Our days are filled with countless routine tasks and activities that we successfully complete with little thought and low awareness. After lots of repetition, we can become so proficient, we’re able to simply “go because we know.” Your proficiency only happens after repetitive practice.
What are some new skills or behaviors you’d like to develop? Have you considered what’s involved in getting to the point where you can “go because you know”.
Let me help you gain more awareness about your path to proficiency.
Assuming that drove to work this morning. Allow me to ask:
If you’re like most people, you don’t remember. Safe driving is a critical skill. Yet routine trips don’t require much thought or awareness.
Traveling to work is something that you’ve done so often, you can do it without thinking. You have programmed your subconscious to get you from home to work without much thought. While you likely did not use your car’s cruise control feature, you did use your brain’s cruise control feature for doing without thinking.
Where and when did you stop on you way to work today?
Driving to work is only one example. If you’re really skilled using Excel, you can copy, paste, format and add functions without much thought.
Consider the hundreds of things that you habitually do every day without giving them much thought. You can’t do that exercise on cruise control. It’s not routine. It requires conscious thought.
The operative word here is habitual. Our habits enable us to put our lives on cruise control. Repetitive actions program us to be more efficient. Imagine how exhausting it would be to have to think about everything you do. Stroke victims learn this first hand when they have to re-learn how to position their tongues to form words.
– Wayne Dyer
Living in cruise control goes beyond our routine, habitual actions. We also have habitual ways of thinking; a.k.a. our attitudes.
Attitude development is a prerequisite for changing habitual behavior.
When it comes to developing attitudes that support positive behavior change, most of us don’t know what we don’t know. Perhaps I can help with that.
The Law of Proficiency is a developmental model that explains how habits are formed and how new skills are developed.
The image below is my graphic enhancement of the concepts, created in 2004 to empathize the four bridges that are crossed in the endless loop of development.
Learning to tie your shoes is my simple example for developing proficiency. The process you experience learning to tie your shoes is the same as your path to proficiency for any other skill you seek to gain today.
Think back to when you were a toddler. When you didn’t know or care about tying your shoes. And you had little reason to care. Mom or Dad did the tying for you and you were off to run and play in the grass. Until the time that you reached The Bridge of Discovery.
We all begin our quest for new habits or skills in the state of Unconscious Incompetence. You don’t know what you don’t know. You’re both ineffective and unaware of a proficiency development opportunity. You’ll stay that way until you experience an ah-ha moment that leads you across “The Bridge of Discovery”. You then gain a new awareness. And, there’s no going back. The Bridge of Discovery is a one way bridge.
Consider that toddler running in the grass with his laced up Keds. Suddenly one of the shoes becomes unlaced and falls off. The child is left standing with one shoe on and one wet sock. He’s crossed The Bridge of Discovery. He now knows what he doesn’t know. Both unaware and ineffective.
Now you’re aware of what’s missing. Welcome to the Conscious Incompetence state. Now you know you don’t know. You’re aware yet still ineffective. You have a development opportunity at hand, should you decide to cross the next bridge.
If you’re uncomfortable enough with being ineffective, The Bridge of Change awaits. You figure out that you need to start learning, gaining new skills and taking action. You begin to DO!
However, the Just Do It approach needs to be repeated for the change to stick.
What would lead a child’s desire to learn shoe tying skills?
The Bridge of Habit Forming and Repetition is a two way bridge. You can and will cross back and forth. If you don’t practice your skill enough, you’ll revert to consciously thinking about how to do it.
Now the work begins. When you’re unfamiliar with a task, procedure or process, you need to concentrate on all of the steps or elements involved. You have the knowledge to do it. But that need for concentration slows you down as you need to pause to consider each action.
As you’re learning to tie your shoes, you need to pause and think about each step in the process. You make mistakes and learn from each one. You can do it, eventually. Just not so quickly.
After enough repetition, you reach the state of unconscious competence: doing without thinking. You simply go because you know. Mental cruise control. Like your drive to and from work.
After enough repetition, you reach the state of unconscious competence: doing without thinking. You simply go because you know. Mental cruise control. Like your drive to and from work.
When you become highly proficient, it’s easy to develop a blind spot for the next improvement or development opportunity. We become complacent or apathetic. Unconscious Competence IS a comfort zone. Pursuing something better can be uncomfortable.
Where is your next development opportunity? You’ll need to cross The Bridge of Discovery to find it.
Will you have enough of a motive to pursue it? Only then will you cross The Bridge of Change.
Will you have enough perseverance and patience needed to cross the Bridge of Repetition and Habit Forming to sustain the positive change?
Once you become highly proficient, will you cling to your comfort zone or rest on your laurels?
The Law of Proficiency applies to every skill you’ve developed. And every one you’ll need or want to have.
I am calling this model The Law of Proficiency. It is built upon published principals that date back to 1969. I want to acknowledge the origins.
The enhanced model graphic shown above evolved through collaboration with my colleague Ray Overdorff. We met in 2002. Ray had already used and applied this model for Leadership Development for about a decade prior.
Along with others in my affiliate network, I’ve used this development tool to help hundreds of leaders continue to cross the bridge of discovery.
In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the “conscious competence” learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill. – Wilkipedia
The origin model was developed in the 70s by Noel Burch, an employee with Gordon Training International and was called The Conscious Competence Ladder.
Leadership author John Maxwell labeled it The Law of Process. He popularized the model in his 1998 book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.
More from Gordon Training International: What Every Teacher Should Know (PDF)
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I believe it’s OK to declare your sincerity or to close cordially. Writers have used those terms for over a century, When would it be time to explore more personalized alternatives? How about today?
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