Maybe at some point, you have felt a little frustrated with yourself and have also thought that you are not moving forward while you are studying. You may also have wondered why your learning pace is so slow or even, you have despaired after several failed attempts to memorize the meaning of a concept. Withholding information in our mind is sometimes not so simple.

That is why in this post I would like to talk about one of the techniques that can give you the best results when you start your journey through the world of learning. The Feynman technique, a simple and efficient strategy to acquire new knowledge in a faster and deeper way.

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The method that Feynman used to learn something new was something that this famous scientist used recurrently for the simple and infallible that was for him. One of its main motivations when doing science, so to speak, was to show that the most complex phenomena of nature could be attractive to the immense majority and not only to experts.

Many times we tend to believe that the more difficult and profound we are able to explain an idea, the more we have understood this idea. However, for Einstein, it was not like that

If you can not explain something in a simple way is that you yourself have not understood enough - Albert Einstein.

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Who was Richard Feynman?

Richard Feynman was a North American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his important contribution in the development of quantum electrodynamics, as well as being the most outstanding driver of the Feynman method.

In addition to being among the most famous scientists in the world, Feynman had a particularity and is that he was known by many people as "The great explainer", all this because one of the greatest passions of the American physicist was to impart knowledge.

He loved to explain, his classes were famous for the incredible passion and dedication he showed when narrating and explaining scientific phenomena. Feynman was famous for how he managed to synthesize and summarize such complex topics in such a light way.

I do not know what happens to people: they do not learn by understanding; they learn in some other way, by routine, or in some other way. How fragile is your knowledge - Richard Feynman.

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Feynman method.

The Feynman technique was unveiled by James Gleick in the book Genius: The Life Science of Richard Feynman.

The Feynman method is basically about studying in an intuitive way, making our brain wrap the concept to make it part of it. This method takes advantage of the cognitive tools in which the human being has historically proven to be very good.

What I can not create, I do not understand - Richard Feynman.

This technique basically consists of continuously reading the material you want to learn or memorize so that later, try to explain it in a more summary and simple way as if we wanted to make it understood to a child or a person with no knowledge of the subject.

The basic principle of this learning technique consists of an active methodology, since it urges the person who wants to learn or memorize a concept to create his own version of the study material so that when he wants to explain it; he has mastered the concept in such a way that he is able to use his own definitions.

The best way to understand something is to explain it - Richard Feynman.

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The 4 steps of the Feynman technique.

The Feynman learning technique consists of 4 easy steps.

First step.

To begin with, the first thing we have to do is take a piece of paper and write on the upper part as a title, the name of the concept we want to learn.

For example, if we are studying about the states of matter; we must place that title at the top of the page.

Second step.

After we have written the name of the concept we want to learn in the upper part, the following is to conceptualize it with our own ideas of the subject, in the simplest way possible using a simple language, as if we were explaining it to another person or even to a child.

Third step.

The third step is basically about correcting the concept in order to find ideas that are not very clear or that are somewhat confusing.
In this case what was recommended by Feynman was to take information from other more precise sources and make the necessary adjustments.

Learn to solve all the problems that have already been solved - Richard Feynman.

Fourth step.

The final step is about reviewing once again the document we have written so that we can make a final correction if there is any inconsistency or if we have used terms and ideas that are too complicated. Remember that even if the goal is for the concept to be simple, it must also be explained correctly. In this step, it is advisable to use some metaphors or even analogies that make the concepts more digestible. Whatever format we reach, the important thing is to make sure that the speech can be understood by anyone.

If after following these four steps, our explanation is still not understood or remains somewhat confusing, we may not have fully understood what we have studied. In this case, it would be best to start over.