> When you write out an idea from start to finish in simple language that a child can understand (tip: use only the most common words), you force yourself to understand the concept at a deeper level and simplify relationships and connections between ideas. If you struggle, you have a clear understanding of where you have some gaps. That tension is good –it heralds an opportunity to learn.

I have lived with my grandparents for the majority of my life. My grandpa isn't the most intellectual person on this planet. Yet, since I've grown up I've always seen him as my intellectual equal and because of that he always listened to when I had understood a new concept.

I am sure that because of this 'in-built mechanism' in my family structure I got set up to be 'naturally talented' at explaining things since I was always used to put things into simple terms subconsciously.

What I am learning from this is that when I have a kid, I have to act like an 8 year old so that he/she will experience the same blessing as I did.

I still thank my grandpa for listening to my (most of the times) very long-winded and convoluted explanations, forcing me to simplify until I had a feeling he understood me well enough.

Although I think Shane's article serves as a good introduction to the Feynman Technique, I feel it could go further when it comes to how to actually implement it. Notably, I'd argue the Feyman Technique - and Feynman was especially good at this - revolves around asking good questions. Here's a related excerpt from my blog post on the topic[1]:

--

This is not a novel concept, and it’s just a bit of fortuitous branding that Richard Feynman’s name got attached to it, but the Feynman technique is a framework for learning new things. It’s very simple:

1. Pick a concept you want to learn, such as “what is company stock?”

2. Ask some very practical questions, like:

- “What is it?” - “Why do we need it?” - “What alternatives are there?” - “When did it come about?” - “Who uses it?” - “What are its various forms?” - “Where is it commonly used?”

3. All of these questions will invariably branch out into even more jargon and concepts, such as “equity,” “preferred stock,” “voting rights,” “limited liability” and so on.

4. Repeat #2 for each of those branches. By the end, you should know the first principles so well you could teach the concept to a college freshman.

Three things about this framework immediately jump out at me:

(1) Learning something deeply is necessarily a lot of work. It’s not like you’re just answering “what is X.” You’re asking ten questions about it, each trying to get at it from a different angle, and then asking ten questions about each of those underlying concepts. The bottleneck to knowledge then is not so much ability, but effort.

(2) Learning something deeply is largely a function of the questions you ask. The greater “coverage” your questions span on the concept surface area, the better you will understand it. In this framework, asking good questions is a necessity.

(3) Questions are also where new insights come from. Once you understand all the factors which compose “company stock,” you’re able to toggle individual factors on and off, and ask questions such as: “can you have stock with unlimited liability?” or “what would stock in people look like?”

.

[1] https://alexpetralia.github.io/2017/12/25/NL-2017-12-25.html

There is a youtuber junior md called Ali Abdaal. He has very good scientific videos about learning. Talks about subjects such as “active recall” and “spaced repetition”. Worth a look imho.

Here is the youtube channel link: https://m.youtube.com/user/Sepharoth64

Video on a.recall and s.repetition: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLnPbIffxE

In my town we have something called The Science Cafe. The presenter has describe an interesting topic in 20 minutes without [computer] slides, followed by Q&A. This is not easy now that conference talks and course lectures heavily use powerpoint. TED science talks are similar.

That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.

My friend’s dad is an inventor and discovered that the best way to retain knowledge is to teach it, which is why most students forget 90% of the source material. Most teaching is based on students inputting knowledge not outputting it.

"If you’re not learning you’re standing still"

This is a large understatement. In our industry, if you're not learning you are drifting backwards rapidly.

I aim for twenty hours a week of (unpaid) reinvestment and learning. Some weeks I still feel like that's not enough to stay current.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

I thought the Feynman technique was:

1) Write down the problem

2) Think real hard

3) Write down the solution

In other words, the "draw the rest of the fucking owl" of general learning/problem solving.

  1) Write down the problem
  2) Frame it in such a way as to pique Feynman's curiosity
  3) Wait for Feynman to tell you how he solved it

A variant is to 'explain it to your spouse'. (Ignoring these days your partner might be better educated than you.)

The real problem is not the way to learn, it depends on each individuals. The real problem is knowing which concepts need to learn. It's not easy.

"Step 1: Teach it to a child..."

Key. Teaching is a learning process for both teacher (who must condense and reduce to essentials, and so integrate) and student.

If the child is old enough to ask good questions (and is encouraged to), so much the better. The feedback is valuable, and the teacher can continue to reduce/integrate at a somewhat higher level.

Some people used to say the same about programming. If you can ~teach it to a computer (<2yo innate abstraction capabilities), you know it all.

An alternative explanation is that some people are just good explainers.

I've had profs in college who were brilliant but couldn't teach, and profs who could teach but weren't brilliant (didn't produce much original research).

I wouldn't say the former group "didn't know their material well", but they didn't build up the material systematically. Pedagogy was neglected. Explaining things is an art that not every has the inclination to master (but they should).

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. - Albert Einstein

Good or smart? They're not entirely unrelated but there's a big difference.

People's talk of complexity tends to remind me often of their (many believers I have seen) conceptualization of god, that is, he is only beyond them in such a way that is in itself within their horizon of understanding, just more so, as it were. That is to say, it they themselves who are the measure of god. And I see much the same thing happen in other fields. And it leaves me wondering, if we truly can explain everything to 12 year olds, why aren't twelve year olds...doing anything other than being 12 year olds? Perhaps we have to admit that in bestowing this "understanding" through the equivalent of and episode of Nova, we really do have to leave out so much, that to call it either understanding or communication in any serious sense is farcical and a lie promulgated to an audience that's just acting out evolved desires both to want to acquire and mating advantage possible and also to have some innate feature of attraction that is unacquirable by others, while those communicating get to act out their own desires to positions themselves higher within that hierarchy (because are the people in these audiences ever going to be considered 'on their level'? The answer to that should illuminated the whole situation.)

---

So what if—just another fancy idea of mine—what if Chomsky cannot find anything in my work that goes "beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old because" because, when he deals with continental thought, it is his mind which functions as the mind of a twelve-year-old, the mind which is unable to distinguish serious philosophical reflection from empty posturing and playing with empty words?

--Slavoj Žižek

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1365-some-bewildered-clarif...

I'm not sure complicated is a sign, that said trying to match your listener is mandatory, otherwise you're just speaking out loud.

I’ve had that feeling, and I started making an effort to improve myself. I started time-tracking my side projects (“you can’t improve what you don’t measure”), scheduling time for learning, and set up an automatic summary sent on email every week.

It didn’t work for me at all, and ended up basically killing every joy in my side projects. If I missed a scheduled hour (because I was doing something else fun) I felt like a failure. I could only focus on “I should be working on x” instead of actually thinking about x.

These days I try to not worry too much about what I should learn/produce, and rather work on what interests me at the time. I’m probably not learning at the most effective rate, but at least I’m having fun.

> if you're not learning you are drifting backwards rapidly

I'm pretty sure this isn't true. Most of the "new" things in the industry are just rehashes of old things with a different coat of paint and some added abstractions to slow it all down.

There's lots of new stuff, but (luckily?) very little of it is worth learning. The universe of software is divided into worlds which were each founded with a certain set of assumptions, often long in the past, and everything that comes after is a test of how those assumptions apply to various real problems as they arise. They are essentially (social science) experiments in progress. The latter-day activities of one world are (almost) always inapplicable to other worlds. (The exceptions are very few, for example testing approaches, reactive programming, some functional techniques have managed to spread across worlds).

If you're going for excellence in your world, which is usually the goal of the staff programmer, you're better off focusing on the details of the world you're in - new libraries, releases, details of governance etc. Yes you should learn new languages now and again, to dip your toe in other worlds; that's foundational and good and keeps you agile. But most of the stuff you see on HN isn't foundational, and so you don't really need to pay attention to anything not happening on your world.

I did learning for the sake of it; not totally for no reason, I used to crave learning, abstraction, understanding. At one point it wasn't the whole story.

Standing still as rotting is bad obviously, but to me, just seek things that provides a sense of eager. Be it walking, boxing.. "make it" passionating (as in seek what tickles that sense). If semiconductor physics does that, enjoy it. But the emotion is what motivates me now. I think it's more important to replenish that than learning. You'll learn later when you're fulfilled, and probably 10x times better and faster.

It depends on how you measure that ROI, so to speak. In the web development industry, yes probably you could spend even more h/w on learning but would that benefit you in any way?

If you have just graduated yes you probably need to catch up especially if you are after a highly paid job, but for the more experienced one, no you don't have to be that anxious about it.

At some point I found my self spending more time on readying newsletters that were landing on my mail daily or weekly. Besides knowing what was that weeks' famous frontend library, it was adding zero to my foundational knowledge. I did felt that way. I just learned to let it go.

Now I am gradually trying to find my pace. The state were I can be aware of what's happening in the industry but also spend enough time on things that matter.

> Some weeks I still feel like that's not enough to stay current.

Staying current is overrated. You'd be better off spending most of those hours on CS fundamentals, written and oral communication skills, and probably exercise.