that the old “3Rs” that many of us grew up with at school are no
longer as relevant in today’s world. In particular, you will see how two
of the new “5Rs,” Reflecting and Responsiveness, come after what is
normally thought of as learning, and are dealt with in Part III.
Once you come to that moment when you are consciously
ready to start learning, when you realize that you want to do some-
thing but can’t, you need to go through a number of stages to
achieve competency in your chosen area.
Take the example of driving a car. To begin with, you do not
even know that you want to learn how to drive a car. Then, you
become conscious that you can’t do something you want to do.
Perhaps as a teenager you watched one of your parents driving and
begun to wonder what it would be like. Or you had an elder brother
or sister who seemed to be having more fun than you because they
knew how to drive.
So, you learn how to do it but remain very conscious of how
you undertake every aspect of the task, painfully looking in the mir-
ror, signaling, and then maneuvering out into the road in a very
mechanical way and going forward and backward as you attempt to
reverse the car into a small parking space. Finally, you can do every-
thing without even being aware of what you are doing. You can
drive along changing gear, instinctively looking in your mirror from
time to time and chatting as you do so.
In other words, you have gone full circle from not being
aware that you were an incompetent driver to being competent, so
skilled that you don’t even notice what you are doing. Most com-
mentators agree that the process looks like this:Unconscious incompetenceConscious incompetenceConscious competenceUnconscious competenceLearnacy 79