“In preparing for his oral qualifying examination, a rite of passage for every graduate student, he chose not to study the outlines of known physics. Instead he went up to MIT, where he could be alone, and opened a fresh notebook. On the title page he wrote: Notebook Of Things I Don’t Know About. For the first but not the last time he reorganized his knowledge. He worked for weeks at disassembling each branch of physics, oiling the parts, and putting them back together, looking all the while for the raw edges and inconsistencies. He tried to find the essential kernels of each subject. When he was done he had a notebook of which he was especially proud.”
From Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick
It’s incredibly gutsy to take eight weeks to make a list of things you know nothing about. But when it’s done, you know what you know, and you know where to look to answer the questions that remain.
What would you put in your version of that notebook?
If you want to get better, start making that list.