How The Feynman Technique Can Make You More Intelligent

Oct 01, 2024

Richard Feynman was one of the most accomplished physicists of the 20th century, renowned for his contributions to quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics and particle physics. Winning the Noble Prize in 1965 and contributing to the Manhattan Project, he was just as famous for his unorthodox teaching style, brilliant communication skills and humour.

As lifelong learners, it’s important to have mental frameworks capable of taking in new information, digesting it, and putting it to work.

Richard Feynman’s Technique on how to learn anything allows you to do just that.

Here’s how it works:

Choose a Concept to Learn: Pick a concept or topic you want or need to learn. Write down everything you think you know about it.
Teach It to a Child: Imagine teaching the concept to someone without background knowledge, like a child. This forces you to break down complex ideas into simpler terms, revealing gaps in your understanding.
Review Your Gaps: As you teach, you’ll identify parts you don’t fully understand. Go back to your source material, study those parts, and fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
Simplify Further: After filling in the gaps, try explaining the concept again, using even simpler language or analogies. The goal is to be so clear that the explanation is easily grasped by anyone.

A good place to start is by trying to grasp the foundational knowledge of the topic you’re curious about. Understanding the basics of something may sound like obvious advice, but so many people try to understand the big complex stuff first and work backwards. This is not how intelligence works.

Feynman’s genius lay in his ability to cut through complexity, focusing on clarity and fundamental understanding. This technique is an excellent way to ensure you've truly learnt something, rather than just memorising information.

Example

Let's go through a challenge many solopreneurs face: digital marketing.

Here’s how the Feynman Technique can help:

Choose a Concept to Learn: You’re trying to understand SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to drive traffic to your website but feel overwhelmed by the jargon and technical aspects.
Write it Down or Teach it to a Friend: Imagine explaining SEO to a friend who runs a completely different type of business or even to yourself on paper. You might start by saying: “SEO is the practice of making your website easier to find in search engines by using keywords, quality content, and backlinks.”
Review Your Gaps: As you explain, you might notice you don’t fully understand what backlinks are or how on-page optimisation works. This shows you where your understanding is weak. Review your resources, articles, or tutorials, and fill in those gaps. Study how backlinks from authoritative websites can improve your ranking or how to optimise your website’s structure for search engines.
Simplify Further: Once you’ve deepened your understanding, go back and explain it again in even simpler terms: “Backlinks are like votes of confidence from other websites. The more high-quality sites that link to yours, the better your website looks to search engines. On-page optimisation is how you organise your website’s content and code so it’s easier for search engines to understand.”

After using the Feynman Technique to learn SEO, you might apply it by creating a simple SEO strategy. You’d focus on optimising your website for a few high-impact keywords, writing blog posts around those topics, and reaching out to other businesses for backlinks (recommendations on Substack). Breaking it down and learning step by step, you can manage your SEO without feeling overwhelmed.

Until next time,

Karl (The School of Knowledge).