The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything

They frame it as a learning technique, but it&#x27;s also a great problem-solving technique.<p>When I was a kid I made money by helping my dad with his programming. When he got stuck on problems he&#x27;d come out and find me, and offer me $20 to solve it. Then he&#x27;d explain what he was trying to do in the simplest way that he could, and explain what he&#x27;d already tried. About half the time he&#x27;d figure it out before he finished explaining it (and I&#x27;d get nothing).

I still full immersion is the best.<p>Basically, pick any subject and consume every form of media - podcasts, books, articles, videos, talk to people, Quora questions - and you’ll eventually get it on a very fundamental level.<p>Constantly ask questions and seek answers and rinse and repeat.<p>No tests too.

4 step technique:<p>1) study some topic and write down everything you know &#x2F; learned about it<p>2) pretend to teach to somebody or explain to somebody or write down in simple terms<p>3) when you are explaining use that process to expose the gaps that you don’t think you fully understand if you struggle to explain simply<p>4) simplify the topic further and keep iterating on your explanation and filling gaps you don’t understand until you can explain the topic in a concise way or simpler language

I am sorry but you cannot teach everything to a toddler. It needs years of learning to understand something. Feynman knew this, he knew science was hard, he would never say those things.

I do this, it&#x27;s useful. It helps during meetings as well. I figured on what&#x27;s being said and can retain the key ideas long enough to jot down afterwards.

But where am I going to find a toddler at this hour? Perhaps I could fill the void by training a neural network instead.

&gt; In fact, he created a formula for learning<p>Citation needed. It&#x27;s a good technique for your toolbox, but people like to stick Feynman&#x27;s name on their own things: quotes, the &quot;Feynman algorithm&quot;, a book titled <i>The Feynman Processor</i>...