Feynman Technique

Let’s talk about the second pillar and the second pillar is the Feynman technique.

Now the Feynman technique is named after Richard Feynman a famous Nobel Prize winning physicist who

was renowned not only for being extremely smart but also for his ability to explain things to beginners

very well.

In this pillar is important because throughout the rest of the course we want to keep this in the back

of our mind.

You see the Feynman technique says that if you want to really understand something well to really know

a topic you need to be able to teach it explaining something in a simple to understand way is the best

way to actually learn but also to test your knowledge a good way that I like to think about this is

speaking with a young child when you’re talking to a child you get asked the question why all the time.

Why do birds fly.

Why do they have wings.

You keep coming up with the answer and the child always goes.

But why and the Fineman technique is all about bringing down a concept to its basic level to understand

a concept or a topic you need to be able to explain it to a child in simple terms.

Often in our world especially when you go to work or in a business setting.

We try to use big words to sound knowledgeable and these big words or jargon allow us to hide behind

perhaps some uncertainty that we have when we stop speaking with jargon with difficult business speak

or big words.

When we speak in simple terms to others it actually frees us from hiding behind a knowledge that we

pretend to have.

For example if I was a programmer I might speak in a way to my managers to sound like I’m smart to use

complex terms that I know they don’t understand just to pretend that I know what I’m talking about.

The Feynman technique actually goes against this.

The idea is to become a good learner to understand a topic you want to be able to explain it in simple

terms.

And when you start realizing that explaining things in simple terms actually makes you a better learner.

We shift our focus from trying to hide our knowledge from others to showing others how much we know

so moving forward as we’re developing our skill to learning.

See if you can’t test yourself see if you can explain a topic that you’re learning to somebody with

zero knowledge.

If you can’t go back to the drawing board and figure out what you are missing in your knowledge to be

able to explain to a child.