Scientific Definition
Forcing yourself to explain a concept reveals exactly where your understanding is hollow.
Plain-English Definition
Forcing yourself to explain a concept reveals exactly where your understanding is hollow.
Feynman Explanation
You don't know it until you can teach it. Most 'understanding' is recognition, not retrieval.
Core Principle
Forcing yourself to explain a concept reveals exactly where your understanding is hollow.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Forcing yourself to explain a concept reveals exactly where your understanding is hollow.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Why teaching juniors is the most underrated form of senior-leader skill development.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
You don't know it until you can teach it. Most 'understanding' is recognition, not retrieval.
Examples
- Feynman Technique; Eben Pagan's Explanation Effect Mastery Manual.
- Why teaching juniors is the most underrated form of senior-leader skill development.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- After learning anything important, teach it cold to a smart non-expert. The gaps are your homework.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- After learning anything important, teach it cold to a smart non-expert. The gaps are your homework.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Unusual or bizarre material is more memorable than common material.
Believing previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected.
A conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes.
Six escalating levels of teaching that compound learning: self-explain, simulated other, dialogue, informal teach, full-spectrum teach, professional teach.
As more facts are learned about a topic, retrieving any one fact slows.
IQ scores have risen substantially over generations.
Items that stand out are more likely to be remembered.
Your capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn faster than the environment changes.
Malcolm Knowles's principles of adult learning: self-direction, experience as resource, readiness, problem-centered orientation, intrinsic motivation.
Amishi Jha's research: attention is a finite, depletable, but trainable cognitive resource — short daily mindfulness measurably improves it.
Approach a situation as if you knew nothing.
Hierarchy of cognitive learning: Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyze → Evaluate → Create. Benjamin Bloom, 1956 (revised 2001).