Learning faster is possible with the Feynman technique

Maybe you’ve felt like you’re not making progress when you’re studying. You may have ever wondered why your learning rate is so slow or even despaired after several failed attempts at memorizing the meaning of a concept. Retaining information in our minds is sometimes not so simple.

To help you in this regard, we present to you the Feynman technique, a simple and efficient strategy to acquire new knowledge faster and deeper. Keep reading to find out what it is.

Who was Richard Feynman?

Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. He is known for his work on the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as the Parton model in particle physics.

For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. Additionally, according to a 1999 survey by the British magazine Physics World, of the top 130 physicists around the world cited, Feynman was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.

What is the Feynman technique?

The Feynman technique was explained by his biographer James Gleick in the book Genius: The Life Science of Richard Feynman. Using this technique, anyone can acquire new knowledge efficiently if they set their mind to it. In fact, It is also a powerful study tool to prepare for any exam.

James Gleick tells how Feynman opened his new notebook and wrote on the cover “Notebook of things I don’t know yet.” Feynman was reorganizing his knowledge. And the physicist always tried to get to the core of each subject he studied. What he intended was write down in that notebook all the explanations of those concepts that were being developed in their research.

Maybe we can think that we could do the same with a friend. It would be about telling them what we have learned with the aim of memorizing it and understanding it better while explaining it to them. However, we do not always have such a helpful and patient friend. Thus, Feynman developed A variant but equally effective technique: learning by explaining.

The basic idea of ​​this technique is to actively read the study material and then try to explain it in a simple way, as if we were addressing a child or a person with less knowledge than us on that topic. Hence, this form of learning is valued as an active methodology, since when explaining the material we are studying, we will have to use another language and different strategies. This way, it will be much easier to notice mistakes and learn more efficiently.

The 4 steps of the Feynman technique

The Feynman learning technique is made up of 4 simple steps. Let’s see what they consist of.

First step

For a start, You have to take a sheet of paper and write on the top of it the name of the concept that we are studying.. For example, if we are studying the Pythagorean theorem we should write it at the top of the sheet of paper.

Second step

Once the concept is written, it must be described in our own words and using simple language, as if we were explaining it to another person.

If we continue with the example of the Pythagorean theorem, we would have to write something like “in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs.”

Third step

The third step consists of reviewing everything we have written with the aim of identifying those parts that are not perfectly explained., which are confusing or not well written. To do this, we can go back to our notes or even look for new information about it. It is also useful to use examples that reinforce knowledge.

Fourth step

If after following these simple four steps, our explanation is still not understood, it may be that we have not fully understood what we have studied. In this case, we should start the process again.

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