I used to think that at some point I’d get life (the balance of time and priorities) all figured out… but I’m discovering that life IS the figuring.
Have you heard of the “Conscious Competence” Learning Model?
I think it’s brilliant and really helpful in understanding the way we learn and improve in skills and life in general. I imagine you’ve probably experienced this when you’ve been excited to learn something new and followed that desire through to mastery of the skill.
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence
This is when you see the skill in action in others and desire to learn it. You are so excited and can picture yourself being amazing at it. You may have a general idea that it’ll be challenging to learn but just know you will get it. You have no idea how bad you really are at it yet.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence
This is when you actually start learning this skill, and start to see how hard it is and how far you have to go. It can be discouraging and frustrating. But it’s part of the process.
Stage 3: Conscious Competence
This is when you have gained enough skill to be able to do the thing fairly competently, but it requires intention and attention. It’s challenging but doable.
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence
This is when you’ve mastered the skill to the point that it’s habitual, you can do it without thinking. It’s second nature and not challenging anymore. This is the point where we may become bored and feel the urge to try something new or find ways to make the task more challenging or novel.
This process gets repeated over and over again in our lives and is one reason we never get everything ‘figured out’ — we’re wired as humans to seek novelty and challenge and growth, so we seek change and not stagnation.
So give yourself some grace if you don’t have everything ‘figured out’ yet — wherever you are is just right, and growth and progress are happening. They have to be — because every day we’re figuring things out (and for those with head injuries, that may mean figuring out how to get through this day — and that’s good knowledge to be gaining).