quarter to 162 in the last. Overall it is faster than 46 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 14.7 words, longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 19.1% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 4 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “kind of” (7 times) and “have to” (4 times).

Lines from across the talk, and what each one trains

One line from each quarter of the talk. Press a line to open it in Sada, ready to record. “Linking” marks words that run together: a word ending in a consonant sound joins the vowel that starts the next one.

1. 3:12 You want to prove to yourself and everyone else that you made a good decision.

   “want to”: fast speech often shortens it to “wanna” when a verb follows. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “yourself and”, “and everyone” without a break between the words.

2. 5:16 And it's not just goals that can cause this kind of shortsightedness, it's your identity too.

   “kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “And it's”, “kind of”, “your identity” without a break between the words.

3. 9:32 They say feedback is a gift, but right then, I wondered, "How do I return this?"

   A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it. Linking: say “feedback is”, “is a” without a break between the words.

4. 13:53 We need that kind of openness in schools, in families, in businesses, in governments, in nonprofits.

   “kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “kind of”, “of openness”, “openness in” without a break between the words.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Adam Grant uses more than once. The number is how often each is said. Look up any you don’t know, then press it to practise the line where it first comes up.

• rethinking ×13
• rethink ×10
• boiling ×8
• frog ×7
• diving ×7
• habits ×5
• checkup ×5
• excel ×4

How the pace changes through the talk

The fastest minute starts at 1:40 (about 201 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 13:05 (about 143): a good minute to warm up with.

Measured from the caption timing, so the numbers are close, not exact.

How the talk opens: press any line to practise it

1. 0:13 You might have heard that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out right away,
2. 0:18 but if you put it in lukewarm water, and then slowly heat it up, the frog won't survive.
3. 0:24 The frog's big problem is that it lacks the ability to rethink the situation.
4. 0:28 It doesn’t realize that the warm bath is becoming a death trap -- until it’s too late.
5. 0:33 Humans might be smarter than frogs, but our world is full of slow-boiling pots.
6. 0:38 Think about how slow people were to react to warnings about a pandemic, climate change or a democracy in peril.

How to practise this talk

1. Warm up on the slowest minute (from 13:05) or on the opening lines above.
2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: a shortened phrase, linked words, a question.
3. On each line, press Record and say it after Adam Grant (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
4. Save the fastest minute (from 1:40, about 201 words a minute) for last.
5. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 16 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

• Adam Grant — The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers (B1–B2 · 165 words a minute · same speaker)
• Adam Grant — Are You a Giver or a Taker? (B2 · 186 words a minute · same speaker)
• Malcolm Gladwell — The Unheard Story of David and Goliath (B2–C1 · 165 words a minute · same level)
• Adam Grant — How to Stop Languishing and Start Finding Flow (B2–C1 · 149 words a minute · same level)

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