I’ve written before about the learning curve. We’ve all heard of it, but may not realize it has four distinct regions: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Since those four are explained in the earlier post, I’m going to focus on a key characteristic of that middle region, the “conscious” area. Both conscious incompetence and conscious competence are uncomfortable, though for different reasons.
discomfort
Ride the learning curve beyond frustration
Let’s make something explicit: just exactly what is that “learning curve” you keep hearing about?
I can’t remember where I first heard this idea, but it has been around for awhile: whenever you learn something new, you go through four stages. Continue reading

