#111: Feynman Technique, Zone of Proximal Development & Iterative Learning
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on the Secrets to Learning
I. The Feynman Technique
The Feynman Technique is a learning method developed by famed physicist Richard Feynman. It promotes learning through teaching and simplification. You shouldn’t learn by memorising and regurgitating facts, the Nobel laureate insisted. The better strategy would be to internalise a new topic in four steps:
Study the new subject by starting with a blank page, writing down what you learn and making connections.
Teach what you have learned to someone else so as to challenge your knowledge and uncover any gaps you might have.
Fill those gaps you have just discovered by going back to your desk and studying more.
Simplify and refine what you know further until you’re able to explain it to something as if they were five.
The Feynman Technique is a good learning method. But if you ask me, it uses the term “teaching” a bit too loosely. I’ve tried to improve on it in my essay about the Feynman Technique 2.0.
II. Zone of Proximal Development
In teaching, the Zone of Proximal Development describes the sweet spot where a new skill is too difficult to be learned alone but can be mastered with guidance. The learner is just at the edge between the known and the unknown.
If your 6-year-old has just started to read, Shakespeare’s Hamlet will definitely be outside her Zone of Proximal Development. So will be an ABC book at the other extreme. To best develop her reading skills, a teacher would pick a book that’s still too difficult for her to read on her own. But easy enough so she can develop new reading skills with guidance.
The idea was developed by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky over a hundred years ago and is still used in education today.
III. Iterative Learning
Ideally, you’d want to stay in the Zone of Proximal Development and not get stuck in a repetitive cycle. Here’s investor Naval Ravikant explaining the importance of iterations:
If I start a business where I go in everyday and I'm doing the same thing. Let's say, I'm running a retail store down the street where I'm stocking the shelves with food and liquor every single day. I'm not gonna learn that much because I'm repeating things a lot. I'm putting in thousands of hours, but they're thousands of hours doing the same thing.
Whereas if I was putting in thousands of iterations that would be different. It's the number of iterations that drives the learning curve. So the more iterations you can have, the more shots on the goal you can have, the faster you're gonna learn.
—Naval Ravikant, Iterations Drive Learning
🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com