Skip to main content

The ultimate test of understanding

    

                                                                      Source

Here’s a simple test to check whether you really understand a certain topic or not?

Pick the topic of your choice, which you think you know well. Now try explaining it to a 14-15-year-old child or someone who has absolutely zero knowledge about that topic. If you’re successfully able to make the chosen person understand your idea- congrats you do know the topic well after all.

A lot of us might fail at this simple activity including yours truly. I know its difficult to accept the fact that things you thought you knew so well you don’t actually know them so well.

Our brain gives us a false sense of understanding based on mere reading or just knowing about something as understanding it. We take great comfort in the same.

Allow me to introduce the Feynman technique of learning by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.

1. Identify a subject or topic

2. Explain it to a child – this would force you to simplify it to a degree where it can be understood by anyone

3. Identify gaps: Places where you are not able to explain or communicate your thoughts with simplicity

4. Go back, reread and then try to explain

Most concepts known to human beings can be explained in simple language. So now if someone who says he knows it well and yet is unable to explain it in a simple manner has probably got it wrong. They are suffering from what is called the knowledge illusion.

Let’s talk about how can things be actually simplified?

Can be done by using analogies of concepts used in our daily life and already understood even by children like the one we used- the concept of gravity to explain mean reversion in the stock market.

Can be done by narrating a story or a real-life experience.

Using examples so relatable that the concept doesn’t feel alien to the listener anymore. Show them how some application of the concept being explained has already been used by them. Like the idea of a pension system is a simple equivalent of saving from today’s salary for your future.

Or the idea of a Systematic investment plan is the equivalent of putting money in a piggy bank the way we used to do in our childhood or the concept of inflation being equivalent of what a $1 could buy in the 1990s vs what it can buy today.

Now one might question why simplify or why do I need to explain it to anyone who has no clue about the topic? It’s simple to communicate.

What is the use of those brilliant ideas you have (imagine a start-up idea or an idea to increase productivity) if you can’t communicate it to people? It won’t work if people don’t understand it.

A huge part of businesses today is marketing your products & services. if you can’t simplify and explain your products to your customers how will you survive?

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Investing like Long Distance Running

  What does investing in the stock market & running a marathon have in common? Running long distances requires a lot of stamina and mental strength. It takes hours of deliberate practice, self-belief, and doses of strength training. Is investing any different? You’ll figure out in. Let’s assume you have practiced and you have all that requires running a marathon covered. Cut to the day of the actual marathon and how you can think of it as similar to investing. Let me divide it into 4 parts of 10km’s each for simplicity assume full marathon is of 40kms exact. The race flags off after the Zumba warm-up and you’re all fired up and excited. You leap and run at your maximum pace leaving everyone behind for a brief moment. This is akin to when you start your stock market journey with your initial capital having read all those books and thinking you know everything but having zero market experience. Let’s say you do earn a decent return on your first idea but they
Post a Comment
Read more

Are you Biased?

We are all biased!! Yes, I said that out loud, we all are. It includes yours truly too because I am no exception. Let’s define what bias means before we delve into different types of biases. Wikipedia defines bias as “disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair”. Biases stem from the way our brain is structured to help us. Our brain always tries to keep past experiences in mind, remembers what gives us pain or pleasure, what worked to give us recognition or what led to failure, and tries to make sense of the present and future decisions based on them. So, the brain doesn’t recognize that it could be a bad thing for us. Biases make us irrational in our decisions and choices. Now almost none of us can eliminate biases because its difficult to recognize the bias when you’re actually being biased because your brain tricks you into believing that what you’re doing is the right thing to do.
Post a Comment
Read more