The Feynman Technique

The Feynman Technique

   If you're after a way to supercharge your learning and become smarter, the Feynman Technique is the best way to learn absolutely anything. 

What is Feynman Technique?

        The Feynman Technique is an efficient method of learning a concept quickly by explaining it in plain and simple terms. It's based on the idea, "If you want to understand something well, try to explain it simply." What that means is, by attempting to explain a concept in our own words that we are likely to understand it a lot faster.

How it works:

1. Choose a concept to learn: Select a topic you're interested in learning about and write it at the top of a blank page in a notebook.

2. Teach it to yourself or someone else: Write everything you know about a topic out as if you were explaining it to yourself. Alternately, actually teach it to someone else.

3.Return to source material if you get stuck: Go back to whatever you're learning from - a book, lecture notes, podcast - and fill the gaps in your knowledge.

4. Simplify your explanations and create analogies: Streamline your notes and explanation, further clarifying the topic until it seems obvious. Additionally, think of analogies that fell intuitive.

Why use it? Because learning doesn't happen from skimming through a book or remembering enough to pass a test. Information is learned when you can explain it and use it in a wide variety of situations. The Feynman Technique gets more mileage from the ideas you encounter instead of rendering anything new into isolated, useless factoids.

The Feynman Technique doesn't let us fool ourselves into thinking we're masters of a subject when we're really amateurs. Each step of the process forces us to confront what we don't know, engage directly with the material, and clarify our understanding.