Conscious Incompetence

Conscious Incompetence is the action of doing something that you know that you cannot do properly, competently, or at all, for the purpose of learning or practicing how to do it better. It’s consciously and deliberately going out of your depth to learn how to swim well. In the process, you also let go of your pride and allow yourself to appear awkward, foolish, and sometimes stupid.

There are some provisos:

• Because you are choosing to do this, you naturally try to select times and places where you are not going to cause yourself — or others — real damage by making mistakes.
• When possible, you practice Conscious Incompetence away from the eyes of critics, especially bosses or jealous colleagues. This is, however, not always possible. Since your harshest critic is usually yourself, you have to be willing to put up with some internal carping and ignore it.
• You limit the risks by doing a little at a time, when you can. Little and often is a good guide.
• All episodes of Conscious Incompetence should be immediately followed up with time to reflect on what happened, what mistakes you made, and what you can learn from them. Conscious Incompetence is a learning process, so give yourself plenty of time to absorb the lessons.
• However badly you do, you don’t give up — at least until you have proved to yourself that the effort is truly not worth it. You are practicing, not trying to win a competition.