Shadowing Daniel Levitin

Summary

Daniel Levitin recounts locking himself out on a freezing Montreal night and then forgetting his passport the next morning. That chain of mistakes leads him to prospective hindsight, or a pre-mortem: imagine a future failure before it happens and prepare ways to prevent or limit it. He applies the idea to misplaced possessions and difficult decisions, arguing that preparation matters because stress can make clear thinking harder.

Key points, in order

1. The pre-mortem starts by anticipating what could go wrong. Levitin distinguishes this from examining a disaster afterward, when opportunities to prevent it have already passed.
2. Assign consistent places to easily lost belongings. He links this advice to his account of spatial memory, explaining why keys or glasses are harder to locate when their position keeps changing.
3. For medical decisions, he urges people to prepare questions about potential benefits, side effects and the number needed to treat. His numerical examples illustrate his argument for discussing evidence with a doctor, rather than a recommendation about an individual's treatment.
4. Thinking beforehand about quality of life and family preferences can support later conversations under pressure. Levitin ends by acknowledging his own incomplete organization and describing the spare-key system he installed after his trip.

Five useful phrases to practise

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

1. 2:44 And I started wondering, are there things that I can do, systems that I can put into place, that will prevent bad things from happening?
2. 3:59 Around the home, designate a place for things that are easily lost.
3. 5:18 If you designate a spot and you're scrupulous about it, your things will always be there when you look for them.
4. 9:19 I'm just saying you should have this conversation with your doctor.
5. 11:27 I think the important point here is recognizing that all of us are flawed.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED · TED.

Everyday phrases from this video

• thank you very much

• Level: B1
• Accent: North American
• Length: 12 min · 148 lines to practise
• Speed: about 186 words a minute (faster than most talks)
• Words: about 2,240; the talk asks 9 questions
• Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

The words are clear but the pace is quick, so take it one line at a time. “Minus 40 is where the two scales meet” is a good line for stress on the key words, and “Celsius” (SEL-see-us) and “Fahrenheit” (FAIR-en-hite) are worth a few tries on their own.

What this talk trains

Daniel Levitin speaks for about 12 minutes: roughly 2,240 words in 148 caption lines. The pace stays fairly even, about 192 words a minute in the first quarter and 186 in the last. Overall it is faster than 58 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 19.6 words, longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 14.0% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 9 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “going to” (8 times) and “have to” (7 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. 2:39 Well, I had a lot of time to think during those eight hours and no sleep.

   “a lot of”: fast speech often shortens it to “a lotta”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “had a”, “lot of”, “hours and” without a break between the words.

2. 6:02 And at some point, all of us are going to be in that position,

   “going to”: fast speech often shortens it to “gonna” when a verb follows. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “And at”, “all of”, “us are” without a break between the words.

3. 7:31 And you're thinking, what kind of crazy statistic is that?

   “kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it.

4. 10:21 You don't want to have to manufacture all of this on the spot.

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

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Daniel Levitin 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.

• passport ×7
• cortisol ×5
• mortem ×5
• statin ×5
• cloudy ×4
• obvious ×4
• cholesterol ×4
• treat ×4

How the pace changes through the talk

The fastest minute starts at 10:06 (about 209 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 1:31 (about 163): 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 A few years ago, I broke into my own house.
2. 0:16 I had just driven home, it was around midnight in the dead of Montreal winter, I had been visiting my friend, Jeff, across town,
3. 0:23 and the thermometer on the front porch read minus 40 degrees -- and don't bother asking if that's Celsius or Fahrenheit,
4. 0:30 minus 40 is where the two scales meet -- it was very cold.
5. 0:34 And as I stood on the front porch fumbling in my pockets, I found I didn't have my keys.
6. 0:40 In fact, I could see them through the window, lying on the dining room table where I had left them.

How to practise this talk

1. Warm up on the slowest minute (from 1:31) 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 Daniel Levitin (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
4. Save the fastest minute (from 10:06, about 209 words a minute) for last.
5. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 12 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

• Ivan Joseph — The Skill of Self Confidence (B1 · 186 words a minute · same level)
• Cameron Russell — Looks Aren’t Everything. Believe Me, I’m a Model. (B1 · 184 words a minute · same level)
• Malcolm Gladwell — Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce (B2 · 177 words a minute · same accent)
• Malcolm Gladwell — The Tipping Point I Got Wrong (B1–B2 · 168 words a minute · same accent)

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