This habit separates self-taught geniuses from everyone else

Summary

Anthony Metivier explores the habits of self-taught geniuses like Tesla, Einstein, and Da Vinci, revealing a unique method that aids in mastering information. He argues that traditional schooling often fails us, and passive learning is ineffective. Instead, by actively engaging with content and transforming learning into a physical component, like using notebooks and mind maps, one can leverage spatial memory for retention. By using tactics like the Feynman technique and interacting with real people, learners can achieve deeper understanding and creativity, embodying a truly self-taught genius approach.

Highlights

• Discover the secret habit of self-taught geniuses like Tesla and Da Vinci. 🤔
• If you endlessly study but nothing sticks, this might unlock your potential. 🗝️
• Learn how to lock information in your brain and process it at high speeds. ⚡
• Using physical notes and spatial memory could be the game changer in self-learning. 🔄
• The key to retention isn't digital; it's working with hands-on techniques! 👐

Key Takeaways

• Tesla, Einstein, and Da Vinci share a common genius habit not widely taught. 🚀
• Passive learning isn't enough; transformation into physical knowledge is key. 📚
• The Feynman technique involves teaching concepts to better understand them. 🧠
• Memories form better when engaging physically with content like notes and mind maps. ✍️
• Active recall and teaching yourself simplify understanding and boost memory. 🔍

Overview

Tesla, Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci were united not just by their genius, but by a habit that many overlook — the active and physical engagement with learning. Anthony Metivier delves deep into how these self-taught figures mastered knowledge in a way that goes beyond passive absorption, challenging traditional educational systems.

Key to unlocking this genius, according to Metivier, is the Feynman technique, an approach that involves teaching what you learn to simplify understanding. He suggests that by using physical tools such as notebooks and engaging with spatial memory, individuals enhance their recollection and creative capacities, paving the way for deeper self-improvement.

This method highlights the power of stepping away from purely digital consumption. Metivier underscores the benefits of spatial memory and physical learning techniques, not only in academic achievement but in creative thinking, encouraging a holistic and interactive approach to self-education.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction: The Habit of Self-Taught Geniuses In the introductory chapter titled 'The Habit of Self-Taught Geniuses,' the author discusses an ongoing study of successful self-taught geniuses such as Tesla, Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci. Through years of research, the author unveils that these geniuses share a common habit that is rarely taught. This habit is presented as a crucial factor that could contribute to many individuals not achieving their full potential.
• 03:00 - 06:00: The Problem of Forgetting The chapter addresses the issue of constantly studying without retaining information. It explores a common struggle many face: reading books, watching tutorials, taking notes, yet finding that the knowledge quickly fades away, often minutes, days, or weeks later. The chapter promises insights on how to overcome this cycle of forgetting and truly progress towards achieving one's goals.
• 06:00 - 12:00: The Feynman Technique The chapter titled 'The Feynman Technique' focuses on addressing the problem of forgetting by utilizing a method practiced by self-taught geniuses. It introduces multiple resources, including a free self-education blueprint, aimed at helping individuals retain information, process it quickly, and overcome useless objections. The Feynman Technique is highlighted as a powerful tool for locking information into the brain.
• 12:00 - 18:00: Refining the Feynman Technique The chapter titled 'Refining the Feynman Technique' discusses the importance of practical application in learning, emphasizing that every moment and effort spent can be practical if approached correctly. The technique uses examples to illustrate its application in both learning and broader life contexts. The chapter highlights that while content is crucial, context is even more significant in the educational process.
• 18:00 - 24:00: Physical Assets and Spatial Memory Explores the inefficiencies in traditional school systems, particularly focusing on the problem of forgotten information due to poor note-taking or not using notes at all. Highlights the misconception that passive content consumption leads to intelligence, despite its prevalence.
• 24:00 - 28:00: The Power of Words The chapter "The Power of Words" discusses the transformative impact of words and how a self-taught genius processes information. It emphasizes the importance of active information processing in three different ways and highlights a specific habit that aids in turning learning into mastery. The narrative is styled as a dialogue or internal monologue, with a focus on the speaker's listening habits and learning strategies.

This habit separates self-taught geniuses from everyone else Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Tesla, Einstein, and especially Leonardo da Vinci. I've been studying for years people who are the most successful self-taught geniuses. And long ago, I discovered one habit they all hold in common. And the crazy part is that almost no one teaches it, which helps explain why so many people are failing to reach their full potential. And
• 00:30 - 01:00 perhaps you're in that trap right now. So if you feel like you've been constantly studying but never actually getting smarter, never actually reaching a place where you could even imagine achieving your goals, make sure to watch this entire video to the end. Especially if you read books, watch tutorials, take all kinds of notes only to find that minutes later or days later or weeks later it's all gone. That problem of
• 01:00 - 01:30 forgetting gets solved today. Because in addition to giving you access to my free self-education blueprint and another powerful resource that has a chance, at least a chance of freeing you from the prison of failure. You're about to discover how every self-taught genius I'm aware of really locked information into their brain, processed it at insane speeds, and most importantly never got hung up on useless objections about
• 01:30 - 02:00 whether or not something is too abstract or impractical or well I don't know how to do this etc. They understood that every second and every iota of energy is practical provided you have the one simple habit I'll show you today including examples of how to apply it in your learning life and your life at large. But content is merely king and context is God. So let's look at why people trying to educate themselves in a
• 02:00 - 02:30 world filled with broken school systems fails us. Well, a lot of people are binge watching educational content and then they go on to forget 90% of it or more, maybe even 100% of it because they have either never taken notes, they take notes ineffectively, or they never use the notes that they jot down. And some people even think that passive consumption equals intelligence. I've seen this so many times. I spend all my time watching the best channels and
• 02:30 - 03:00 always spend all my time listening to the absolute best podcasts. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. A self-taught genius thinks differently and operates differently by processing information actively and not just actively but in three different kinds of time. And to do that, they apply one habit that turns learning into mastery. But before I
• 03:00 - 03:30 reveal the habit, let me tell you a quick story. This is Dr. Anthony Metivier from magneticmarymethod.com. Get subscribed if you're new here. Hit that thumbs up and just understand that if you're watching this video, chances are you've heard of some of the people that I talk about, but chances are you've never heard of them in quite this way. So be part of the community and help me help others find it with your engagement and your comments because we want to make as many people be as genius as possible and
• 03:30 - 04:00 not in this arrogant snotty way but in the humble way like Da Vinci's way because this dude was very very humble very humble indeed so much so that he sometimes didn't mention that he was a painter until the end of his resume right and I teach those things too. Okay. So, with humility in mind, Richard Fineman had something called the Fineman technique. We're going to make it better today. So, if you already know it, don't
• 04:00 - 04:30 skip the details because we need the general review, but also we're going to go a little deeper on it. Now, Fineman, in case you don't know him, was one of the most brilliant physicists in history. But he did something that a lot of people think is a little bit strange. Instead of just reading notes and taking notes like a lot of his classmates, he forced himself to teach everything he learned even before he fully understood it. Please understand this. It's worth
• 04:30 - 05:00 repeating. Before he understood it. And he did this all his life. And this is where a lot of people get stuck. They don't do things because they feel that they don't understand. But understanding is a process, right? And Fineman gives this over and over and over again throughout his career. And he has endless extraordinarily important lessons for people that are stuck in
• 05:00 - 05:30 hesitation. And one lecture he gave just sticks in my mind. He said, "It is my task to convince you not to turn away from physics because you don't understand it." You see, my students don't understand it either. That's because I don't understand it. Nobody does. Now, that's not just humility. It's a strategy. And it's a strategy that does require an extra dose of intelligence because you have to admit the truth of things. And this is a world
• 05:30 - 06:00 where a lot of people do not like truth. They like little fantasies and little boxes that they can tick, right? But understanding is a procedure and it requires continual vigilant awareness and acknowledgment of the procedural nature of self-education and we're always going to have ignorance to deal with and we're always going to be intimately involved in ignorance. Now you want to be able to
• 06:00 - 06:30 enable yourself to deal with that constant ignorance. And one way you can think about it, and this is an ancient metaphor, is that the truth, the knowledge is a sun, and ignorance is just the clouds. Well, clouds come and go. They're not going to stop coming and going. But when you detect those clouds, you blow them away, right? And the more you're willing to do that and the better you're going to be. Now, what is the blowing away? Well, it's the effort of
• 06:30 - 07:00 teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, right? And so, you've got to just start explaining it as quickly as you possibly can in your life in order to be able to develop your personal genius. And do it in a way where you don't get hung up on things. I had somebody trying to convince me the other day, oh, I could never be a genius because of X, Y, and Z. Because because because because because because well that song belongs in the Wizard of Oz. We're singing a different tune. The
• 07:00 - 07:30 foundational theory of learning is this. If you've got genes in your body, you've got the potential for genius. And if you can't take my word for it, read Lin Kelly's The Knowledge Gene amongst her other books. You know, my regular viewers, regular listeners to the Magnetic Memory Method podcast know all about Lin Kelly's work. Get into it. It's really, really powerful. But she's going to prove to you that you can be a genius. And it's in your genetic makeup, or at least for most of us, it is. There
• 07:30 - 08:00 are certain situations, conditions, etc. And that book, The Knowledge Gene, gives you one of those case studies with the most amazing scientific story that that I've ever read. And you're going to enjoy it a great deal, I'm sure. Now, back to the Fineman technique. It is not exactly the habit I have for you today, but I'm mentioning it because you can stack it together with the sheer gold that I'm leading you towards in this video. The Fineman technique
• 08:00 - 08:30 is, in case you don't know it, a very, it's not just, oh, just teach others. It's also, you know, explain the concept in the simplest terms possible as if you were explaining it or trying to teach a 5-year-old. Now, one of my first ways of changing this is to ask, does it really have to be a 5-year-old? Like, what if that's not a useful metaphor in a particular situation. I'm not so orthodox on the point is what I'm saying. And to show you what I mean, I mean, I went out of my way and have
• 08:30 - 09:00 spent over a year now on the Memory Detective Junior books and I went I went for 10-year-olds, right, to explain it to 10 year olds. And is that okay, Richard Feman? Uh yes, that's fine because you're using your own noodle and you know you're not getting caught up in someone else's dogma, right? So that's a very very important principle, right? Is you want to explain it simply to just somebody at some level that is not ready for it, right? So don't turn it into, oh well, does this really check the
• 09:00 - 09:30 5-year-old box? Have I really simplified it enough? No, you just want to understand the meaning of the metaphor. And if you struggle to simplify what you're learning, the point is not the age group that you're simplifying it for. It's that you have identified now at least one gap in your understanding. Because if you can't simplify it to a particular level, you need to go back. You need to study more. You need to refine your comprehension through contemplation through writing. And you repeat this process over and over and
• 09:30 - 10:00 over again even after you have successfully mastered the concept. Now why do you do that? Because you want to maintain the knowledge, right? And so then when you do so, you will no longer have failed to understand the nature of understanding because nature is a process. So if you struggle to put advice like this into use, if this is still too conceptual for you, there might be a reason for that. And I have high confidence that I can help you make
• 10:00 - 10:30 a change so that you do finally start to get these concepts and then start to more importantly implement on their basis. So as we move forward to the gold mine I have for you. We want to ask why the Fineman technique and this form of teaching others at a simplified level works. Well, part of the reason is just obvious, right? By breaking things down, we're using reasoning and analysis to have various components and working
• 10:30 - 11:00 through those various components enables us to see how all the parts fit. But learning scientists also talk about active recall. So when you're teaching, what you're doing is you're causing memories to form and comprehension requires memory by bringing it up in your own words and verbally exercising your understanding as it is. And you're literally starting to rewire your brain, right? This is neuroplastic change. So
• 11:00 - 11:30 if you struggle with this, right? Just don't label yourself. If you keep labeling yourself either negative or positive, you're placing a premium on just the label itself, not the process. Right? So go for precision. If you don't understand something, then the process is you go back and you understand it better. This is genius. To go back is the genius because genes grow. Right? Now, I know I'm playing around with language a little bit, but
• 11:30 - 12:00 the point is that this is what it is. This is what these geniuses are doing. They are literally in movement. They are in the process. They don't get stalled. They don't get stuck. So going back to check the record for your accuracy to hunt for further details, you're improving the retention of the content and you'll not only eventually retain the information more accurately, but you'll remember the gaps. You'll remember what it was that you didn't correctly understand. And so now you
• 12:00 - 12:30 have a story that you can re use to remind yourself and others in the future of how essential it is to practice this technique in learning. I hope that's clear, right? You want to remember when you failed because it's going to help you fail less in the future and it will help you remember the costs of failure but it will also help you help others not fail or at least share with them the story of why you failed and then
• 12:30 - 13:00 eventually more people will get it. They'll go aha that's why I failed and then all ships rise. Okay. So what that means is that technically there never are any mistakes. Not as such, just a process. And that process will reveal itself to you and lead to pattern recognition that helps you assess the validity of future educational resources that you want to study. It improves your critical thinking and ultimately puts you ahead of the curve in almost every
• 13:00 - 13:30 domain of life. Now, I should also give cognitive load theory a shout out. Hello, cognitive load theory. Being willing to break things down to their smallest and simplest components also burns things into your memory much much better because you're reducing the cognitive load. So I've memorized many words in so many different languages it's not even funny different terms some from physics like orchestrated objective reduction and I had to break that down. I had to literally ask myself, okay, so what are we going to do for this
• 13:30 - 14:00 orchestrated thing, right? Or orc O, I think is the the shortened version of that. And I didn't let pride get in the way of working on just the orc part, right? And I had to think and I got Frank Zappa in there and, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And in Latin, expatendorum, well, I'm sorry, but not sorry, that I had to break that down to one syllable, X. And then I had pet and then 10 and then door and then um x
• 14:00 - 14:30 expendorum. When I have learned the um symbols in a non-class logic that I studied, I had to break it down one symbol at a time in order to read these syllogisms. And if you let your pride get in the way of that, you're not going to be able to reduce the cognitive load, which means that you'll be stuck in overwhelm. So these are kind of modifications to the Fineman technique, I suppose. But he's literally talking about breaking things down, down, down,
• 14:30 - 15:00 down, down. Why? Because we know from learning science that this is one of the best things that we can do, even if it seems fickle. The smallest unit of learning could even just be one little curve in a new alphabet you're trying to learn. All right. So, for completion's sake, let me break this down into steps. If you want to use the Fineman technique as we've discussed it so far, the first step is to explain it out loud within 24 hours. If you can't recall a certain
• 15:00 - 15:30 aspect, don't stress it. The substep cuz sometimes you will recall it. So, you don't need this step is to, you know, just don't add a label to it. Don't say, "Oh, I failed." Or, "Oh, this sucks." Or, "Oh, this is hard." Oh, no. Just go straight to fixing the issue, right? Go back, brush up, study additional resources, treat it just as all part of the process. Then you have the explain it to a 5-year-old or a 10-year-old rule
• 15:30 - 16:00 or just explain it to yourself as if you were a simpleton. And I sometimes do that to myself. Okay, simpleton, let's go. And I don't put an age on it. But the the target doesn't have to have a particular age. It's not helpful. Now, I just said don't label things. And then I just immediately went to label things. Another little substep here is accept that you're human and accept that your teachers are just human too because sometimes we get hung up on their contradictions and you know that doesn't help either, right? So we want to
• 16:00 - 16:30 basically just simplify it. Simplify it in the way that you think it will work in the context. Break the concept down into ridiculously simple terms. And maybe that's where a label can help. know that this is so ridiculously simple, but I'm doing it for myself anyway. That's what I did with expatendorum. I don't know why that word was so difficult, but it I just made it as ridiculously simple as possible. And if I had to go from X down to E, I would have. Okay, so those are basically the steps of the Fineman technique
• 16:30 - 17:00 classically speaking. But here's another step that I'll add for you. It's been implicit all along. I've said okay so if you can't understand go back research refine find additional resources but if you get stuck even on that you can ask a question which is who is the person most likely to have the answer and how would I find that person now answering that question may already get you out of the rut because you'll go oh I know that the person who wrote the book probably has a
• 17:00 - 17:30 bibliography at the end and I can look for additional resources there but you can also use search tools a little bit more intelligently. Now these days you can ask chat bots and so forth. You have to do that with caution, but that is a a decent thing to do. But there is still old search functions that still work like in title and then a colon or in URL in text and file type PDF and you can search for syllabi from universities and
• 17:30 - 18:00 this can help you. So, who is the person best able to help me answer this question? You can refine your search terms down. And that is a beautiful way to simplify things for yourself or the opposite is sometimes you need to make it more complicated. You need to go to the experts. And it's getting increasingly difficult to find those experts with traditional search tools. And maybe it's getting better with the chat bots. But I would be very very cautious either way and use them both
• 18:00 - 18:30 and really get to an actual physical book if you can. But find that expert. The other thing is, and this is something that Da Vinci did, and it's a big lesson here, a huge lesson, is you go and ask people, you interview people. Now, this can seem like a stretch because, you know, it can be hard to get a response. I know because I've emailed a lot of people and uh sometimes I just never hear back from them. But at the end of the day, you can still try. Or
• 18:30 - 19:00 you can go to local community functions, meetings, and just start talking to people. Figure out what other people know. Other people's knowledge is a huge asset. And you want to start to build the process of being in the habit of talking with other people. That's not the gold mine yet, but it's part of it because a lot of us just don't do that. We've become so accustomed to, well, I can just look it up. No, you can't. Or at least if you leave yourself strictly
• 19:00 - 19:30 to the habit of constantly looking things up and leaving page one or leaving what a chatbot tells you, you're putting yourself behind the curve. Self-education requires more if you want it to be epic, and I know you do. Okay, so before I get to the gold mine, thanks to everyone who smashes that thumbs up, helps me project this message around the world so all of the ships can rise.
• 19:30 - 20:00 Thanks for those who support my work by getting my books and the magnetic merry method masterass, etc. If you want to join the ranks of those who use what we're about to talk about now, the one thing that separates the top learners from the rest, don't stop at learning. Don't stop at the Fineman technique that we just discussed and that we add a little bit more nuance to. The common denominator amongst all the people I've studied is very simple and it is this. They turn their knowledge into a
• 20:00 - 20:30 physical asset, not digital. Although there are all kinds of personal knowledge management systems out there that involve a digital component and to a certain extent I suppose I use them by virtue of having a computer. But if you want to learn faster than 99% of people and you want to start teaching yourself at scale through books, through courses, through videos, you have to stop starving yourself of the spatial memory benefits that come from working with
• 20:30 - 21:00 physical notebooks, journals, index cards, mind mapping, and other learning techniques that get your hands involved in space. And I said going and talking to real people, that's part of this, too. Being physically engaged in real rooms with real people is going to be more and more essential, especially as we're having a lot of artificially programmatic content fill every available space because the tech bros and all that, they're going to move
• 21:00 - 21:30 very, very quickly in order to do that. At least that's the way it seems, right? And so it's going to be more and more important that you have the skill of people in space. Not just, oh well, I got my index cards in space, but you actually know where in your community people are in case things get wild online and it looks like that's the way it's going to be. Now, why does spatial memory optimization and physicalization of content work so well? Well, memory scientists don't exactly know. I think part of the answer is in
• 21:30 - 22:00 Koslin's the case for mental imagery. I know that a lot of people don't agree with his thesis, but I think actually it's not that I agree with it or disagree with it. I think it's one piece of what he's talking about that gets to the core of it. Now, I don't want to chew up time on memory science and stuff like that right now, but even Klene was talking about the problem of digital dementia recently on the Lex Friedman podcast. And so, you know, I've had all kinds of theories over the years, and I've talked about them many times on the
• 22:00 - 22:30 channel before. It's just common sense that where something is in a book that you've read, right, is a lot easier to figure out if it's a physical one. Where is halfway through a Kindle book, right? A Kindle book that currently you no longer have the right to download and import on other devices. At least that's the way things were as of last week. Maybe these uh corporations that are responsible for that changed their mind. I don't know. But this is the thing with digital. It's not just that they're controlled by people. uh that have
• 22:30 - 23:00 nothing at all remotely related to your interests in mind. It's that there is no middle of a Kindle book. But here I can tell you that it's near the end that Lynn Kelly makes a particular point. I remember that it was at the end even without using memory techniques because that's how spatial memory works, right? And it's a very very important part. When I think of various notes in my memory palaces or in my index cards, I know where they are in space. And that additional
• 23:00 - 23:30 physicality helps me find it without even having to go and get the physical thing. That's how memory palaces work, especially when they're based on real locations because those spaces have depth. Single screen devices do not. Either way, the research and the commentary, including people like Ezra Klein, are on my side of this position. In any case, your mileage may differ. I know that there are people who tell me, "Oh, but I'm just fine." Usually, they
• 23:30 - 24:00 have anonymous user accounts and they have no particular accomplishment to share. But if you like the digital thing, that's okay. Just keep this warning in mind for the day when you might wish that you had physical books, a library that you built so that nobody can change it and that you have a library that you can think about spatially in order to help use the memory palace technique better because of things that I talk about in the magnetic memory method master class that let you turn every page in a book into a
• 24:00 - 24:30 memory palace. I'm not going to apologize for this point. I have been able to learn and achieve so much more by being stubborn about it in my own practice even though it's more challenging. I have tried digital devices and I've done it for quite a few years, but I gave up digital learning almost entirely in 2017 because I saw how detrimental it had become to my memory. And so when I got back into being more of a purist in applying the habit of learning to physical media,
• 24:30 - 25:00 everything changed back to strength upon strength upon strength. So I've got one more tip for you. But if you'd like a few exercises that go far beyond the Fineman technique for helping you teach yourself, I've put together my free self-education blueprint that's going to help you turn what you learn into real world expertise. So please don't miss it. You can get it at magneticmary method.comb which is for selfeducation blueprint. Now if you find that the
• 25:00 - 25:30 self-education blueprint and what I'm saying with you today is reasonable but it still doesn't help you change. I would love for you to have an additional resource which you can watch just by sticking with me now on YouTube or if you're listening to the podcast, look up my list of books on learning. I've been locked in to patterns that refused to let me go in my past. There's perfectly scientific
• 25:30 - 26:00 explanations that help me understand why that that happened to myself and others. And these books on learning will help release you from it. If you are also stuck and you can't get yourself to move, I think this is a list of books that everybody should read, which is why I put it together for you. And I do share more of my struggle and how that one idea in particular from one of the most powerful books in that list helped me stop beating myself up about how I wasn't getting anything done and allowed
• 26:00 - 26:30 me to get on a path of action and it has continued ever since almost unabated even though life seems to get more and more challenging. Right? Isn't that weird? But nonetheless, power moves forward and that's because it's power not force. All right. So, I got one last power tip for you today. Speaking about power, I would suggest in addition to following up with the resources that I've offered for you today is that you get really involved in words. Words that
• 26:30 - 27:00 you can wield like a shield and operate like a boomerang. Now, it may be that you get a copy of Norman Lewis's Word Power Made Easy, or maybe you get involved one day when I open it up again in my weekly Word Warrior program. But I want you to do whatever it takes to start studying words. Practice memorizing individual words and their meanings to create a shield, but a
• 27:00 - 27:30 shield that you can throw from yourself so that you don't get hung up on semantics and that you are also able to share with others in a non-semantic way. Studying words, what they have meant, what they could mean in the future, the flexible ways that they can be used will improve your rhetoric and it will improve how you understand the rhetoric of others. So you can practice questioning better. And when you can question better on the basis of how
• 27:30 - 28:00 people make meaning and you supplement whatever digital archive you're building with physical archives that help you both complicate and simplify everything, you're going to find that the words are more powerful than you ever imagined possible. And you will have your own library in your mind that helps you grow and stack growth upon growth upon growth
• 28:00 - 28:30 because you have a fallen of shields and you know what a phallank is. So, grab the self-education blueprint, watch my books on learning next, and with thanks as always, until we have a chance to speak again, keep yourself magnetic.