By default we all start our learning curve knowing little to nothing about the topic. But the main thing during this stage is not start learning but becoming aware of our ignorance and making the right decision about it.

For some, this stage is a trap, reacting with denial and rejection to the unknown and locking themselves in a vicious cycle of “I don’t know, I don’t care, don’t bother” - or even worse, falling for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

For others, facing new things is a challenge that sparks curiosity and excitement over the fears and discomforts of looking dumb. And that’s exactly the goal of this phase; become aware of how much we don’t know and be open to know better.

Coming to terms with what we don’t know is a big step, but we haven’t learn anything yet. Phase two is where we kick that off by asking lots of mindful questions and engaging in playful practice.

These first steps can be very rewarding due to the impression of our progress being exponential and accelerated and the support and encouragement from people that love seeing us grow. However, there are also major challenges.

Contemplating the immensity of what we don’t know can be overwhelming and paralyzing. Becoming dependent of externals validations or facing sudden disinterest can also be off-putting. And, the most dangerous of all, overestimating the little we’ve learned and going back to phase.

We’ve finally learned something new. Now we actually understand what we’re doing and can explain how and why something works. How did we get here? Through practice and experience.

This stage rocks because finally we can assess a situation or a task and use our skill to create great outcome. Ans that is highly motivation.

Thus, we can only do it if we’re super focus and that might make us believe that our performance depends on external factors. Avoid this mindset.

Also, this stage is where things like the impostor syndrome or the plateau effect hit the hardest. We’ve to stay consistent and enthusiastic about bigger challenges and appreciate how far we’ve come so far.

By this stage we’ve developed such a high level of competence that we can perform without thinking about it, even to the point where it has become second nature, muscle memory, or “the zone”.

Once we’ve achieved a high level of expertise, we run the risk of forgetting what it was like to learn something from scratch, falling for an ugly state or entitlement, or getting bored.

And what’s left then? Naturally we have to push our skills to the next limit in order to discover new spaces for growth, either in our fields of expertise or synthesizing knowledge from other fields to create new unexplored spaces.