How do you feel about learning something new?
Learning something new, particularly a new skill, can be exciting, fun and challenging. But it can also be frustrating. We can find ourselves getting irritated by the time it takes to absorb, apply and master new information. One thing that can help us with such frustration is to think for a few moments about the learning process and exactly what our brains and bodies are doing.
Unconscious Incompetence
This is the first stage of learning a new skill. This is where we are doing something incorrectly or we don’t know how to do something, but we are unaware of the fact. Basically, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Conscious Incompetence
The second stage of learning is when we become aware that we can’t do something. Perhaps we find ourselves in a brand new situation and encounter a need for the first time. Or perhaps, we have been happily going along thinking we know what we’re doing and someone with greater knowledge helps us see that we are doing it incorrectly. We now know that we have something to learn and we start our journey.
Conscious Competence
The third stage of learning comes upon us gradually. When we start to learn a new skill, we need a lot of help – instructions, a teacher, a mentor. But as we keep practising, we reach the stage of being able to do it all by ourselves…with concentration. We know what to do, we are doing it correctly but we have to consciously focus in order to get it done.
Unconscious Incompetence
This is the final stage of our learning – the moment of mastery. We can now use our new skill and we don’t have to think about it – it just happens.
Each of us will move through this learning process at our own pace, and that pace will probably change for each new activity and skill we try. We may find our journey has some ups and downs, moments of triumph and moments of frustration. All of this is completely normal and part of the process. But the next time you are feeling annoyed at your progress, try pausing and remember all the stages your brain is working through to master this skill. You clever thing!
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