What is Feynman Technique?
The Feynman technique is a learning method where you explain a concept in plain language, as if teaching it to a child, to expose exactly where your understanding breaks down. You then return to the source to repair those gaps and simplify again. It is named after physicist Richard Feynman.
The technique is usually described in four steps: pick a concept, explain it simply as if teaching someone with no background, notice where you get stuck or reach for jargon, then go back to the material and refine the explanation. The name honors Feynman's reputation for plain-language explanation; the packaged four-step version is a later popularization, widely spread by writers such as Farnam Street, rather than a procedure Feynman himself published.
Its effectiveness is plausible because it bundles mechanisms that are individually well supported: explaining from memory is retrieval practice, generating your own wording invokes the generation effect, and teaching-oriented study is associated with the protege effect, where preparing to teach increases effort and learning.
Applied to reading, the technique turns highlights into raw material for an explanation. After finishing a source, write or say a plain-language account of its core idea without looking, flag every point where you hesitate, and let those hesitations decide what you reread. Jargon you cannot unpack is a gap wearing a costume.