That feeling of effort means your new habit is wiring in: the four stages of learning
I wrote recently about the importance of your comfort zone as a place for recovery and consolidation. Stretching into uncomfortable territory - into the learning zone - is critically important too. But it can be daunting. Unpacking and understanding the discomfort you feel as you make that stretch can help you stay the course.
Imagine you want to start a new habit - say, getting outside for a walk before eating your lunch. At first, it's hard. Sometimes you realise it's mid-afternoon, you've eaten something, and walking never crossed your mind. It takes focused and concerted effort to change your old habit (lunch at your desk), and focused effort is tiring. The effort required makes you feel like this is just not worth it. You consider giving up.
It can be helpful to reframe how you are thinking about that discomfort. Rather than seeing it as a sign you are doomed to fail, consider that it in fact is a sign that your plan is working. Why? Because you are shifting through the stages of learning, and that shift is uncomfortable for a while until it gets wired in and becomes second nature.
The Four Stages of Learning
As we learn any new skill, we move through four stages of learning:
Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetence
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence
The first stage in this model, Unconscious Incompetence, sounds a little insulting but it just means that you don't know what you don't know.
When you were a baby, you couldn't drive and you didn't know that you couldn't drive.
Before making your plan to walk at lunchtime, it wasn't on your radar. You sat at your desk through lunch, and so you were unconsciously incompetent when it came to getting up from your desk to walk at lunch (sorry).
The second stage, Conscious Incompetence, means you know what you can't do.
When you were eight years old, you knew you couldn't drive a car.
As you begin to think about and plan your lunchtime walks, but before actually doing them, you are consciously incompetent as to your planned new habit.
The third stage, Conscious Competence, means you can do the new thing but only with focused effort.
You can drive, but every mirror check and lane change has all your senses switched on and calculating.
Your lunchtime walks have begun to happen but getting up and leaving the desk to go outside doesn't just happen - there can be a sense of inertia you almost feel you need to battle against.
Once you reach the fourth stage, Unconscious Competence, your new skill is now deep knowledge. You do it without needing to apply that tiring, directed effort.
You can drive home without particularly remembering the drive (it doesn't mean you drive home while unconscious - please don't do that!).
As lunchtime rolls around, you get up and out the door seemingly without any effort required. Success! Walking at lunch is now in your newly expanded comfort zone.
Understanding this 4 stage learning framework can help you for 2 reasons:
The shifts between stages are uncomfortable, therefore some level of discomfort means progress.
Conscious competence is particularly effortful until the new skills or habits become automatic, therefore feeling it's hard is a sign it's working, which can help you to persist.
It is important to remember that learning won't happen in the panic zone, so don't take that learner driver in your life straight out onto the freeway the very first time they get behind the wheel.
Enjoy the stretch and until next week, take care of yourself and others.
Madeleine
PS If you are a lawyer who is starting to wonder if it’s possible to be successful as a lawyer AND happy as a human (or if you know a lawyer like that), Thriving as a Lawyer could be just the ticket. Send me a message to enquire, and please share with anyone you think may benefit.
PPS There are still some places available for the Out of the Quicksand session on Wed 17 March where we’ll be talking about successfully managing work and life in times of change and transition. Register today!