I don’t know about you, but I consider learning a lifelong activity. But sometimes, as an adult, I get frustrated at not being able to do something as well as I think I “should.”
Not knowing how to do something that seems effortless for someone else is embarrassing. It can sometimes make us feel uncomfortable or inadequate. And sometimes, the frustration, embarrassment, or feelings of discomfort or inadequacy are too painful to bear.
So we abandon our efforts to learn new skills before we even give ourselves a chance. Then we justify that decision to quit with thoughts like, “Never mind. I really didn’t want to…didn’t have the time…wasn’t all that committed” and other nonsense. We justify quitting to ourselves, to make us feel better.
If you’re ready to stop justifying the quit, and really master a new skill, all you need to understand is that learning is a process of acquiring new skills over time. It’s like that old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!”
Learning anything is going to require your patience for the four stages of the process. Here they are, with no further ado:
Unconscious Incompetence
Let’s say that you want to learn to play the piano, and you know nothing about pianos or anything associated with pianos. Things like pedals, white keys, black keys, sheet music, and metronomes are a complete mystery to you.
You don’t know what you don’t know. You’re completely unaware of how much there is to know.
Sure, you can put your hands on the keys, bang around and sound comes out – but you are incapable of playing the piano to make music. In other words, you’re incompetent at playing the piano.
That’s unconscious incompetence.
When there is so much to know, and you are not aware of how much you don’t know, you can be like a “babe in the woods” – naïve and blundering your way through the unfamiliar. You will often be taken by surprise. It can be risky. You will make mistakes, and the results can be painful.
Every single one of us has lived through unconscious incompetence if we’ve learned anything. There’s no shame in it.
The good news is that when you recognize that’s where you are in your learning, you automatically move into the next stage: conscious incompetence.
Conscious Incompetence
Continuing with our piano playing metaphor, once you’ve confronted the fact that not only can’t you play the piano, you discover that there is a whole lot you don’t know about playing the piano.
In other words, you still can’t play music on the piano. If you’re still interested in learning to play, you become keenly aware that you need to gain knowledge. You watch other people reading music, working pedals, practicing scales, running their fingers over the white and black keys, making mistakes, and starting over.
That’s conscious incompetence.
You know that you don’t know stuff – that if you knew it, you could begin to make music on the piano. That’s where your real learning begins to accelerate. You take lessons. You begin to practice. You make a bit more progress as you confront your lack of ability. You move from “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to a few rudimentary classical waltzes, over time.
Each mistake teaches you something – it creates the “aha!” that causes you to learn something new.
And one “aha!” leads to another, your learning increases, and you begin to gain some skill with practice over time. With enough practice, you move into the third stage of learning: conscious competence.
Conscious Competence
Once you’ve put in the hours of practice and learned the lessons from the mistakes you’ve made as you’ve practiced, you can play almost any music on almost any piano (or any keyboard, for that matter). You’ve achieved competence. You have ability. And you know it.
Your skills improve, and you are aware you can pick up a sheet of music, sit down at a piano, and play that music competently. You can admit, with credibility, that you are a “piano player.”
That’s conscious competence.
You know how to, and you are able to, play the piano. People might even say you’re pretty good at playing the piano. You feel good about your ability. You’re making music. Why? Because you’ve put in the effort. Practice, practice, practice.
If you can claim expertise in anything, you’ve gone through at least these three stages of learning – whether it’s the piano, or driving a car, or seating a crown perfectly.
There is, however, one last stage of learning to pass through, with enough passion and practice. And that is true mastery – or unconscious competence.
Unconscious Competence
The truth is that not every piano player becomes a concert pianist. For some, merely playing competently is enough. But for a few, the passion to keep learning continues, and they evolve to a position of true mastery.
If you’ve ever had the privilege of attending a concert by a world-class virtuoso, you will have experienced that playing the piano is part of who that pianist is. He doesn’t even think about the music as his fingers fly effortlessly over the keyboard and music soars and fills the space.
That virtuoso is not just playing the piano. She is expressing the music as if it were welling up from the deepest part of her. She’s not counting time, or remembering flats and sharps, black keys or white. She’s being the music – and it’s effortless. She probably practices entire symphonies in her sleep.
That’s unconscious competence.
A concert pianist, or any great practitioner of any skill, makes it look easy – effortless. Whether that skill is music, art, cooking, public speaking, or dentistry, true mastery arrives when the practitioner has put in the time, energy, and devotion to hours, months, and years of practice.
Look into your own life and your own skillset. See if you can identify where you are with your many skills.
If you’re honest, you’ll be able to identify areas where you are still learning – still climbing the ladder from unconscious to conscious, from incompetence to competence, from student to master.
If there’s something more you want to learn, don’t hesitate! Let yourself be a beginner. Let yourself make mistakes. After all, everyone starts at the same level.
Just keep your eyes on the prize – keep your heart focused on your passion. And, like getting to Carnegie Hall, don’t forget to practice, practice, practice!
After all, isn’t that what life’s all about?
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