Yesterday I subscribed to a new site that notifies me of what I consider interesting stuff. The site is called Cool Tools. The first email showed some tools which were somewhat interesting and a software evaluation of what I call reminder ware. OK not earth shattering stuff. But at the bottom there was a link attached to a paragraph subject "How to understand difficult subjects". That link brought up a page
Learn Anything In Four Steps With The Feynman Technique which I found extremely interesting for two reasons. One is that it is so simple yet powerful. When something is simple yet powerful I tend to think of it as elegant. Elegant like E=MC^2. The second reason was that I found that I have been doing something similar for quite some time and it tickled my ego. I can remember trying to help fellow students with technical subjects by trying to explain what I knew of the subject. By doing this I either simplified the subject through the explanation and in turn branded that simplified knowledge in my own brain or realized that I did not understand as much as I thought I did. Later in mid career I went back to get my masters' degree and used this same method even though I had no idea it was what I was doing. We had a dedicated group that moved through the curriculum taking the same courses. We had study sessions and each student was assigned a particular subject to be the "expert" and would be tasked to produce "the gouge". The gouge was a written synopsis of the ideas and skills that were expected of each student in that course. I wrote down what I thought was the gouge for each idea or skill as I did my course work. As I progressed I would often go back to previous entries and modify usually by simplification or making the previous entry more encompassing. By the end of the term (terms were quarterly system just like at TECH which I think is the best way) I had a concise understanding of the subject and could pass that on to my fellow students in paper form and explain it as by teaching it.
That web page also had a few other links that relate to productivity which I also found interesting. I can not say that I have followed those productivity techniques but I can see that they are also simple yet powerful and hope to incorporate them into my everyday life. One thing I can also see in these techniques is that current everyday life and electronics (smartphone, social media, etc.) is working against those techniques.
Take what you will from what I wrote or what is in the links. I just found the ideas elegant and thought others might too!
Learn Anything In Four Steps With The Feynman Technique which I found extremely interesting for two reasons. One is that it is so simple yet powerful. When something is simple yet powerful I tend to think of it as elegant. Elegant like E=MC^2. The second reason was that I found that I have been doing something similar for quite some time and it tickled my ego. I can remember trying to help fellow students with technical subjects by trying to explain what I knew of the subject. By doing this I either simplified the subject through the explanation and in turn branded that simplified knowledge in my own brain or realized that I did not understand as much as I thought I did. Later in mid career I went back to get my masters' degree and used this same method even though I had no idea it was what I was doing. We had a dedicated group that moved through the curriculum taking the same courses. We had study sessions and each student was assigned a particular subject to be the "expert" and would be tasked to produce "the gouge". The gouge was a written synopsis of the ideas and skills that were expected of each student in that course. I wrote down what I thought was the gouge for each idea or skill as I did my course work. As I progressed I would often go back to previous entries and modify usually by simplification or making the previous entry more encompassing. By the end of the term (terms were quarterly system just like at TECH which I think is the best way) I had a concise understanding of the subject and could pass that on to my fellow students in paper form and explain it as by teaching it.
That web page also had a few other links that relate to productivity which I also found interesting. I can not say that I have followed those productivity techniques but I can see that they are also simple yet powerful and hope to incorporate them into my everyday life. One thing I can also see in these techniques is that current everyday life and electronics (smartphone, social media, etc.) is working against those techniques.
Take what you will from what I wrote or what is in the links. I just found the ideas elegant and thought others might too!
