So here I am, wondering, as I read yesterday’s post… just how to explain what I mean about getting from I to ‘I’… to experience something you don’t even believe exists. And then “I” gets into the act and deposits this in my inbox. Like what are the chances that the very thing you need shows up on your computer right when you need it? Right? Anyway, this time it’s swimming instructions written by the man whose writing taught me how to swim:
The 4 Stages of Skill-Learning. And the Critical Kaizen Loop
by Terry Laughlin The Four Stages of Learning emerged from the field of psychology in the 1970s, and has since become widely familiar and accepted. It identifies four levels of competence one must experience in learning any new skill.
According to this model, we generally start out with a blind spot: “We don’t know what we don’t know.” We must recognize our deficit to progress further. Next we must consciously acquire the skill, then consciously use it. By doing so we gradually acquire the ability to use the skill somewhat automatically.”
The four stages are called:
- Unconscious Incompetence We fail to recognize that a higher skill level exists or that it has value. You may have escaped this stage quite early in your swimming experience. I didn’t do so for 25 years, until almost age 40. Until then, I believed my swimming potential was limited by a lack of ‘genetic’ traits. That notion was dramatically dispelled—in less than 10 minutes–when Bill Boomer taught me a balance drill, and I recognized I had a serious blind spot in my knowledge of technique. Even after coaching with great success for nearly 20 years!
- Conscious Incompetence Like most TI swimmers, the first skill deficit I identified was balance. For 25 years, I’d thought I had ‘heavy’ legs and the only solution was to kick harder. When Boomer taught me to align my head and spine and shift weight forward, I was stunned at how my legs automatically—and effortlessly—lifted to the surface. That remains my single most transformative moment in 50 years of swimming.
- Conscious Competence For the next six months I thought of almost nothing but maintaining a straight line between head and hips, and leaning on my chest (a technique called Press Your Buoy which we taught until the late ‘90s), fearful that—after 25 years of unbalanced swimming—I would lose this magical feeling if I wasn’t explicitly focused on it.
- Unconscious Competence When I finally trusted that balance had become a moderately-durable habit, I immediately adopted a new skill goal—Swim ‘Taller,’ which I’d learned would reduce drag. This change was just as challenging: For 25 years I’d focused exclusively on pushing water back. Now I had to train myself to ignore the hand pushing back and focus on the one going forward.
OMG! That’s it. He’s talking about swimming, but it’s the same thing I went through in accepting a higher power and going from I to ‘I’.
Unconscious Incompetence – I don’t believe “I” exists. [first 37 years]
Conscious Incompetence – I go into the light and experience “I”. [April 16, 1978]
Conscious Competence – I focus on being the ‘I’ who knows “I”. [last 38 years]
Unconscious Competence – I know “I” intuitively and am ‘I’. [from now on]
Wow, this is fun.
peace……..ag
ps. Note the date? Happy birthday to ‘me’.