Competence

I’ve been reminded lately of the Four Stages of Competence, or what is called the “conscious competence” learning model. It’s how we learn and grow from not knowing how to do something to a state where the activity flows.

It would seem running is about as natural a human activity as there is. Humans have been doing it for their entire existence. What’s there to learn? Plenty and there’s always something new. We are always changing and with that our modes of thinking, being, and even running have to change too. For me it’s becoming more natural and still I listen to my body and the run.

I’m still struggling with sore legs and knotted muscles from hard runs several weeks ago. To stay active and work on stretching out those muscles I’ve been doing yoga 3-4 times a week. My initial exposure to yoga was almost ten years ago; since the beginning of the year I’ve been putting some effort into yoga again. This is where the competency model had occurred to me lately. It’s a rather simple, yet elegant way of looking at learning.

Here are the four stages from Wikipedia:

1.Unconscious incompetence - The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognise their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.

2.Conscious incompetence - Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.

3.Conscious competence - The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.

4.Unconscious competence - The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

For me cycling, running, software development are all mostly Stage 4, though I go back into Stages 2 and 3 to learn and grow. With yoga I’m somewhere between Stage 1 and 2 so I need to remind myself of what I do know … and what I don’t know. At times it’s frustrating and slow, then I remind myself where I’m at which eases my mind. I’m enjoying learning something new and still bringing my experience from other realms into yoga.

So once we’ve taken the First Three Steps and experience TheFirst Time – on it goes through the Stages!