For people of a certain vintage, remember the time when cell phones were just entering the market? When they had not become an indispensable part of life? Remember not knowing what cell phones could do and might be used for?
As time went on, most of us probably got the Nokia 1100 as our first cellphone. I have fond memories of mine – it was indestructible, it had the snake game, and the torch lit the way for me many a time on field visits in rural India. It was also the first time in my life that I did not have to remember phone numbers.
I remember knowing that the cell phone is useful but not always knowing how to use it well.
I realise that this image was not entirely needed for this post, but I got carried away by emotions associated with fond memories of this instrument.
Then we all slowly moved to Android phones (I moved very very late myself), and then an entire world opened up. Suddenly, it seemed that making calls might be one of the least important things that one could do with the phone. We all grew fairly competent in using the phone for a variety of reasons.
Today most of us use our phone for a variety of things – taking notes, shooting pics and videos, accessing the internet, games, obtaining information, messaging, dating, banking and many such. And yes, making calls too. Most of us are fairly proficient at using the phones we have, and some of us probably are texting while driving too. I am sure most of us are still not able to or have no desire to use all the features the phone offers.
This journey that we had with cell phones – from not knowing they existed/ how to use them, to becoming proficient is applicable to most of the things we learn. Even for those who started with android phones, the journey stages were the same. Think back to when you learned to ride a bike. Or when you learned to swim. Or when you drove a car for the first time. It is almost certain that you passed through these four stages of learning; you may have spent relatively less or more time in each stage but pass through them you did.
The first stage is what learning experts call Unconscious Incompetence – we are living in a blissful state that ignorance offers us. We know not what we know not. We are not necessarily troubled by it.
We then move to the next stage which is Conscious Incompetence – we know that we don’t know and it is at this point that learning may start. This is also the stage where, with the right assistance, a lot of learning may happen. We could, of course, choose not to get on the journey; I know many people who, for instance, have never bothered to learn to drive even though they can afford cars and they know how useful a skill it is. This is another matter altogether.
As we learn and practice the skill we are trying to pick up, we get better at it. This stage is called Conscious Competence. It still takes a lot of effort, but we can do it. We don’t need assistance. We are not necessarily brilliant at it, but we are fairly competent. For instance, we can drive a car in the city but not on highways. We can swim in the pool, but don’t have the confidence of swimming in a pond, river, or ocean. There are many of us for whom learning ends here. We do not have the desire or the need or the commitment to get even better.
The final stage, Unconscious Competence, is where we have to only use part of our mind to accomplish the task. Remember what I said about texting and driving? Now that’s dangerous and stupid, and should never be done. The point is that we don’t have to think any more about how to do something.
This seems fairly obvious. So why am I writing about this? There are two reasons:
- Knowing about the four stages, can make your learning journey more focused and purposeful.
- You can try and understand what enables or blocks your learning. All of us learn very differently. Experts have classified learning into seven styles. I don’t want to digress in this post. I may write about these separately. Suffice to say that how we learn depends on who we are. Recently, I discussed the four stages with a bunch of adults. After we had understood what they are, I asked them to go back to an example in their work life where they went through the four stages. I asked them to identify what blocked them and what enabled them at each stage. We had a rich discussion about these. We could collectively see the patterns emerging. We were then able to have a discussion on what we could do to boost the enablers and manage the blockers to learning.
Learning is an integral and inevitable part of all our lives. The stages of learning are cyclical. Even as we get to the unconscious competence stage, something changes and we have to start afresh. For instance, I had to remember how to use the phone to make payments recently. Not something I had done for over a decade and back then I was using M-PESA in Kenya; which was a different system. This happens to us all the time. Every day as the knowledge generate in the world increases, we get a little more ignorant in relative terms. Knowing what we need to learn, why we need to learn, and how best we can learn efficiently seems like a good way to try and not be left behind too much.
Makarand
This post is part of a series where I attempt to demystify jargon that we use in the development world. You will get to see a list of topics I have identified here. The hyperlinks, where available, take you to the posts on the topic.
Musings of a wanderer 