George Bernard Shaw no doubt said many wise things in his life but unfortunately it is a stupid phrase from Man and Superman which has stood the test of time. I refer, of course to “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” The problem with this phrase is that the truth is, if you can’t teach something and indeed teach it in a simple way then you almost certainly don’t understand it well enough yourself and if you don’t understand it you can’t do it well. Which brings us to the topic of how to effectively learn new things.
One of, if not the best way of learning new things was devised by the physicist Richard Feynman and unlike Mr Shaw he stated that “if you can’t explain a complex concept at a simpler level, you probably don’t understand it well enough yourself.” This has lead to the four step Feynman method for effectively learning new things.
Find yourself an imaginary child and try to teach them the concept you have been studying. In other words can you explain what you think you have learnt clearly and simply without resorting to complex or confusing language?
Use this to identify gaps in your knowledge and go back to the original material to fill in those gaps.
Organise your notes into a narrative.
Now teach it to someone for real. I find this the most difficult part as often I can’t find anyone and so I return to my imaginary child (or friend) who has to sit through it all over again but they don’t seem to mind too much!!
This is not only an amazing method for effectively learning something new but also puts you in good shape to effectively put into practice what you have learnt.
How about this for a better phrase?
Those who can teach really understand what they do, those who can do but can’t explain, need to learn how to teach. It’s not as snappy as George’s but I like it better and it’s certainly more effective in the modern world where AI and automation can often do but only educated humans know why it needs to be done.
We all need to be constantly learning new things and this is an effective way to enable you to do it.
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