Shake up
Today’s expression is a phrasal verb, “shake up.” To shake up is to make a change to a routine. Starbucks is going to shake up the way you get your morning coffee. They’re going to change your routine. This is a bit of an exaggeration: the vast majority of its cafés and customers won’t change. But the new Pickup-only locations will shake up the morning routine of customers that like to order on the app.
I shook up my morning routine today, in fact. It snowed last night, just a little bit, and the trees and streets were covered in snow. I’m writing and recording this on a Sunday. My typical morning on a Sunday is to have coffee in my sunroom and then work on Plain English mid-day. But today, I shook things up. I went out for a long walk in the park to enjoy the recently-fallen snow. Then, I came back and had my coffee—which I make myself—while was writing this lesson.
It’s always good to shake up your routine a little bit. We often say “shake up your routine” because your routine is the list of things you do regularly. Shake up your morning routine: do something a little different in the morning.
It’s also common to say, “shake things up” if you want to change the way you normally do things. Let’s say you have a weekly meeting with your team at work—these days on Zoom, right? Let’s pretend that on these meetings, you always start with the most important topics and then you let people share some personal news at the end before the meeting is over. You might decide to shake things up a little bit and have people share their personal news first, and then get down to business later.
A new boss taking over a company might decide to shake things up. New company leaders, new CEOs—they’re under a lot of pressure to make an impact right away. If the company is well-run and well-established, they might not want to shake things up. If everything is working well, there’s no point in shaking things up. But if a new boss takes over a company that’s maybe not doing as well, that new boss is going to want to shake things up.
We talked about WeWork at the end of 2019, about how their plans to go public were derailed. Eventually, the founder was kicked out and a new leadership team came in. They had to shake things up. They had to cancel a lot of distracting projects. They had to change the way things went. No more parties with tequila in the office. The old founder’s personal sauna was removed—yes, from the office. The new leadership team shook things up: they had to make some changes because the company was about to go out of business due to the mismanagement of its founder.
In Lesson 313, we talked about the new way to buy a used car. A lot of new companies are hoping to shake up the process of buying a used car. They want to change the way you buy a used car—for the better. They want to shake up the process.
JR’s song of the week
Time for an English song of the week. JR is back at the controls this week and the song he chose is “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners, one of the most popular songs of the 1980s. It came out in 1982 and was voted by Britain as their sixth-favorite song of the 80s.
See you next time!
And that brings us to the end of today’s lesson.
If you think you need to shake things up in your career, shake things up in your personal life, then taking the next step in English might just be the thing for you in 2021. And if it is, then I think you’d really like being part of Plain English Plus+, which will help you take that next step. We have step-by-step videos, tons of practice, translations, and the fast version of every lesson. So check that out at PlainEnglish.com/Plus.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
