The Feynman Technique pronounced, fine-man, has changed my life. Reviewing every single study technique that I've ever used, this is easily one of the top five study methods that I've ever used. The basis of the technique is that you try to explain a complicated topic simply. This allows you to better
understand this complex topic. The only problem is that when I started to actually use the technique, my time spent studying went way up and my grades went down. Over time, I identified
the Feynman Technique's fundamental principles, the golden rules. When I started to use
the technique properly, I not only noticed a
deepening of my understanding, but I also started to
make new connections. So in this video, I'm gonna give you eight techniques to level
up the Feynman Technique. (soft music) The incredible power of this technique is that it's uniquely matched and perfect for every student that uses it. Well, why is this? Well, the explanations
are coming from yourself. So that means your explanations
are perfect for you because they come from you. So the first thing I wanna explain is, what is the Feynman Technique? Well, Richard Feynman
was a renowned author, physicist, and teacher. And Albert Einstein was actually present during one of Feynman's talk as a graduate student. But personally, the trait I most admire about Richard Feynman, Dr. Feynman, is his ability to be an amazing teacher. I remember when I was doing
the research for this video, I was going on YouTube and looking up different videos of him talking. And I was just enthralled and amazed by his ability to make really complex topics really simple. Hot and cold is the speeds that the atoms are jiggling. If they jiggle more, corresponds to hotter and colder is jiggling less. So if you have a bunch of a cup of coffee or something sitting on a table, and the atoms are jigging a great deal in the coffee and they
bounce against the cup and the cup then gets shaky and the atoms and the cup shake, and they bounce against the saucer and it heats the cup and heats everything else. And hot thing spreads its heat into other things by mere contact because the atoms that are jiggling a lot in the hot thing shake the ones that are jiggling only a little bit in cold thing. So that the hot heat we say
goes into the cold thing. It spreads, but what's
spreading is just jiggling and irregular motions, which
is easy to kind of understand. Bill Gates actually
reports Richard Feynman as being the greatest
teacher he never had. So what are the basic
steps of this technique? Well, number one,
identify the information. What did you just learn? Number two, how would you teach it? Imagine teaching this
information to a 12 year old. And number three, how did
your explanation sound? Was it simple? Did you use lots of complex terms? Can you redo your explanation, so it's simpler and easier to understand? Okay, so now we know what it is, let's get into actually making it better, making sure we don't mess up this amazing, amazing technique. (gentle music) My first tip is to make sure you understand the topic first. You shouldn't be learning something for the first time with
the Feynman Technique. You should be understanding the topic before you even go into trying to explain it to someone else. It seems obvious, but I've seen people go straight into looking at the textbook and then just try to come
up with an explanation. Number one, you might not understand the information at all,
which is not great. But the worst thing is
when you start to try and explain this information that you don't understand at all, you're starting to solidify wrong information in your brain, which is a big, bad no-no. This is why I don't use active recall or space repetition when I start to learn something for the first time, because when I'm using those techniques, I'm solidifying information that I should already understand. The same thing is true
for the Feynman Technique. You're solidifying information that you should already understand. If you don't understand the information, you're gonna be solidifying
wrong information. So make sure you learn this thing first, learn this information first. Read a chapter of the textbook, watch a third party resource video, or have a friend explain it to you. Bottom line, before you even start the Feynman Technique, make sure you understand the complex topic first. Number two, we wanna focus
on long-term retention. So you just read a dense page of a textbook on mitosis. You watched a 20 minute YouTube video on how it works and then
you began to test yourself and draw out the diagrams
for the steps of mitosis. And you practiced the
explanation three times until you had an amazing simplified explanation of all the phases of mitosis. Great job. The lamp you've been explaining it to seems to really understand what the different phases are. Mitosis is when cells divide, okay? Bam, mitosis down. Now we can go straight onto
meiosis and the Kreb cycle. No, no, no, no, don't do that. Why would you go straight
into that information? You just did so much work on mitosis over an hour of work trying to understand and learn and simplify the
complex topic of mitosis. You wanna consolidate that information and make sure you're gonna remember it in the long-term. Studies indicate that we
lose as much as two thirds of the information we learn just 48 hours after learning it. We really don't want
those one or two hours we spent using the Feynman
Technique to go to waste. So what should we do? Well, if you know me at all, you know I like flashcards, and we're gonna use the
magic of flashcards, the magic of space repetition to make sure we consolidate this information for long-term retention. And I'll link a video somewhere up here about why I love space repetition so much. So this is what I would do. I would use the Feynman Technique so you understand the information and can explain it simply. Then I would create just one flashcard that says, "Explain mitosis-Feynman." And on the back, write your simplified explanation of this topic. And again, you should be able to fit that explanation on the
back of the flashcard because you've made it so simple that you can understand it. Now you don't have to use a
actual physical flashcard. I love Anki 'cause it
actually spaces it out based on an amazing algorithm to figure out the perfect time to test yourself with this flashcard. But you can use regular flashcards, too. It's all okay. So bottom line, after
spending so much time learning the topic with
the Feynman Technique, consolidate that information
onto a flashcard, so you'll remember it in the long-term. Number three is notes on
notes on notes don't work. In college, I used to take
notes on notes and notes to try and consolidate the
information in my head. I really wish I saw some
of my own previous posts or just did a little bit of research on the evidence behind studying, because then I would've learned, okay, summarizing really
isn't that evidence backed as a good studying method. There are techniques that
are so much better than this, like space repetition and active recall. But the idea behind notes on notes seems to make sense, right? You're taking notes, you're
consolidate the information. It's kind of like the
Feynman Technique, right? Well, yes and no. The problem with the
notes on notes technique is it's inefficient. In medical school, time
is tough to come by. So I make sure I jump on any method, any technique that saves me time without sacrificing retention. Bottom line, don't write notes on notes. Number four, choose what topics to do the Feynman
Technique with carefully. Do I use the Feynman Technique on every single piece of
information I learned? No, that would be a huge waste of time. And also certain pieces of information are better suited to
the Feynman Technique, while other pieces of information are not as well suited
to the Feynman Technique. The best topics for using
the Feynman Technique are big general pieces of information. For example, in medical school, I really liked using the Feynman Technique for obstructive versus
restrictive lung diseases. And those are just two different kind of lung diseases that can
be explained pretty simply. However, if I was trying to understand the histopathology of these different lung diseases and histo is just tissue and pathology is just bad stuff, right? So that means bad stuff in tissue. So if I was trying to understand the histopathology of these things, usually those are pictures under a microscope you would see. So you can't really use
the Feynman Technique to describe or explain
histopathology, right? Because it's pictures. You need pictures to kind
of understand those topics. So bottom line choose what topics to use the Feynman Technique on carefully. So now that I've chosen what topics I want to study with
the Feynman Technique, and I've chosen those topics carefully, I wanna make sure I actually put the time in to do the Feynman Technique properly with these methods. I wanna make sure I'm not half-assing it. Here's the issue. If you half-assed the explanation, you will half-ass your understanding and you'll become a full ass
when it comes to test day. (donkey braying) So be a non-ass. This might mean spending a full two hours understanding mitosis
or something like that, but it's so, so important. Because once you have the basic framework of what mitosis is, then
you can start to fill in the little small things that go into understanding mitosis more deeply. You know, you get the cells, bam. DNA, chopped right in half. You will start to understand the things that make you go from getting a low B to getting a mid or high A. But if you don't understand the basic concepts of mitosis at all, you won't even get up to a B, you might get a C or a D or an F. If you cheat the Feynman Technique, the only person you are
cheating is yourself. So take the time and do it properly. Bottom line, spend the time and prepare a simple
explanation of a complex topic. Tip number six is avoid
jargon and complexity. This is the classic trap of using words that you
don't really understand because they kind of sound nice and fancy and they were written in the textbook. So if we were gonna talk about a specific phase of mitosis, for example, anaphase, a two complicated explanation might be something like this. Microtubules attached to the centrosomes of sister chromatids and
then the microtubules depolymerize to pull
these sister chromatids apart to the centrosomes
at the respective sides of the new to-be daughter sells. Now, that was way, way too complicated. I think I kind of know what's going on 'cause I remember mitosis and anaphase a little bit from college and high school, but that's just way too complicated. I was trying to remember
all those terms in my head. And if I was explaining
that to a 12 year old, he wouldn't or she wouldn't understand it. What's a centrosome, a centromere, a chromosome, a microtubule? These are all terms that
are way too complicated for your Feynman Technique explanation. So if we were to simplify
this down a little bit more, a better explanation
might be something like, the genetic material of the cell has condensed into these things called chromosomes that has lined up across the center of the cell. And in anaphase, these condensed pieces of DNA in the cell are pulled apart into separate sides of the cell in preparation for the cell becoming not one cell but two cells. The simpler the explanation is the more likely you
are to understand it. So if I was even to double
simplify that explanation, I would go even further and say, anaphase is when the
condensed genetic material or chromosomes are pulled apart to the separate sides of the cell. Isn't that much simpler than that really crazy
explanation. I said before? Yeah, and I can see it. I can picture it in my head this genetic material being pulled into separate sides of the cell. The simpler the explanation, the more likely you are to understand it. You can fill in the specifics later with flashcards and
memorization and all that stuff. But if you don't have
a basic understanding of what's going on, what's
going on in this topic, you won't even perform at
a medium level on the test. Make sure you avoid jargon
and avoid complexity. That's the whole point of this technique. Tip number seven is to use it for real. Once you definitely learn a topic, actually prepare a lecture to explain to other students. In the first two years of medical school, every week we would have to come up with a topic to explain to our classmates. And usually there were 10 other classmates and we were in like a small group and we would have to prepare that topic to explain
to the other classmates on a Tuesday or a Thursday
or something like that. A supervising doctor would be present to kind of listen to our explanations and our explanations were graded. So you can bet I wanted to do the best I possibly could on these explanations. Not only because I wanted
to get a good grade, right, but also because I wanted to make sure I was teaching my other classmates, my fellow colleagues well. I wanted to make sure they understood what I was teaching them because we would be tested
on this material later. And even now, two years
since that time happened, the topics I remember the
most from medical school are topics that I taught in those small mini lectures. The actual teaching seems to solidify the learning in your head. In one study, two sets of students were asked to prepare a presentation, but only one of those sets of students actually got the opportunity
to teach to a real class, to a real group of people. Guess which group of students retained information better? Well, they both prepared
for teaching, right? But the group of students that actually taught had better retention than the group of students
that didn't teach. That's interesting. That's interesting
because it seems the act of actually standing
up and teaching people what's going on or talking
through your slides solidifies the information in your head. So how would I use this? Well, with most of the content, with most of the things you're learning, you don't have time to prepare a lecture and actually teach it to other students. But if, for example, your school makes you teach stuff or there's one topic that's really, really complex and you're having a tough time, I would do this. I would take the time,
create a PowerPoint, create a lecture or something like that and actually present this
topic to other people. So bottom line, try teaching
this topic in real life. So tip number eight, and this is the most important tip of my entire video. Simplify your explanations
so you understand it. This is the most important tip. If at any time during your explanations you find yourself getting lost or that you don't understand
what you're talking about, stop, just stop what
you're doing right there and just rework everything. Go back to the drawing board, go back to the textbook, go back to the YouTube video, and see where your explanation got lost. See where your understanding,
right, got lost, and then redo it, redo your
simplification of the topic, so it makes sense to you. When you're at test day
staring at that exam, you're not gonna remember the complex sentences that you tried to come up with to sound smart to people. You're gonna remember
the simple explanations that you said to yourself, so you understand the topic. So make sure you make sense to you. Don't be a donkey. (donkey braying) As you may know, I talk
a lot about studying. Most of my videos are about maximizing your mental performance in
some way, shape or form. Whether that means
making sure you exercise at a perfect time during a study session or using the magic of active
recall and space repetition, my videos teach you,
hopefully, how to study better. And I've been working on something really, really big for a while now. And it's finally here. I've done my first ever complete studying class on studying. And my course is on Nebula Classes, which is a platform I'm creating with a bunch of other creators. And it's on everything I
know about studying better. My class has over 100
sources for a reason. I wanted to make sure I was providing you the best possible information from top academic journals. And the result is a class
that I wished I had. I wish I had this class when I was starting high school or starting college, because it would've saved me so much time and made me score better on every test. And this is a class on how to learn. The course will cover
how to get your brain to peak cognitive function to do your best possible work. It will go into specific study techniques that work and specific study
techniques that don't work. And finally, I'll give you
my exact lifestyle plan, how I actually implement these study techniques in my real life. So when you sign up with my
link for Nebular Classes, you not only get access to my huge class on how to study better, but you also get access to Thomas Frank's class on running a business as a creator. I watched it, it's awesome. And you also get Legal Eagles' class on copyright law, and many, many more. And there are new classes being released every single week. The whole thing is available for just $10 a month or $100 a year. But if you use my unique link, it's just $8 a month or $80 a year. Also because Nebula
Classes is part of Nebula, as soon as you sign up for Nebula Classes, you get instant access
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while you're at it. You made it to the end of this video. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it was helpful. These techniques really are great. All these studying techniques are amazing, but if we take the time to figure out why these techniques work, what parts of them are good, and what parts of them are bad, and how we can actually individualize these techniques for ourself, I think we can maximize our potential and maximize our performance. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you on the next one. You wanna hear about mitosis? How you doing? So mitosis.
