Achieving Unconscious Competence:

The Brilliance of Incremental Progress

I shared this image about Noel Burch's Ladder of Conscious Competence on my Facebook page last week - it's so important that I think it is worth further discussion.

You see, when you decide to learn something new: play therapy, crochet, kickboxing....
whatever it is, you compare yourself to the masters.

You look at the teachers, the "legends" and you focus on the gap between you and them. This is "conscious incompetence" - meaning you realize just HOW MUCH there is to learn to be really good at this new thing.

It is during this time that you will make improvements in your learning, but maybe not as quickly as you would like. You can get frustrated and may have times when you want to give up.

Atomic Habits author, James Clear, calls this period
"the valley of disappointment." This is the time when sticking with your learning (or new habits) is really hard work .

Be kind to yourself during this phase! The key is to keep going and look for incremental progress.

If you stick with it, you will get to Conscious Competence - meaning you are now pretty good at this skill, but it requires a lot of mental energy. You have to think about each step, but you can do it!

In the next stage, Unconscious Competence, the skill is part of you. You don't have to think...you can just execute. This is what is often considered the "flow state."

The reason all of this is important is because we often assume that those "masters" are somehow just naturally talented. We think they have something that we don't have.

What they really have is repetition over time.

If there is something you want to learn, give yourself plenty of time and space to practice. Don't judge yourself too harshly on your first (or 50th or 5000th attempt). Another one of James Clear's helpful thoughts is "aim for 1% progress"
He says, if you get 1% better every day, you will end up 37x better in one year.

That is the METHOD behind going from Conscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence.

Look for ways to make incremental progress over time!

In your journal:

First, identify one skill where you currently have
"Unconscious Competence"
You don't have to think about it to be able to execute. It might be something simple like driving or something more complex like surfing.

What did it take to get there? What advice would you give yourself if you were starting over learning that skill?

Now, identify an area of your life where you are trying to learn something new and have "Conscious Incompetence"

What skills or lessons can you take from the first part of this exercise and apply to learning this new skill? Write down at least three ways that you can make incremental progress over the next month.