The Five Learning Stages

This is the rude awakening you get when you realize all you don’t know. For many people, if they didn’t already quit in the blissful beginner stage, this second stage — or the suck — does them in.

The suck is where it slowly dawns on you just how much you don’t know. You s...

The first stage of learning is called unconscious incompetence. In this stage of learning, we don’t know what we don’t know.

For most people, whether you’re trying to learn a new language, play a new instrument, or learn complicated jiu-jitsu moves, this first stage of learning sta...

Stage four of learning is when you fully internalize all that you’ve learned. You can execute your new skills automatically and without having to think beforehand. This is the stage of learning when you’re most likely to regularly get into the zone because you can stop thinking so much. Instead, ...

During the conscious competence learning stage, you know how to reach your goal but have to concentrate hard on your task. Nothing is automatic.

In this stage, your new learnings are still fragile and not yet cemented in your neural circuits — meaning you haven’t committed your new learning...