- [Thomas] Thanks to brilliant
for sponsoring this video and supporting my channel. A few years ago, I made a video about something
called the Feynman Technique. This is a simple but highly
effective study technique, where you deepen your own
understanding of a concept by attempting to simplify it
and explain it to someone else. In other words, you teach to learn. In this video, I want to present a modified
version of that original, Feynman Technique that I've
been using in my own independent learning projects as of late. Conceptually, it is very similar to the original Feynman Technique but in execution, it is quite different. So I'm going to give it its own name, to keep things distinct. And that name is the LPC method, which stands for learn, present, critique. And I've been using this
LPC method in my own studies of anatomy, biomechanics,
and bioenergetics, as part of my goal to earn both
CSCS and PBC certifications, which if you're curious are
certifications in the strength training and coaching industry. And I've learned through using this, that this technique has a very
high ROI on helping me retain lots of information without
having to spend a lot of time actually studying it. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through
exactly how to use the LPC method along with some examples. And I'm also going to compare it to the original Feynman Technique. And you can see in the
timestamps below exactly where those sections are. But first, if you haven't seen my original video, or if it's been a while, I want to give you a very quick refresher on what the Feynman Technique is. The heart of this technique
can be found in a quote that is often attributed
to Albert Einstein, though he probably didn't actually say it, but it goes like this. If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough. The idea behind the Feynman
Technique is to break down a concept and simplify it to the point where you could easily explain it to a lay person. If you can't do that, then you don't understand
it well enough yourself. And in going through this exercise, actually trying to explain
it on a piece of paper, you expose gaps in your understanding, where you can then go and try to shore up. So again, conceptually, the LPC method is very similar
to the Feynman Technique We're trying to achieve the
same goal except for replacing the act of writing on
paper, drawing diagrams, with actually presenting to a camera. Here is the TLDR version
of the LPC method. First you go out and learn. Go to the lecture material, watch a video, read a book, take your notes as normal. Second, present a concept, present something you've
learned to your phone camera as if you're explaining it
to a friend or explaining it to a classroom like a speech. And third upload that video, paste it into your notes and finally watch it and critique it. And in your critique, you're looking for three different things. Number one, any errors, factual errors that you need to correct. Number two, any areas where you are vague, where you can add
clarification and number three, any questions that your critique
brings up after the fact, you can then go and learn
about through supplemental material or through
revisiting the actual material you're learning from. So here's a real world
example from my own study of human anatomy. And if you look through
my notes here on motion, you'll see lots of different videos where I'm explaining lots of concepts, but the one that I want to show you here is my explanation of the
different moving joints in the human body, which are called synovial joints. So at first I went through
that learning process. In this case, the material that I'm working
through is Barbell Logic's principles course, which goes through pretty much
everything you need to learn to become a beginner strength coach, so biomechanics, bioenergetics, the basics of human anatomy, as well as how to coach the
four main power lifting lifts. So I'm going through this
course and I'm taking my notes on the different joints in
the body and how they move. And I use a pretty
typical outline style note taking technique here in notion with the one exception
that I often will clip a lot of screenshots and add a lot of multimedia elements into my notes to take advantage
of multimodal learning. And I'll touch on that a little bit later, but now it's time to move on to step two, which is present. At this point. I want to put my phone on
a tripod and pick a concept or a set of facts to present and explain to my phone as if I were
explaining it to you or to a friend. So in this case, I picked these six different
diarthrodial joints in the body and explain how they work in the video. So a way to imagine a saddle
type joint and how it moves is if you took your knuckles here and took the other knuckles here and sort of sandwiched them together. Now, this is my own analogy. They did not teach this in the course, but it sort of is analogous to
how you'll see illustration. Once I am recording, I use the YouTube app to
upload an unlisted copy of this video to a second YouTube channel. I have specifically for my own learning and for this LPC technique. And because it's on YouTube, I can then go ahead and
paste it into my notion, which will embed it. And that brings us to
step three, critique. At this point, I'm going to watch through the
video and I'm going to look for, again, three things. Number one, factual errors. So for example, at one point in the video, I mentioned the carpals of the hand and the carpals of the feet. Those are the tarsals. I'm going to also look for anything where I could be a little bit more clear or more correct in my explanation. So at one point I mentioned
the joint between the metacarpo and the phalangeal
bones here in the thumb. Well, that is a joint, but it's called the
metacarpophalangeal joint. So I should actually use
the name of the joint. And finally, number three, if I have any questions that come up in this critique process,
and I almost always do, I want to go out and get
answers to those questions. And this is just another
way that encourages me to deepen my understanding often by using supplemental resources. So how is this method
better than the original Feynman Technique? Well, I am not going to stand by that claim for every subject
or every concept out there, but I do think that for
certain types of information, certain concepts, this is much better than the Feynman
Technique in terms of ROI. And it's because you're using
a different mode of learning or mode of active learning
specifically to deepen your understanding of
the subject material. Going back to my example of the
synovial joints in the body, if I get on camera and I verbally explain how these joints work, but also use body language
to demonstrate how they work and point out where they
are on my own anatomy, I am using multimodal learning to deepen my own understanding. And if I wanted to do that
with the Feynman Technique I would have two different options. I would either have to write out in text how these things work. That's a very abstract way of learning. It's going to take me a lot longer. Or I would have to draw them. That is a more iconic type of
learning, using iconography. It's much better in terms of me being able to visually
see how something works, but drawing takes a lot more
time than just pointing out and moving my arm to
show a hinge joint works. So in terms of time spent
studying versus retention of information for
certain kinds of topics, this is going to be superior. Though I think the real improvement to the five technique here is to combine your use of both of these techniques, either separately based on the type of concept you're studying, or maybe even lumping them
all into one big technique. There is nothing stopping you
from breaking out a whiteboard and actually writing out or diagramming while you film yourself. But that extra step of
critiquing yourself afterwards is another thing that's going to help deepen your understanding. In general, you want to pursue a multimodal learning strategy because no one way of learning
is better than any other. You may have seen this
often cited learning pyramid floating around the internet, where people will say things
like you only retain 10% of what you hear, 20% of
what you read, etcetera. Well, as it turns out the
original version of that pyramid, number one, it wasn't
even called a pyramid, it was a cone. - It's about the cones. - But number two, it did not include those percentages at all. And as far as research
has been able to find those percentages are completely made up. The original version of the cone was called the cone of experience. It was created by Edgar Dale
who was a very well-respected education researcher. And his whole point in creating
this cone was to just create a model that showed visually
the differences in levels of abstraction, between
different methods of learning, be it verbal or text-based or audiovisual. And his whole point was that
mixing up different methods of learning is more
powerful than using any one. In fact, back in 1969, he wrote that direct hands-on experience, what we often think of as the
gold standard for learning anything is often not the
best way to learn something. And more recent cognitive
research has confirmed this and shown that for basic concepts, a more abstract learning model is actually better. And once you get into higher
order learning concepts, then hands on experience is better. So as far as cognitive research has found, a multimodal approach truly is the best. So talk about what you're
learning and demonstrate it with body language, draw it, find a way to get a new perspective and a new view on what you're learning. And you're going to find
your long-term memory, your long-term ability to retain
and recall that information and master it truly understand it is going to improve as well. Before I end this video, I want to let you know
about one more resource that I'm using in this independent
learning project of mine and that is Brilliant. Specifically their chemistry course. Because believe it or not, I never took chemistry in college. And in my current study of bioenergetics, I am learning that a
little bit of chemistry knowledge is actually very useful. So I'm currently going through
Brilliant's chemistry course, and I'm finding it very
helpful for understanding how chemical reactions work. And I'm also using some more
passive supplemental resources, lecture, materials, videos, but Brilliant is built with
active learning in mind, which means while I'm
going through their course, I'm constantly being quizzed. I'm constantly being
asked to solve problems. And if you know anything
about the cognitive science behind active learning, you will know that this is a
much more effective, efficient, and interesting way to learn and it is the methodology they
use to build all the courses in their library of which
there are more than 60. So if you want to get better at math, at science and computer science, you're going to want
to check out Brilliant. In all their courses, you're going to find logically
sequenced bite-sized quizzes and interactive puzzles that
keep you actively engaged and help you to master the
material more effectively. And by solving problems more frequently, you become a better
problem solver overall. So if you wanna get
started learning today, go over to brilliant.org/ThomasFrank to sign up and to support this channel. Hopefully you found this video helpful. I'm finding this very
helpful in my own study, so hopefully you will as well. If you enjoyed this video, likes and comments definitely
help the algorithm. And I'll have one more video right here and another one right here, if you want to keep watching
stuff on this channel, thanks as always for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.
