The Feynman Learning Technique is a simple way of approaching anything new you want to learn.

Information is learned when you can explain it and use it in a wide variety of situations.

the point of learning is to understand the world. But most of us don’t bother to deliberately learn anything. We memorize what we need to as we move through school, then forget most of it.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” —E.F. Schumacher

There are four steps to the Feynman Learning Technique, based on the method Richard Feynman originally used.

Pretend to teach a concept you want to learn about to a student in the sixth grade.
Identify gaps in your explanation. Go back to the source material to better understand it.
Organize and simplify.
Transmit (optional).

Step 1: Pretend to teach it to a child or a rubber duck

The truth is, if you can’t define the words and terms you are using, you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

Step 2: Identify gaps in your explanation

Identifying gaps in your knowledge—where you forget something important, aren’t able to explain it, or simply have trouble thinking of how variables interact—is a critical part of the learning process. Filling those gaps is when you really make the learning stick.

Identifying the boundaries of your understanding is also a way of defining your circle of competence. When you know what you know (and are honest about what you don’t know), you limit the mistakes you’re liable to make and increase your chance of success when applying knowledge.

Step 3. Organize and simplify

Step 4: Transmit (optional)

The ultimate test of your knowledge is your capacity to convey it to another.

“If you can’t reduce a difficult engineering problem to just one 8-1/2 x 11-inch sheet of paper, you will probably never understand it.” —Ralph Peck

Richard Feynman believed that “the world is much more interesting than any one discipline.”

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” —Mortimer Adler

learning doesn’t happen in isolation. We learn not only from the books we read but also the people we talk to and the various positions, ideas, and opinions we are exposed to.

the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it.

Knowledge is not static, and we need to be open to continually evaluating what we think we know.

the plural of anecdote is not data.

many errors people make simply come from lack of information. They don’t even know they’re missing the tools they need.

being willing and able to question your knowledge and the knowledge of others is how you keep improving. Learning is a journey.