On How To Learn A Hard Skill

This Week’s Topic: The 4 Stages of Learning

1 Strategy 🎯 

In my early 20s, I broke up with a long-term college girlfriend.

The break-up left me with some extra time on my hands, and I decided to do something that I'd been wanting to do for years - learn the guitar.

I remember being so excited as I drove home from the music store with my shiny new guitar riding shotgun, along with just about every accessory you can imagine.  

But when I sat down to practice for the first time, reality hit me like a ton of bricks - it was HARD and I was TERRIBLE!

So terrible that I considered returning all my gear before the return window closed. But I stuck with it and I'm grateful I did.

I'm pretty good now, and my musical journey has led to countless hours of absolute joy. I even had the opportunity to serenade my wife at our wedding a few years back.

I’m not crying, you’re crying!  

As it pertains to this week’s topic, the experience of learning the guitar is a textbook example of navigating the process of learning a difficult new skill.

Let’s dive in.

Whether your ambition is to learn an instrument, become a better public speaker, master generative AI, or develop any other ability, the journey from frustration to fluency always follows the same 4-stage process.

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence

At this stage, you don't know what you don't know.  You haven't experienced any real discomfort, and you're ignorant of the challenges ahead of you.  

This is the stage I was in while driving home from the music store with my new guitar.

And sometimes the pressure to stay in this stage can be strong.  As they say, ignorance is bliss.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence

This is where the learning journey gets dicey, and where many people lose steam or decide to quit altogether.  Because now you're realizing just how bad you are at this new skill, and your initial enthusiasm is wearing off.

You now appreciate that it's harder than you thought it would be, and harder in ways that you didn't even consider when you started.

You may be wrestling with feeling of inadequacy as you struggle with aspects of the skill that you thought would be easy.

It's how I felt for the first few months that I was struggling with the guitar.  My fantasies shifted from being on stage, to successfully strumming a single chord.

It might even feel like you're getting worse at the skill during this stage.  You aren't - you're just becoming more aware of how bad you are at it.

Stage 3: Conscious Competence

By the time you reach this stage of the learning process, you have some wind in your sails! 

You're making fewer mistakes, and you're now able to perform aspects of the task that may have seemed impossible when you started. 

But it's still difficult and requires a significant amount of focus and attention.

I reached this stage after ~10 months of practicing guitar EVERY SINGLE DAY, at which point I could confidently play a few simple guitar songs as long as conditions were perfect:

• I could only play the songs using MY guitar.

• I could only play while sitting down.

• When I played in public, I'd get nervous and screw up.

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence 

This stage is defined by mastery. At this point, you've persevered through the ups and downs of the first three stages, and you can perform the skill at a high level with minimal conscious effort. 

You implicitly trust your abilities and you can now enjoy the feeling of being "in the zone".  

While you can't leapfrog any of the stages, there are things you can do to accelerate your journey from young Padawan to Jedi Master.

Chunk It Out

By parsing out a broad skill into a set of bite-sized learning objectives and tackling them one-by-one, you'll create a positive feedback loop, helping you stay motivated as you successfully learn each new subskill.

Get Support

Invest in a coach, trainer, or group program to help you stay on track. Making a commitment to someone outside yourself will a.) help you stay accountable to your goals during periods of frustration and b.) provide a source of on-demand resources and feedback to help you get unstuck.

Teach Someone

The quickest way to learn something new is to teach others how to do it.  And you don't need to be an expert to start teaching. If you've only been practicing a skill for a few months, you already know more than someone who just started yesterday. 

I’m actively learning how to make this a better newsletter experience and I need your feedback.

If this week’s newsletter struck a chord, hit ‘reply’ and let me know!

See you next Wednesday,

Darin

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