Why Explaining Things Makes You Understand them Better

This week’s Better You, Backed by Science is about how explaining something helps you understand it better.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

That quote is often attributed to Richard Feynman, and sometimes to Albert Einstein. Whoever said it first, the principle is spot on.

It’s been one of my guiding rules for years – whether I’m writing a book, preparing a talk, or trying to understand something new.

Because here’s the thing I’ve learned:

Clarity doesn’t come from consuming more information.

It comes from trying to express it.

The power of articulating

When I want to understand something deeply – or quickly – I start by reading it.

But then I get up, walk around my office, and pretend I’m explaining it to someone.

That’s when the cracks appear.

I notice where I hesitate.

Where I ramble.

Where I realise… I don’t actually understand it as well as I thought I did.

So I go back. Fill the gaps. Try again.

Each time, the explanation gets clearer. Simpler. More direct.

In just a few minutes, I’ve gone from fuzzy to focused.

This sort of approach has a name. It’s called the Protégé Effect.

The Protégé Effect

Researchers at Stanford tasked 62 teenagers with learning about the biological changes that occur when a person has a fever, and then to create a flow diagram showing the key stages.

Half of them were asked to study and learn as you usually would when you’re trying to learn and understand something.

The other half were told that their diagram would be used to teach a virtual character. This was the ‘teacher group’. 

After two 50-minute classes, the results were in.

The teacher group learned the content much more deeply and scored much better when tested on the subject. And incredibly, the least able students in the teacher group matched the highest achievers in the learn-as-usual group.

The researchers called this the Protégé Effect.

How does it work?

When we’re learning something to teach someone else, we take more responsibility for getting the facts right and making sure we join the dots in our understanding of concepts.

Secondly, if we then present or articulate what we’ve learned, we learn even better because explaining quickly reveals the gaps in our knowledge and understanding. So we go back to the source materials and make a few corrections to what we thought we knew or understood.

It also helps consolidate memory.

Sometimes, if I want to really check I understand something deeply, I imagine I’m explaining it to a child.

The “explain it simply” test

That’s where things get interesting.

I once tried this with Einstein’s idea of time dilation – how time slows down the faster you travel.

I realised very quickly that phrases like “the fabric of spacetime” were doing a lot of heavy lifting… without me fully understanding what they actually meant.

So back I went.

More reading. More refining. More explaining.

Until it became simple.

Because simple isn’t basic… it’s the end point of understanding.

So whether it was Feynman or Einstein who first said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” they were onto something.

It’s my personal yardstick when I learn something.

Because I’ve learned that clarity doesn’t come from consuming more. It comes from explaining it.

Try This

1.     Choose something you’ve recently learned

2.     Stand up and explain it out loud (as if teaching it)

3.     Notice where you hesitate, ramble, or get stuck

4.     Go back and fill in the gaps

5.     Try again – simpler, clearer, sharper

6.     Repeat until it flows easily

It might take you two or three iterations to feel you’ve made significant progress. I’ve seen myself make about 10 iterations, especially if I’m preparing to speak at a conference.

People see the polished final result and think it’s a skill. It is. But the real skill is commitment to the practice I did beforehand.

Want to explore more?

I always make a YouTube video based on each of these Better You, Backed by Science emails.

Here’s a link to this one, where I dive a little deeper into the science.

And here’s a link to my entire Better You, Backed by Science video playlist, with a video of each subject I’ve ever covered.

Reference

Protégé Effect. Link.

More

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