- [Thomas] Thanks to brilliant for sponsoring this video
and supporting my channel.
A few years ago,
I made a video about something called the Feynman Technique.
This is a simple but highly effective study technique,
where you deepen your own understanding of a concept
by attempting to simplify it and explain it to someone else.
In other words, you teach to learn.
In this video,
I want to present a modified version of that original,
Feynman Technique that I've been using in my own independent
learning projects as of late.
Conceptually, it is very similar
to the original Feynman Technique
but in execution, it is quite different.
So I'm going to give it its own name,
to keep things distinct.
And that name is the LPC method,
which stands for learn, present, critique.
And I've been using this LPC method in my own studies
of anatomy, biomechanics, and bioenergetics,
as part of my goal to earn both CSCS and PBC certifications,
which if you're curious are certifications in the strength
training and coaching industry.
And I've learned through using this,
that this technique has a very high ROI on helping me retain
lots of information without having to spend a lot of time
actually studying it.
So in this video,
I'm going to walk you through exactly how to use the LPC
method along with some examples.
And I'm also going to compare it
to the original Feynman Technique.
And you can see in the timestamps below exactly
where those sections are.
But first,
if you haven't seen my original video,
or if it's been a while,
I want to give you a very quick refresher
on what the Feynman Technique is.
The heart of this technique can be found in a quote
that is often attributed to Albert Einstein,
though he probably didn't actually say it,
but it goes like this.
If you can't explain it simply,
then you don't understand it well enough.
The idea behind the Feynman Technique is to break down
a concept and simplify it
to the point where you could easily
explain it to a lay person.
If you can't do that,
then you don't understand it well enough yourself.
And in going through this exercise,
actually trying to explain it on a piece of paper,
you expose gaps in your understanding,
where you can then go and try to shore up.
So again, conceptually,
the LPC method is very similar to the Feynman Technique
We're trying to achieve the same goal except for replacing
the act of writing on paper, drawing diagrams,
with actually presenting to a camera.
Here is the TLDR version of the LPC method.
First you go out and learn.
Go to the lecture material,
watch a video, read a book,
take your notes as normal.
Second, present a concept,
present something you've learned to your phone camera
as if you're explaining it to a friend or explaining it
to a classroom like a speech.
And third upload that video,
paste it into your notes
and finally watch it and critique it.
And in your critique,
you're looking for three different things.
Number one, any errors, factual errors
that you need to correct.
Number two, any areas where you are vague,
where you can add clarification and number three,
any questions that your critique brings up after the fact,
you can then go and learn about through supplemental
material or through revisiting the actual material
you're learning from.
So here's a real world example from my own study
of human anatomy.
And if you look through my notes here on motion,
you'll see lots of different videos
where I'm explaining lots of concepts,
but the one that I want to show you here
is my explanation of the different moving joints
in the human body,
which are called synovial joints.
So at first I went through that learning process.
In this case,
the material that I'm working through is Barbell Logic's
principles course,
which goes through pretty much everything you need to learn
to become a beginner strength coach,
so biomechanics, bioenergetics,
the basics of human anatomy,
as well as how to coach the four main power lifting lifts.
So I'm going through this course and I'm taking my notes
on the different joints in the body and how they move.
And I use a pretty typical outline style note
taking technique here in notion
with the one exception that I often will clip
a lot of screenshots and add
a lot of multimedia elements
into my notes to take advantage of multimodal learning.
And I'll touch on that a little bit later,
but now it's time to move on to step two,
which is present.
At this point.
I want to put my phone on a tripod and pick a concept
or a set of facts to present and explain
to my phone as if I were explaining it to you
or to a friend.
So in this case,
I picked these six different diarthrodial joints in the body
and explain how they work in the video.
So a way to imagine a saddle type joint and how it moves
is if you took your knuckles here
and took the other knuckles here
and sort of sandwiched them together.
Now, this is my own analogy.
They did not teach this in the course,
but it sort of is analogous to how you'll see illustration.
Once I am recording,
I use the YouTube app to upload an unlisted copy
of this video to a second YouTube channel.
I have specifically for my own learning
and for this LPC technique.
And because it's on YouTube,
I can then go ahead and paste it into my notion,
which will embed it.
And that brings us to step three, critique.
At this point,
I'm going to watch through the video and I'm going to look
for, again, three things.
Number one, factual errors.
So for example, at one point in the video,
I mentioned the carpals of the hand
and the carpals of the feet.
Those are the tarsals.
I'm going to also look for anything
where I could be a little bit more clear
or more correct in my explanation.
So at one point I mentioned the joint between the metacarpo
and the phalangeal bones here in the thumb.
Well, that is a joint,
but it's called the metacarpophalangeal joint.
So I should actually use the name of the joint.
And finally, number three,
if I have any questions that come up
in this critique process, and I almost always do,
I want to go out and get answers to those questions.
And this is just another way that encourages
me to deepen my understanding
often by using supplemental resources.
So how is this method better than the original
Feynman Technique?
Well, I am not going to stand
by that claim for every subject or every concept out there,
but I do think that for certain types of information,
certain concepts, this is much better
than the Feynman Technique in terms of ROI.
And it's because you're using a different mode of learning
or mode of active learning specifically to deepen
your understanding of the subject material.
Going back to my example of the synovial joints in the body,
if I get on camera and I verbally explain
how these joints work,
but also use body language to demonstrate how they work
and point out where they are on my own anatomy,
I am using multimodal learning to deepen
my own understanding.
And if I wanted to do that with the Feynman Technique
I would have two different options.
I would either have to write out in text
how these things work.
That's a very abstract way of learning.
It's going to take me a lot longer.
Or I would have to draw them.
That is a more iconic type of learning, using iconography.
It's much better in terms of me
being able to visually see how something works,
but drawing takes a lot more time than just pointing out
and moving my arm to show a hinge joint works.
So in terms of time spent studying versus retention
of information for certain kinds of topics,
this is going to be superior.
Though I think the real improvement
to the five technique here is to combine
your use of both of these techniques,
either separately based
on the type of concept you're studying,
or maybe even lumping them all into one big technique.
There is nothing stopping you from breaking out a whiteboard
and actually writing out or diagramming
while you film yourself.
But that extra step of critiquing yourself afterwards
is another thing that's going
to help deepen your understanding.
In general, you want to pursue
a multimodal learning strategy
because no one way of learning is better than any other.
You may have seen this often cited learning pyramid
floating around the internet,
where people will say things like you only retain 10%
of what you hear, 20% of what you read, etcetera.
Well, as it turns out the original version of that pyramid,
number one, it wasn't even called a pyramid,
it was a cone.
- It's about the cones.
- But number two, it did not include
those percentages at all.
And as far as research has been able to find
those percentages are completely made up.
The original version of the cone
was called the cone of experience.
It was created by Edgar Dale who was a very well-respected
education researcher.
And his whole point in creating this cone was to just create
a model that showed visually the differences in levels
of abstraction, between different methods of learning,
be it verbal or text-based or audiovisual.
And his whole point was that mixing up different methods
of learning is more powerful than using any one.
In fact, back in 1969,
he wrote that direct hands-on experience,
what we often think of as the gold standard for learning
anything is often not the best way to learn something.
And more recent cognitive research has confirmed this
and shown that for basic concepts,
a more abstract learning model
is actually better.
And once you get into higher order learning concepts,
then hands on experience is better.
So as far as cognitive research has found,
a multimodal approach truly is the best.
So talk about what you're learning and demonstrate it
with body language, draw it,
find a way to get a new perspective
and a new view on what you're learning.
And you're going to find your long-term memory,
your long-term ability to retain and recall that information
and master it truly understand it
is going to improve as well.
Before I end this video,
I want to let you know about one more resource
that I'm using in this independent learning project of mine
and that is Brilliant.
Specifically their chemistry course.
Because believe it or not,
I never took chemistry in college.
And in my current study of bioenergetics,
I am learning that a little bit of chemistry
knowledge is actually very useful.
So I'm currently going through Brilliant's chemistry course,
and I'm finding it very helpful for understanding
how chemical reactions work.
And I'm also using some more passive supplemental resources,
lecture, materials, videos,
but Brilliant is built with active learning in mind,
which means while I'm going through their course,
I'm constantly being quizzed.
I'm constantly being asked to solve problems.
And if you know anything about the cognitive science
behind active learning,
you will know that this is a much more effective, efficient,
and interesting way to learn
and it is the methodology they use to build all the courses
in their library of which there are more than 60.
So if you want to get better
at math, at science and computer science,
you're going to want to check out Brilliant.
In all their courses,
you're going to find logically sequenced bite-sized quizzes
and interactive puzzles that keep you actively engaged
and help you to master the material more effectively.
And by solving problems more frequently,
you become a better problem solver overall.
So if you wanna get started learning today,
go over to brilliant.org/ThomasFrank
to sign up and to support this channel.
Hopefully you found this video helpful.
I'm finding this very helpful in my own study,
so hopefully you will as well.
If you enjoyed this video,
likes and comments definitely help the algorithm.
And I'll have one more video right here
and another one right here,
if you want to keep watching stuff on this channel,
thanks as always for watching,
and I'll see you in the next video.