How to Use the Feynman Technique for Studying

6-minute read • Updated on 29 Mar 2023

The “Feynman Technique” refers to a study method where you explain what you’re learning to an imaginary student in order to understand and retain the information better. It’s one of the most powerful study tools, and it can be used in combination with mnemonics and other kinds of memory techniques.

By teaching what you’ve just learned from memory, you’re using active recall, which helps the information stick in your mind better. It also ensures that you understand the topic, because you will only be able to explain an idea if you understand it.

The technique has been around long before it was referred to as the Feynman Technique, and many successful students use the method intuitively because it works so well.

How to Use the Technique

Here are the basic steps of the Feynman Technique. It’s just a general guide, and you can adjust the steps for your own preferences.

Explain the concept to an imaginary student who doesn’t know about the topic.
Use analogies and examples in order to put the material in your own words and create new mental connections.
Create new questions about the material as if a student is asking you for more information, and answer those questions.
If you get stuck and can’t explain something, go back to your notes or do more research until you understand the parts that you missed.

Repeat the process until you’re confident that you understand it.

Your explanations can be written on paper, typed into a document or blog post, or spoken as if giving a lecture.

One way that I often use it is when listening to audio books or watching videos. I’ll pause the recording, step away from my computer, and give a mini-lecture on the topic to an imaginary student. When I feel confident that I understand the concept, I’ll hit “play” again and continue with the recording.

Here’s a video that explains how to use the technique:

Feynman Technique Examples

Here are a few examples of how to use the Feynman Technique while you’re learning new things.

Using the Feynman Technique with Memory Palaces

You can use a memory palace to store long lists of information in your memory. As you recall each item from your memory palace, use the Feynman Technique to explain as much as you can about each fact to an imaginary student.

This exercise allows you to study while you are away from your notes!

Don’t worry if you can’t remember everything while performing this exercise. Just performing the act of active recall will help lock the information into your memory. When you get back to your notes later, look up the items you missed. Missing items should not be considered a failure — it’s a necessary part of identifying which things you need to review.

Language Learning

The Feynman Technique is useful when studying languages. When you learn a new phrase or sentence, repeat it back several times until you can say it without looking at the paper.

Then explain exactly what each word means and why it takes that grammatical form in that situation.

Imagine that you are teaching an imaginary student who is having trouble understanding, so you have to explain every detail of the meaning, spelling, and grammar.

If you aren’t able to explain it in detail, then go look up the parts you don’t know, and then try explaining it again until you can do it without looking the information up. This will help ensure that you truly understand the material.

It can be helpful to write down your explanation in your notes.

Computer Programming and Mathematics

The Feynman Technique is an essential study tool when you’re studying technical information like computer programming or math.

As an example I’ll use an example of sorting a collection of books in JavaScript.

First, here is the collection of book objects. Each book has a title field and an author field.

const books = [
  {
    title: "Smart Notes",
    author: "Sönke Ahrens",
  },
  {
    title: "Moonwalking with Einstein",
    author: "Joshua Foer",
  },
  {
    title: "Memory Craft",
    author: "Lynne Kelly",
  },
];

Here’s a function that sorts the books by the author field:

function sorter(a, b) {
  if (a.author < b.author) {
    return -1;
  }
  if (a.author > b.author) {
    return 1;
  }
  return 0;
}

books.sort(sorter);

Now, to use the Feynman Technique, explain a few things about the code as if you were teaching an imaginary student:

What are a and b?
What do the -1, 1, and 0 mean?
How would you sort by the title field?
How would you sort in reverse order?
Is the collection (array) sorted in place or does it return a new array, leaving the original untouched?

If you can answer those questions, you can feel more confident that you understand the basics of how that sort method is working, and the information is less likely to have “gone in one ear and out the other”.

If you want to dive deeper into the sort method, you could come up with more examples and explain them to the imaginary student. For example, why does the sort code below result in the wrong output?

[1, 4, 7, 10, 3].sort();
// output: [1, 10, 3, 4, 7]

Why does the code below fix it? Notice that it’s returning a number, just like the function above that sorts the books.

[1, 4, 7, 10, 3].sort((a, b) => a - b);

More questions that you could ask about the last example:

Why doesn’t the sorting function inside the sort method above have a return statement?
How would you change the code so it sorts the numbers in descending order?

Don’t just answer the questions — teach the concepts to the imaginary student without making assumptions that they already understand the basics.

If you don’t know the answers, you can use a search engine to research it. Once you find the answers, repeat the Feynman Technique exercise by explaining it to the imaginary student again until you can do it without looking at your notes.

Learning how to ask questions about computer code and explain the answers using the Feynman Technique will help you learn to code much faster!

Discussion About the Feynman Technique

Mayarra offered some useful tips in a related forum discussion:

I have tried it, and it is my go-to method (or at least something similar to it) if I am short on time. If I am not however, I go as step further. No imaginary teaching, but imaginary discussing. By discussing a subject you start looking critically at it, which helps remembering it more than when you just teach it. The downside of it being that it is sometimes really hard to argue about something with yourself if you can’t distance yourself from a point of view you own.

To solve that, I go inbetween teaching and discussing, by having an imaginary talk with the young Mayarra. Kids can ask more than adults can answer, by reaching out to the child-part of my personality, I can ask myself questions by ‘looking through the eyes of a kid’.

That helps in thinking about it, but also in explaining it simply. If you can explain something in a simple way, you think about it differently. In words attributed to Albert Einstein, but most likely said by Richard Feynman or Ernest Rutherford (people can’t agree on who it was): If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough

Learn More Study Tips

If you’re interested in the Feynman Technique, check out the links below.