The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”— Mortimer Adler

The famous Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman understood the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something and it’s one of the most important reasons for his success.

-He pioneered an entire field: quantum electrodynamics (QED).

-His work helping scientists understand the interaction of light and matter earned him a share of a Nobel Prize in 1965.

In fact, he created a formula for learning that ensured he understood something better than everyone else. It’s called the Feynman Technique and it will help you learn anything faster and with greater understanding. Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to implement.

1. Pick a topic you want to understand and start studying it. Write down everything you know about the topic on a notebook page, and add to that page every time you learn something new about it.

2. Pretend to teach your topic to a classroom. Make sure you're able to explain the topic in simple terms.

3. Go back to the books when you get stuck. The gaps in your knowledge should be obvious. Revisit problem areas until you can explain the topic fully.

4. Simplify and use analogies. Repeat the process while simplifying your language and connecting facts with analogies to help strengthen your understanding.

Source:  "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman."  by James Gleick's ,1993 

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Seek assistance Through "Master Mind" group

“I don’t know anything about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world,” Henry Ford told the Chicago Tribune in 1916.

During the world war, a Chicago newspaper published certain editorials in which,among other statements, Henry Ford was called "an ignorant pacifist." Mr. Ford objected to the statements, and brought suit against the paper for libeling him.When the suit was tried in the Courts, the attorneys for the paper pleaded justification, and placed Mr. Ford, himself, on the witness stand, for the purpose of proving to the jury that he was ignorant. The attorneys asked Mr. Ford a great variety of questions, all of them intended to prove, by his own evidence, that, while he might possess considerable specialized knowledge pertaining to the manufacture of automobiles, he was, in the main, ignorant.

Mr. Ford was plied with such questions as the following:

"Who was Benedict Arnold?" and "How many soldiers did the British send over to America to put down the Rebellion of 1776?" In answer to the last question, Mr.Ford replied, "I do not know the exact number of soldiers the British sent over,but I have heard that it was a considerably larger number than ever went back."

Finally, Mr. Ford became tired of this line of questioning, and in reply to a particularly offensive question, he leaned over, pointed his finger at the lawyer who had asked the question, and said, "If I should really WANT to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer ANY question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?"

There certainly was good logic to that reply. That answer floored the lawyer. Every person in the courtroom realized it was the answer, not of an ignorant man, but of a man of EDUCATION. Any man is educated who knows where to get knowledge when he needs it, and how to organize that knowledge into definite plans of action. Through the assistance of his "Master Mind" group, Henry Ford had at his command all the specialized knowledge he needed to enable him to become one of the wealthiest men in America. It was not essential that he have this knowledge in his own mind. Surely no person who has sufficient inclination and intelligence to read a book of this nature can possibly miss the significance of this illustration.

Before you can be sure of your ability to transmute DESIRE into its monetary equivalent, you will require SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE of the service, merchandise, or profession which you intend to offer in return for fortune.

When you begin to select the members of your "Master Mind" group, endeavor to select those who do not take defeat seriously.


 Source: ”Think and Grow Rich”  by Napoleon Hill

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Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)

Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself
It's later than you think.

You work and work for years and years
You're always on the go
Never take a minute off
To busy makin' dough

Some day, you say, you'll have your fun
When you're a millionaire
Imagine all the fun you'll have
In your old rockin' chair

Enjoy yourself it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink
The years go by as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself
It's later than you think.

(Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself it's later than you think)

Your heart of hearts, your dream of dreams
Your ravishing brunettes
Has left you now and she's become
Somebody else's pet (pity isn't it)

Lay down that gun, don't try my friend
To reach the great beyond
You'll have more fun by reaching
For a red-head or a blonde

Enjoy yourself it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink
The years go by as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself
It's later than you think.

(Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself it's later than you think)

There's another thing I want to tell you too.

You love somebody very much
You'd like to set the date
But money doesn't grow on trees
So you decide to wait (Foolish Fellow)
You're so afraid that you will bite off
More than you can chew

Don't be afraid, you won't have teeth
When you reach ninety two.

Enjoy yourself it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink
The years go by as quickly as a wink
Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy yourself
It's later than you think.
Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy yourself it's later than you think

Source:  Songwriters: Carl Sigman / Herbert Magidson, Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think) lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

Sung by" Doris Day"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdMWHB6Kz3A

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Making Of a Happy Genius

In 1973, four-year-old Susan opened the cupboard of their guest room and saw many chess pieces fell out of a small bag. Just next to them was a rolled-up chess mat. She took the mat out and looked at the pieces with the intrigue comparable to any other child of her age. 

“What are these, Mummy?” Susan asked innocently, holding a piece in her hand and examining it.

“These are chess pieces, Zsuzsa,” she said, careful to not sound too enthusiastic, worried it might just kill Susan’s excitement. When parents are too excited to introduce something to a child, almost always, the child rejects it. I don’t think children do it consciously, it’s more a reflex action in the beginning. They hear parents saying no all the time and that no becomes their standard response too. And once children discover the joys of rebellion, they stick with their original ‘no’ for a long time. Klara Polgar, however, was better prepared.

Eight years earlier, in 1965, Laszlo Polgar, a teacher in Hungary, had started courting Klara by writing letters. He held two degrees in psychology and education and a PhD with his dissertation in developmental capabilities. In his spare time, he would play chess. During their courtship, Laszlo had told Klara that he was working on a lifelong experiment of making geniuses and that he “needed a wife to jump on board”. Klara too held three degrees and spoke eight languages. She wanted to marry someone who could match her intelligence. She’d liked Laszlo’s research, hypothesis, and his personality of course, and the two got married. From USSR, she moved to Hungary to be with Laszlo and they started out in a modest apartment in Budapest.

In 1969, their first daughter, Zsuzsanna –  also known as Zsuzsa, whose Western name was Susan Polgar – was born. Numerous times the two parents had reiterated their commitment to each other that the idea was not just to make a genius but make a “happy genius”. While attainment in life was important, a sense of fulfillment was even more important. When you feel that you are progressing in your desired area, you experience greater fulfillment and this in turns helps you to remain happy and motivated.

The moment to put the hypothesis to test had arrived with Susan’s fascination with the chess pieces. This was the beginning of a lifelong and insightful experiment. It might appear a matter of chance that Susan discovered the chess pieces but in reality,  it was anything but that. Klara and Laszlo had planned much before their daughter’s birth that they would carry out the experiment in chess where it would be easier to measure brainpower.

Klara Polgar opened up the chess mat and showed her four-year-old daughter how the pieces moved. Once again, she was careful not to sound too excited or make Susan feel that she should be playing chess because her parents wanted her to. Instead, she kept it low-key and fun. You can get anything done from anyone if you can make them think it’s their idea. In other words, when people, particularly children, feel that it’s their decision to do something, they will find the motivation to take it up and persist in the face of challenges.

In the evening when Laszlo returned home, Klara shared how Susan showed interest in chess. The two parents sat down, set up their chess set, and began playing a game. As children usually do when parents seem to be enjoying an activity, Susan – who was frolicking around until now – came and settled near the board. She was asking questions, hovering around her parents, and was beginning to get more and more fascinated with the chess pieces. They were careful not to ask her to observe their game or to play or learn it. They just played and enjoyed themselves (or at least pretended to enjoy). 

With great patience, persistence and dogged-determination, Laszlo began training Susan. The journey proved particularly hard. Not because Susan didn’t want to play chess or Laszlo wasn’t equipped to teach her, it’s just that chess was an entirely a male-dominated sport at the time. Laszlo and Klara, however, knew that their daughter could play as good as anybody else, male or female.

So often, when Laszlo would take Susan out to chess clubs, other players in the club thought that it was Laszlo who had come for a game and had simply brought his daughter along. They thought he was crazy for wasting his time teaching chess to his daughter. And when a seven or eight-year-old Susan would beat seasoned players, many would usually either refuse to shake hands in the end or make excuses like, “I am sick, I have a headache, I didn’t sleep last night,” and so on. This didn’t deter the father-daughter duo. On the contrary, it only strengthened their resolve to prove to the world that girls were equally good, if not better than boys.

Laszlo and Klara continued Susan’s intensive and specialized training. Meanwhile, two more daughters were born to them. Sofia Polgar in 1974 and Judit Polgar in 1976. Against all odds, they applied the same principles of parenting and training to Sofia and Judit. The result, you ask? Let me spell it out one by one:

Susan Polgar won her first Under-11 chess tournament at age four. At twelve, she won the World (Girls) Under-16 championship. At fifteen, she became the top-rated female chess player in the world. Going through the conventional Grandmaster (GM) norms applicable to men, she became a chess grandmaster at the age of twenty-two. In 1996, twenty-seven-year-old Susan Polgar was crowned the Women chess champion. 

While raising Susan, her parents – Klara and Laszlo – had learnt more about parenting and intensive training, which meant that they provided an even better environment and coaching to their second daughter Sofia Polgar who at the age of eleven became a world Under-14 girls chess champion.

Armed with more experience and insight, it was only natural that their youngest daughter, Judit, was brought up in the most conducive environment for making a genius. Her siblings played chess which meant that the game was all they mostly talked about at home, at the dinner table. Her parents no longer had the over-cautiousness and anxiety most parents do with their first child. Their parenting skills were sharpened by now; they could maintain a better balance between giving personal freedom to their child and living up to a discipline. As a result, Judit’s accomplishments exceeded their expectations.

At age twelve, Judit Polgar had thirty-five more points in FIDE rating (world chess rating) than the erstwhile world women chess champion. At the age of fifteen, she became the youngest chess grandmaster, far ahead of any male chess grandmaster throughout the history of the game. She is generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. At age ten, she not only took on chess grandmaster Lev Gutman, but won against him.

At age five, Judit defeated a family friend without looking at the board.

“You are good at chess,” the friend joked after the game, “but, I’m a good cook.”
“Yeah?” Judit said, without batting an eyelid. “So, do you cook without looking at the stove?”

All three daughters were home-schooled by Klara with a specialization in chess. They figured a long time ago (as an increasing number of parents are discovering today) that there was little sense in sending their children to a traditional school where regard for individual growth and temperament of each child was negligible. By the time most children come back home in the afternoon, they are tired and a whole day is gone. To expect that they then pursue intensive training in anything else at all is neither practical nor reasonable.

According to the eldest sister Susan, Judit was a slow-starter but very hard working. Laszlo too said that a happy genius is the result of labor + luck + love + freedom. He studied intelligence when he was a university student and later recalled: “When I looked at the life stories of geniuses, I found the same thing … They all started at a very young age and studied intensively.” Before even becoming a father, he had studied the biographies of 400 people from Socrates to Einstein and everyone in between and discovered the same pattern over and over again. “The experiment is not finished yet,” says Laszlo Polgar. “It began twenty-three years ago with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialize at six.”

In my view too, the gist of scores of studies in child and human psychology spanning over several decades is as follows:

1. Every child is a promise.

2. That promise can be turned into a genius.

3. Such a genius can be a happy person.

4. Coaching begins when they are very young.

5. It must be fun and playful.

Source: ”The Childern Of Tomorrow”  by OM SWAMI

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Pygmalion Effect

The work of Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968), among others, shows that teacher expectations influence student performance. Positive expectations influence performance positively, and negative expectations influence performance negatively. Rosenthal and Jacobson originally described the phenomenon as the Pygmalion Effect.

“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985)

“High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation”.—CHARLES KETTERING, PROLIFIC INVENTOR AND FORMER HEAD OF RESEARCH FOR GENERAL MOTORS

Individuals tend to rise to the level of other people’s expectations of them. In general, people tend to perform up to the level that others expect them to perform. If you don’t expect much from the people you work with, it’s likely you won’t inspire them to perform to the limits of their capabilities. Let them know you expect great things from them, and more often than not, you’ll find that they perform well.

The Pygmalion Effect is a tendency named after the protagonist of a Greek myth. Pygmalion was a gifted sculptor who created a statue of a woman so perfect that he fell in love with his creation. After Pygmalion desperately prayed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, she took pity on him by bringing the statue to life. The Pygmalion Effect explains why all of our relationships are, in a very real sense, self-fulfilling prophecies. The effect was first verified in studies that examined the relationship between teachers and students. If a teacher believed a student was “gifted” or “smart,” the teacher would act in ways that encouraged the student to live up to that assessment. If the teacher believed a student was “difficult” or “challenged,” they wouldn’t receive as much support and wouldn’t perform as well—a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie recommends “Giving others a great reputation to live up to.” He was a wise man—raise your expectations of others, and they’ll naturally do their best to satisfy those expectations.

The Pygmalion Effect isn’t an excuse to have unrealistic  expectations of other people. Even the best builder on earth couldn’t replicate the pyramids of Egypt in an afternoon, so expecting that level of performance from anyone is a recipe for disappointment and frustration. Expecting quality and performance is one  thing—expecting miracles is unrealistic. 

The Pygmalion Effect also features a paradox: having high expectations of people will produce better results, but it also increases the probability that you’ll be disappointed.

The Expectation Effect means that our perception of the quality  of someone’s work is a function of our original expectations. The higher our expectations are to begin with, the higher their performance will generally be, but the risk that our expectations will be violated is also much higher. If you’re doing a formal assessment of someone’s performance, remember to judge performance objectively and quantitatively as much as possible. Let others know you expect great work from them, and they’ll do their best to live up to your expectations.

Pygmalion in Management -  J. Sterling Livingston writes,

“Some managers always treat their subordinates in a way that leads to superior performance. But most … unintentionally treat their subordinates in a way that leads to lower performance than they are capable of achieving. The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them. If manager’s expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent. If their expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. It is as though there were a law that caused subordinates’ performance to rise or fall to meet managers’ expectations.”

Source: ”THE PERSONAL MBA” by Josh Kaufman

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The Secret of Happiness

When Gurdjieff (George Ivanovich Gurdjieff  was a mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, born in Armenia, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness  referred to it as the "Fourth Way")  was a small boy, his dying grandfather summoned his beloved protégé to be by his side. Of Greek descent, the old man had studied the great Greek philosophers all his life and had a compelling piece of advice to pass on.

“Life is a constant stream of moments,” he said, drawing the nine-year-old Gurdjieff closer. “On their own, those moments are good and pure. But, the path of this stream is littered with the snares of urges and immoral choices. The more you give in to temptations, the worse your life will become. You understand what I’m saying?”

Gurdjieff nodded, his eyes welling up to hear the feeble voice of his grandpa. He knew this was perhaps their last interaction.

“I have no wealth to give you, no houses, no horses,” the old man said, “but, I have some golden words for you. You etch those on your mind, and you will never regret a day. You see, my boy, life will put you through innumerable tests and temptations. Don’t let them drag you down the perilous road of conceit or self-destruction. Carefully separate the good from the bad and then choose the former. Good choices lead to good outcomes.”

 “But, how will I know what is good?” Gurdjieff asked.

“It’s hard to say. There’s no certain way of figuring that out but I can give you the rule of thumb: whenever you are hurting anyone or telling lies, it’s unlikely to be a good thing. One day, it’ll come back and haunt you. Remember what Aristotle said, ‘A pursuit of honor or material wealth can’t be the highest good. Instead, it is what helps you maximize your faculties as a human being.’ In simple words, you must strive to become a better human being. You understand?”

Gurdjieff nodded again and said, “I promise you, Grandpa, I will.”

“Now that you have given me your word,” the old man said, “I can give you the secret of happiness, of living a life of goodness. You listening carefully?”

“Yes.”

“Whenever you are tempted to do anything bad, or you are angry and want to give someone your piece of mind, just delay it by twenty-four hours. Never respond in haste. And, any time you have the opportunity to do any good, never postpone it. Do it immediately.

A series of good choices, a series of right actions eventually come around to insulate you from the undesirable situations and events in life. Really, it’s that simple. Good thoughts, words and actions culminate to become your shield. It’s not that life will stop shooting arrows, but you stand protected.

Source: ”The Secret of Secrets ”  by Osho

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