Notes on the Feynman technique
by yaobin.wen
There are tons of articles that explain the Feynman technique, so this article does not mean to explain it again but serves as a note to myself to help me refresh my memory.
The article I’m referring to is The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read.
However, always remember the top principle: Knowledge is not power until applied. The most important thing about Feynman technique is to use it, not put it into an article that’s listed on the front page. Here I am applying the principle I mentioned in [1]: “Stop listing; start integrating.”
The Feynman technique consists of four steps.
Step 1: Choose a topic, recall all the principles/points/concepts that are related to this topic and write them down on a piece of paper. Pay attention that:
- 1). Do not refer to the learning materials, such as a book or an article, directly. Use your own brainpower. This way, you are doing active retrieval and learning with an effort. See [2].
- 2). Do not quote the learning materials directly. Direct quotation probably means you haven’t understood it well enough to describe it in your own words. It is possibly a knowledge gap you need to identity in step 3.
Step 2: Explain the topic in your own language to someone who doesn’t know much about it. A lot of articles say the second step is to teach the topic to a 12-year-old child, but I don’t think a 12-year-old child is the point. The point is to explain it “in your own, as simple as possible words”. Try to avoid jargons, because they don’t make much sense for those who are unfamiliar with the topic yet.
Step 3: Identity the knowledge gaps and study them further. During explaining the topic in your own words, you may find the points that you don’t understand well yet. Those are the areas you should dig deeper.
Step 4: Simplify and re-organize the explanation. This step helps you to grasp the really important points of the concept.