The Meaning of Life

One of the basic principles we subscribe to on this website, is one should constantly be trying to improve your capability to look after yourself, as well as your family and friends, thus becoming an asset to society, and not a liability.

We feel that one of the core things each person should be doing, throughout their lives, is learning new skills and capabilities which are useful to yourself, your family and broader society.

Obviously we are all interested in different things, and have different talents and abilities. That broad range of interests ultimately is beneficial to us all, because then different subjects are mastered by different people, within the broader community. This is the basis for the free market (as an aside).

However, the actual path one follows, as one learns a new skill, is often not explicitly thought about. But whether you are learning how to drive a car, or become a brain surgeon, the basic stages one goes through are the same, and the generic risk levels and objectives in each stage, are similar.

In addition, training/learning without a clear understanding of what it is one is trying to do, or what the ultimate objective is, always yields frustrating or less than optimal results. Understanding what stage one is in, in the overall process, as well as what is required to move to the next stage, helps significantly in navigating one’s way through the process, as well as helps one focus on what is important at that particular stage of learning.

So the purpose of this article is to describe the generic stages one goes through, as one learns a new skill, what the characteristics and risks of each stage are, and what objectives one should have in mind at that stage, as you progress down the path to full capability.

How Your Brain and Body Learns New Skills

The best way to think about how your brain and body learns a skill is to think of yourself as a programmable robot. One gets taught a procedure, which once you work out how to do it successfully, you store that “code” on your “internal hard-drive”. The next time you need to perform the same skill, you retrieve the previous coding and run that same procedure again. That is essentially what happens, although what is actually happening, in detail, is far more complex.

The more times you use the code, the “stronger” that coding becomes, and the less aware you are that you are even doing it. It starts to run more and more in the background. What may have seemed initially quite a difficult thing to do, which required your full concentration, when you first tried to perform the skill (like riding a bicycle, for example), eventually becomes something you do without even thinking about it.

So repetition tends to strengthen the previous coding, as well as make you less aware of the fact that you are even running the code.

For physical skills, it’s not clear whether the “coding” is stored in your brain, or whether the coding occurs in your extended nervous system and/or even the muscles themselves? But nevertheless, as you learn the skill, you are coding a sequence of movements, reactions, balance, calculations, body-eye coordinations etc into yourself, which can be triggered and repeated later, based on incoming stimuli.

The thing to realise is that even though the learning process as it happens, might be extremely complex, you are probably unaware of any of that, as it is happening. For example, think of how you learned to ride a bicycle. Could you explain how you learned? All you know is that at first you wobbled all over the show, while your father held the bicycle and yelled instructions at you. Perhaps you fell off a few times, and then gradually you found you could stay on and started to get it right!

How we ACTUALLY learn any skill is beyond the scope of this article, but what is very useful to realise, is that we all go through the four levels of competence, and we need to approach each stage in similar generic ways, for the best results.

Training With a Firm Objective in Mind

One thing that definitely makes a big difference is having some firm objective in mind each time you train. Setting yourself a goal that you can achieve in that session, is preferable, provided it isn’t too easy (or too difficult).

We are goal orientated creatures. Psychologically, we respond well to striving to achieve a meaningful goal, it literally makes us happy! Conversely, being obstructed in our attempts to achieve a goal is a source of negative emotions.

So to make training less of a chore, and more enjoyable, set yourself incremental goals and strive towards achieving them within each session, or over a limited set of sessions. As long as you perceive progress towards your goals, you will feel positive about the whole endeavour, provided you perceive the ultimate goal as meaningful.

But what goals are relevant, at different levels of competence? It helps to understand the generic characteristics of each stage, and what you should be trying to achieve at that level.

The 4 Levels of Competence

I’m not sure who first came up with these four levels, but they seem to be self-evident in describing the different stages you go through as you learn a skill, and are obviously relevant to all types of skills.

Evaluating what level you are in, for any given skill, and thus understanding what the generic characteristics of that level are, is very useful, especially for setting yourself training goals for each session.

Level 0: Unconscious Incompetence

We all start here.

There is a reason why I call this Level Zero, because you literally know nothing about what you are trying to do.

A common response of people in competence Level Zero, is to overestimate their capabilities, underestimate the difficulty, and attempt to just wing it, while expecting good results, combined with a reluctance to put in the effort required, to actually systematically improve their skill level.

But the fact is, they don’t know what they don’t know, and they can’t actually perform the skill reliably, if at all, and definitely not safely, at this level of competence.

The first requirement to move up to the next level, is to find some way of identifying all the things that need to be learned. The easiest way to do that, is get some form of training from someone who knows what they are doing and is capable of providing effective training.

So the only real objective one should set yourself in this Level Zero, is to move out of it as quickly as possible. And to do that, you have to start becoming aware of all the things you are not doing right, and all the things you don’t know. This is not difficult! It only requires three things; an attitude of humility, a desire to learn, and a willingness to put in the effort required. Moving to the next level can be achieved by simply attending one class of professional training! Or alternatively, taking a realistic view of your deficiencies and then actively collecting training information from reliable sources on the Internet, or from people that know what they are doing.

Level 1: Conscious Incompetence

When you get to this level, you have at least started to realise what you don’t know, and all the things you might be doing wrong, or are unable to yet do properly.

You have become aware of the magnitude of the task, and how much still needs to be learned, or how far short your current abilities fall, from the required standard. You are far less dangerous as a result (in the event that the skill you are attempting to learn has inherit dangers associated).

But this stage is characterised by identifying various sub-skills and techniques that you need to learn, as well as collecting information on how to perform them properly, from suitable sources.

To get to the next level, you need to start becoming able to demonstrate capability in achieving the various sub-skills that combine towards making you able to complete the overall objective you have set yourself.

The big danger of this stage is negative training. Learning the wrong thing to do, and then getting good at that. Because once you do that, it becomes very difficult to undo that programming of yourself. Some element of that will probably persist in your skill set regardless. The best you can do is learn how not to do the wrong thing, when incoming stimuli trigger that response, and then learn the right thing to do after that. Which means when the relevant incoming stimuli trigger your procedures, the sequence of events triggered is, first you try do the wrong thing, but then a separate procedure is triggered to stop you doing the wrong thing, and then finally the correct procedure is triggered. But under stress, you will probably revert to the first thing you learned, which was the wrong thing. This is why it is quite important to get good training in this phase, to minimise the amount of negative training you receive. The reality is we all probably receive at least some negative training, because available trainers are not always the best (and how does one know in advance?), or new better techniques become evident later on. With enough repetitions of “doing the right thing”, negative training can be overcome, but it takes a huge amount of effort (some experts estimate 10,000 repetitions is required).

So this level of competence is characterised by finding the RIGHT information and training, which will inform you of what needs to be done, to master the skill. It is an information gathering phase where you accumulate knowledge and develop proficiency, either from other competent people, or by experimentation and trial and error, to work out what works and what does not.

Depending on the complexity of the skill you are trying to master, the time spent in this phase may range from no more that a few hours, to years. You need to understand that, and be realistic about your expectations of progress, and the amount of effort required.

Level 2: Conscious Competence

Congratulations! When you reach this level, you can actually do what you set out to do.

However you are not yet “completely fluent”. You only get things right when you try hard, concentrate and focus. You still make mistakes, especially when distracted, or tired. You are not yet completely reliable, but have demonstrated you can actually achieve the task.

For many people, this represents a major achievement! Especially for difficult complex skills, that required an enormous amount of learning and effort to learn.

Many people do not advance further, perhaps because that is as far as they wanted to advance (not everyone wants to become a complete expert in every skill they learn, for example).

To get to the next level takes repetition, lots and lots of repetition, as well as perhaps competition. You need to hone the efficiency and effectiveness of your movements, reactions, responses, calculations, judgement etc, while constantly testing those, in difficult, stressful, real world scenarios.

You also need to be constantly looking for better, more effective ways of doing what you have already learned, and then replacing those with more refined skill sets.

Many people spend the rest of their lives at this level of competence, and for non-critical skill sets, there is nothing wrong with that.

Level 3: Unconscious Competence

This is the highest level of competence, which perhaps very few people achieve, certainly for any difficult skill set. At this level you are able to reliably perform the skill correctly, in challenging circumstances, without even thinking about it.

To reach that level, you need to have so deeply programmed yourself on how to complete the task, that when the code is triggered, it runs flawlessly, without you even being aware of that.

There is only one way of achieving this level of competence. Hours and hours of intensive training, practice and experience, in challenging circumstances. There are no short cuts.

Perishable Skills

Something to note is competence in many skills is not retained indefinitely, if you do not practice frequently enough. One can regress all the way back down to Level Zero, where you are unaware that you have become incompetent again.

It is important that you are honest with yourself about this, especially if the skill has any sort of dangerous aspect to it. In that case, it is crucial that you regularly evaluate what your actual level of competence may be, especially if you have not kept your skills up to date. Like it or not, you may need some refresher training, even though you previously reached a high level of competence.

For many of us, this is just a fact of life, because one’s available time, circumstances and priorities change. So we may not be able to put in the hours of training and practice necessary to stay at the level of competence we previously achieved. Although in many cases that is a profound pity, given how hard we worked get to those levels.

So, if a particular skill is important to you, or you particularly enjoy it, make sure you regularly practice it at the appropriate levels of intensity, which challenge you sufficiently to retain your competence level.