The Feynman technique is a four-step learning process for understanding any topic developed by Richard Feynman. The Feynman technique rejects automated recall, instead aiming to deliver true comprehension through selection, research, writing, explaining, and refining. The following are the four steps:
- Choose a concept—The learner selects a topic to learn about and writes at the top of a blank page in a notebook.
- Teach it—The learner writes everything they know about the topic as if they were explaining it to themselves or someone else. Often, this step is described as teaching the concept to a child to get the user to dispense with jargon and break the concept down into simpler language.
- Identify and fill knowledge gaps—The learner looks back at the explanation to determine where the gaps are present. For example, which parts did the learner struggle to explain? Which details did they miss? This reveals where the learner has failed to pick up on key points so they can return to the source materials to review and improve their understanding.
- Simplify and repeat—The learner streamlines notes and explanations to clarify the topic and thinks of analogies that feel relevant and intuitive.
The Feynman technique is considered to deliver multiple benefits including, identifying knowledge gaps, improving communication skills, and promoting critical thinking.
Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist known for his research in quantum and particle physics and his writing and teaching. Feynman stated that he didn't consider himself innately intelligent, but he would systematically identify what he didn't know in order to fill gaps in his knowledge. He rejected rote memorization, instead believing that learning should be an active process of trial and error. Also, stating that to truly understand something, one has to be able to explain it clearly and simply. Throughout his work, Feynman provided insights into his process for mastering complex concepts and his ability to communicate them elegantly. For example, his biography written by James Gleick provides a description of his learning process:
In preparing for his oral qualifying examination, a rite of passage for every graduate student, he chose not to study the outlines of known physics. Instead he went up to MIT, where he could be alone, and opened a fresh notebook. On the title page he wrote: Notebook Of Things I Don’t Know About. For the first but not the last time he reorganized his knowledge. He worked for weeks at disassembling each branch of physics, oiling the parts, and putting them back together, looking all the while for the raw edges and inconsistencies. He tried to find the essential kernels of each subject. When he was done he had a notebook of which he was especially proud.
Observations about his learning process have been collected and developed into the Feynman technique.
