Feynman technique to win hackathons
In this article, I am describing a learning technique I often use when exploring a new topic. The technique is also useful if you already understand the topic but would like to improve your ability to remember details or challenge your assumptions. When applied at hackathons, it turned out to be very useful when preparing the pitch. I am not going to explain what hackathons are in this article, please refer to the many explanations on the web to learn more.
Richard Philips Feynman
Feynman was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century who made major contributions to multiple areas of physics and received the Nobel Prize for Quantum Electrodynamics in 1965. As a professor, he become known for being a great teacher, holding lectures in a very entertaining fashion. In fact, his reputation as a communicator of science did not just earn him the nickname “The Great Explainer” but also led to the TV show “Messenger Lectures” in the early 1960s, where he would offer an overview of selected physical laws and educate the public.
He was known for his love of learning, exploring and mastering a great number of very different fields and activities. Feynman had a very practical view to learning, something he developed as a kid when having long outdoor walks with his father. Instead of just telling him about the world around him, his father would ask him questions that would make him explore and develop his own understanding. Feynman made a distinction between knowing something deeply and (just) knowing the name of something (see video below).
He realized that these two types of knowledge are not the same thing and that people would focus on the wrong one when learning. Based on this idea Feynman created a simple technique with four steps to learn anything much quicker with deeper understanding. Once you applied the technique, you will notice that you’ve not just developed deep knowledge but also are now able to explain the topic or concept in simple language.
The Feynman Technique
The most effective way to ensure you actually deeply understand a concept in year head is by teaching it to someone else or at least pretending you’re doing so. Feynman was able to take a complex concept, break it down and put it simple language, making it intuitively and easy to understand to others who might not have the same understanding.
The steps:
- Take a blank piece of paper and write the name of the topic or concept you want to learn on the top.
- Explain the topic or concept to yourself as you would explain it to someone else. By explaining the parts that you already understand, as well as the ones you don’t fully understand, you pinpoint exactly your problem areas and can address them.
- Once you found a problem area or failed to explain something, go back to the sources, re-read it and learn more about the part you got stuck at and try again until you feel comfortable.
- Try to avoid using confusing or complex explanations. Challenge yourself to either simplify the language or create an analogy to understand it better.
This technique works for multiple purposes. If you’re shaky at a topic or concept and want to improve your understanding, but also works when you already have a good understanding and only would like to test your knowledge or challenge your assumptions.
Hackathons
You now learned about the technique and how it works. Before we walk through the steps in a hackathon context, let’s look at typical event timeline. Usually hackathons last multiple days, often 2 days including 24 hours time to hack. Most can be broken down into the following crucial parts:
- Building a team and deciding what to hack
- Start hacking for the next 24 hours and eventually hacking through the night
- Stop hacking and start preparing your presentation/pitch
- Presenting your hack to the jury (time usually limited to 2–3 minutes)
- Award ceremony honoring the best hacks
At this point, you might be wondering how a learning technique can help you at a hackathon. Remember when I said that once you applied the technique, you will not just have developed deep knowledge but also will be able to explain the topic or concept in simple language? It’s exactly that.
If you think about the different parts listed above, there’re things you can influence like building a great team, picking an interesting idea, building your hack and making sure it still works the next day when you’re pitching it to the jury. However, there is one thing you will notice you can’t change: It’s who the actual jury members are and their judgement. The jury does not necessarily have the same technical or creative mindset and be experts in a different field, meaning you might hit a wall if you speak a complex language. Many great teams failed with amazing hacks. They worked hard, developed and designed great things but failed communicating on stage because they ran out of time still trying to find the right words to explain their hack or gave the jury a hard time understanding the value of their work, just because they haven’t used simple language.
These things could have been addressed using the Feynman Technique. It is very easy. Once you stop hacking, you typically have an hour or more, before your team will be asked to present on stage. Whenever you’re done hacking, get together and pick one person in your team that will speak. That one person will apply the Feynman technique and explain the hack in his/her own words to the team.
When I use the technique, it usually goes like this:
- If you’re using a slide deck to present, open it now. If it’s something different, like cards or drawings on a flipchart, then get those ready so you can use them while you’re explaining to the team.
- Start a stopwatch and explain your hack to your team. There will be parts you can explain right away, but there will also be parts you will struggle to explain and waste time. Pinpoint the problem areas and check your time.
- Once you identified a problem area, get back together as a team and discuss how to (re-)phrase it. Understand why you’re struggling to explain that part of your hack and why it is included, why did you think it was so crucial? Ask yourself if it is actually really important to explain. Do you really need to mention the login screen or the search bar? Probably not. Check your time and try to explain the same concept with less words. Can you explain the same in 1 sentences instead of 2? Repeat until you can explanation becomes fluent and stay within your limited stage time.
- Now as you’re fluent explaining your hack and got the timing right, try to avoid using confusing or complex terms. Challenge yourself to either to simplify the language or create an analogy to understand it better.
Once you applied the technique, your pitch will run smoother. When a friend of mine (Cosmo) and I started using this technique a couple years ago, we realized how smooth our pitch went, so we thought we should just stick to it. It became a natural move, that we would start applying the four steps to prepare for our stage time. There is a nice byproduct of all this. After your pitch, the jury members might ask you (tough) questions. Now, because you developed deep knowledge by challenging your own assumptions, you are prepared much better to take these questions.
I hope you found this article useful. It helped me to improve my pitches and get endorsed at the following hackathons or companies in the past:
The Feynman technique is a simple recipe for learning that you can use in and out of a hackathon. Feel free to reach out to me, if you should have any questions or just want to get in touch.
Olcay
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