Thoughts about unconscious incompetence

I once read there were four levels of learning, which have always fascinated me.  I don’t know if you would necessarily call them levels of learning or levels of consciousness through which learning occurs, or perhaps even through which mastery occurs. 

The four levels to which I refer are

• Unconscious incompetence
• Conscious incompetence
• Conscious competence
• Unconscious competence.

The first state, being the one at which most of us spend most of our time in,  simply meandering along, not really realising we could be doing whatever it is in a better or more efficient or more effective manner.  When we choose to try and learn something, we often go in thinking we already know a fair bit, then realise hang on, there might be a lot more to this than we thought. 

I suppose this theory also goes to support the thought that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know”.     It is often this stage where we feel useless and gangly and like we don’t really have a clue and can’t make our mind or mouth or body do quite what it is we were striving for. 

I have spent a lot of time being consciously incompetent in my riding.  I remember when I was a kid, I used to save up all my money to go on riding camps, and I thought I was damn good! Well, I was comparing myself to the other kids who had only been on one or two of these camps; I used to ride at least once every school holidays, so thought I had a great head start on them. How little did I know.

It was when I was about 20 and I decided that this was my passion, and I really ought to be trying to have a career in my passion, that I first became conscious of just how incompetent I was. 

I had to make a video of myself riding to send off to the university that I wanted to study equine studies at.  So off I went to have a lesson, and have someone video how great I was.  Well, that was rather discomforting.  Watching myself ride (dare I call it ride) or bounce along on the poor riding school pony, I quickly became aware that I should probably apply for the science degree rather than the one that you actually have to know how to ride for.  It took me years to get over that blow to my ego! I still to this day, feel gangly and uncomfortable riding, as if I don’t really know what I am doing, but when I watch myself, I actually don’t look that bad anymore.

Anyway, I digress. 

It is these stages that you must choose to pass through to get to that wonderful state of unconsciously competent.  It is only once you are aware that there is something to learn, that you will allow yourself to learn it.  Then you must pass through the ugly part of changing the habit. 

It is a lot easier to just keep on doing the same thing every day, rather than try and change a bad habit to something that you know may be better, but you feel “it wouldn’t work for me”, or “yeah but I just don’t do it like that”.  This is where practice and practice, and even more practice are invaluable.  I may want to change what my reaction is, or how my body moves, how I hold my hands, how I straighten my elbows around a turn, or stop my leg from doing the nag, nag, nags. I know what I am doing wrong, but when the situation comes up and I am trying to remember three things at once, I will naturally revert to the easiest, most habitual response that my body knows. 

To counter this, try exaggerating it, making the problem worse, it brings it further into your awareness, and helps you become more conscious of the incompetence.  The idea is, that you are trying to change your muscle memory, to actually affect the nerve pathways that control your muscles, this is a hard thing to change if you are not consistent.  So, exaggerating the problem can help you become more aware, more conscious, then,  consistency is the key.  Make sure you change what you are doing, and do it the right way.  If you repeat the correct movement over and over and over, then your body finds it easier and more natural to do.  Have you ever seen the way a young child is taught to swim?  The first thing in their swimming lessons every time is to sit on the steps and kick kick kick kick.  This is not because sitting on the steps is going to teach them how to float or hold their breath, but it is building nerve pathways that make their muscles remember the correct way to kick for the rest of their life.  If you have spent years moving incorrectly, it takes longer to make the new movement habitual, but it will happen.

You can also make a conscious effort to go more slowly.  This will give you more time to think about where  your body is going, how your hands, arms, shoulders are moving.  As you try out the new way of moving for the first time,  of course it will not feel right to you, and it will feel funny.  Don’t worry though, this is just your old habits trying not to let you give up on them.  You need to fight through that, and do it for at least 7 days! If it still feels funny then re-evaluate.  What I found though, was that it will became more and more comfortable.  Voila! You have now found Consciously Competent.  It will then take a while for it to become an unconscious thing, where it is just how you do it, how you move naturally, without any thought process. 

Once that happens, it is time to find the next thing to improve on.  I work on one or two changes a week, and have massively improved my riding.  I didn’t magically become great at it over night, it takes hard work, and feeling uncomfortable, and still doing the wrong thing many times.  But that’s ok, it’s all part of the learning process.  The first step is to become aware of it, conscious of the incompetence, so you can change it.

These steps can be applied to anything you want to improve at any scale.  What ever it is that I want to get better at, the first thing I ask myself, what part of it am I unconsciously incompetent at?

For lessons regarding any of these principles please go to www.postureseatbalance.com.au and either email or feel free to call me.