How To Learn Anything Fast
How to use the Feynman technique to understand and simplify complex topics quickly and remember them for longer.
One of the problems I’ve always had with studying over the last several years, from pre-med, medical school, and residency, is that I tend to study a topic once, but by the time exam day rolls around, I quickly forget all about it.
I soon realized it’s not that I have a poor memory or maybe med school is not right for me.
It’s that I don’t have a good understanding of the topic that I just studied and I had no clue what my weak areas are.
One solution to this problem is to find a way to deepen my understanding of a topic by pinpointing my problem areas and filling my knowledge gaps.
And this is the idea behind the Feynman technique.
What is the Feynman Technique?
This learning method is named after Richard Feynman who’s a theoretical physicist and was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics
And the principle is quite simple:
If you want to deeply understand a certain topic or find out where your knowledge gaps are in a certain subject, you have to try and explain it using the simplest terms.
As the quote that’s frequently attributed to Albert Einstein goes,
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
By doing this technique, you’ll be able to spot your weak areas in a topic.
Your weak areas are where you seem to get stuck in your explanation of a topic or where you’re using medical jargon or terminologies instead of using simple terms.
After you identify your weak or problem areas in the subject that you’re trying to learn, you can then use a targeted and narrower approach to study those topics.
How to use the Feynman technique?
The general idea of the Feynman technique is to explain a complex or complicated concept in simpler terms.
You can try it with a friend who you’re studying with.
But we don’t always have a friend or someone nearby when we’re studying for exams.
So, an alternative method is to either get a piece of paper to write down the concept or what I usually do is I talk to myself out loud when I’m doing this technique because I find that it takes up too much time and energy if I write it down.
Now, let’s go to the 4-step method of doing this technique:
Step 1 - Read and understand the topic first
It goes without saying that before you try and explain a complex topic in simple terms, you have to understand the study material first.
Understanding a complex topic means reading and studying your handouts or textbook.
If you can’t seem to understand the words in your book, you can also try to watch some YouTube videos that explain the topic, for example, NinjaNerd which has videos on almost every medical topic that you will probably find difficult to understand on your first reading.
Step 2 - ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5)
The next step is to imagine or pretend to teach the topic to a 5-year-old who has zero base understanding of it by using plain and simple terms.
Remember, no jargon.
Step 3 - Look for and fill your knowledge gap
As you are trying to explain it using simple terms, you will begin to pinpoint certain problem areas or parts where you’re still having difficulty trying to explain it in a simple way or where you’re using complex terms and medical jargon.
These are what we call our knowledge gaps.
So, we have to read and study more to fill those gaps.
You can do that by going back to your textbook or lecture handouts and trying to read on and study them again.
What you’ll do now is a more targeted approach to studying instead of rereading the whole material from the beginning which will take up a lot of your time
Step 4 - Review your understanding and further simplify it
Now that you’ve already explained the concept in, hopefully, simple terms, go one step further and try to explain it again.
But this time, use the knowledge that you got from when you went back to your study materials which you did in step 3.
Because now, you have already filled in some of your knowledge gaps.
And that’s basically it!
When do you use the Feynman technique?
Another thing to remember is you don’t have to use the Feynman technique on every piece of information that you’re trying to learn.
Because if you use it for everything, it will use up a lot of your time that you can use instead to do practice questions and study the explanations, which is also one of the most effective study strategies I often use a lot.
Personally, I use the Feynman technique for topics that have multiple interconnected concepts or those that I have a hard time understanding like when I’m studying the stages of labor for obstetrics or when I’m studying biostatistics concepts.
Because I’m the worst when it comes to numbers so I have to put more time and effort into understanding them.
One of the best subjects to use this technique is Physiology because here, you have to first start with knowing the general idea of how things work, and then once you get to know the big picture, only then will you be able to focus on the finer details.
Ultimately, one of the key principles is to just find out when to use it.
I also don’t use the Feynman technique if the topic requires memorization, for example, when memorizing the list of drugs that are known as Cytochrome P450 inducers and inhibitors (shown below).
Le, T., Bhushan, V., & Sochat, M. (2022). First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 2022, Thirty Second Edition (32nd ed.). McGraw Hill / Medical.
These kinds of information are what’s known as “nonintuitive knowledge” because the list of drugs doesn’t seem to have a common characteristic to them or they don’t have a sort of pattern for being included in the list in the first place.
In these instances, I would use the method of loci or the memory palace to memorize this list.
Another important thing to remember after going through the 4 steps I just mentioned is there’s a chance your explanation might not work for other students.
But, the important thing is that it works for you.
This is one of the most crucial parts of the technique.
It must work for you.
You must understand the explanation you created for yourself.
Thank you for this Doc!
nice!