Learn like Feynman

Richard Feynman was a legendary teacher. The Feynman Method is one of his lasting legacies.

Thanks to Farnam Street's blog, we have a very succinct summary:

  1. Choose a concept you want to learn about
  2. Pretend you are teaching it to a student in grade 6
  3. Identify gaps in your explanation; Go back to the source material, to better understand it.
  4. Review and simplify (optional)

On that first step, I happen to believe that learning topics adjacent to what you already know is better than learning arbitrary topics (see: Learn adjacent topics).

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Learn how to learn fast
How do we learn how to learn fast? I can mostly only speak for myself, and even then, I know I'm not the fastest learner

Learn how to learn fast

How do we learn how to learn fast?

I can mostly only speak for myself, and even then, I know I'm not the fastest learner. But some principles come to mind, which appear to have been battle-tested.

  1. The first is to Build a project portfolio.
  2. The second is to Learn like Feynman.
  3. The third is to Learn adjacent topics, rather than distant ones.

Learn adjacent topics

When picking out a topic to learn, I think it makes a ton of sense to learn adjacent topics to what we already know, i.e. things that have moderate degree of overlap to our existing knowledge base.

I think a moderate degree of overlap is necessary. If there's too much overlap, there's little expansion of the mind that happens when we learn a new thing. If there's too little overlap, there's too big of an entry barrier into learning that new thing. Having a moderate degree of overlap helps.