To fling poo, or not to fling poo. That is the question.

In previous “Obvious” posts, we’ve gone over both the idea of achieving and noticing more epiphanies (because all people need to have X number of epiphanies to level up your Japanese) as well as striving for confusion (because people who are confused are actually learning more than those who aren’t confused). We’re going to build on both of those in this “Making Japanese Obvious” article by taking a look at the idea of “Conscious Competence.” Don’t worry, it only sounds boring. It’s really quite interesting, I think, and something all Japanese language learners will (and need to) run into. It’s much better if you know about it.

What Is “Conscious Competence”?

When you’re learning something new (especially something like Japanese) you go through various stages. One of them happens to be Conscious Competence. Conscious Competence is a great place to be, which is why we’re talking about it. Let’s break up the two words:

Conscious: When you’re aware something’s happening

Competence: When you’re good / decent at something (i.e. you’re competent in it).

“Conscious Competence” is when you know you’re good at something. In the case of this particular article, you are aware that you are good at Japanese. Or, at least, you know what you need to do to get better. That’s good, because you can always move forward, one step at a time.

In order to get to this point, though, there are other steps everyone has to take, whether you’re learning Japanese or you’re learning underwater basket weaving. Conscious Competence just happens to be a really important step in the big picture of things. To help you understand this, we need to take a look at “the stages of learning.”

The Stages Of Learning

You go through several stages when you’re learning. They are the following:

Unconscious Incompetence: This is when you first start out. You have no idea what you’re doing, and everything is fun and exciting. You are unconscious of your incompetence (i.e. you have no idea you’re bad, and everything you do seems great).

Conscious Incompetence: This is when you’ve studied a bit, and you’ve learned enough to know that you’re not very good at Japanese. You finally have enough knowledge to look at yourself and say “omg, I don’t know this this this this and that. Crap.” This is where most people quit, because they think they’re “bad” or “terrible at learning Japanese.” The problem isn’t that you’re bad at Japanese, the problem is that you’ve learned enough (you’re learning, that means you’re winning, really!) to know what you’re not good at, so it only seems like you’ve gotten worse. Actually, you’ve gotten better.

Conscious Competence: This is what we’re talking about in this chapter. Conscious Competence occurs when you know enough to know what to do. When you don’t understand something, you know where to go in order to understand it. You know what to do, and you can solve any problems. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but you’ve fought through the incompetence to get to the other side.

Unconscious Competence: This is when you’re so good you don’t even know you’re good. The Japanese language (and learning it) has become second nature, and learning has become easy and fluid. This is awesome-sauce stage. You really want to get here, though it will take hard work and persistence.

So why, out of these four, is Conscious Competence so important? Let’s find out.

Conscious Competence

Conscious Competence isn’t the end goal but it is the goal, I think. Unconscious Competence happens when you’ve gone through enough Conscience Competence. Conscious Incompetence happens when you haven’t built up enough competence to reach a conscious state of competence.

People generally quit before they get to Conscious Competence as well. If you reach Conscious Competence, then you’ve learned all you need to learn in order to get what you need when you need it.

Let’s take another look at the graph thingy.

Conscious Incompetence is the lowest of the low. You don’t have that initial excitement, and you don’t have the knowledge to be better at studying Japanese. If you’re going to quit at learning Japanese, you’re going to do it here, most likely. This, I’d say, is week two or three, sometime after learning hiragana, for most people.

Next Week: How To Reach Conscious and Unconscious Competence

So, I think the big question now is how do you reach Conscious Competence? There’s no one way to do it, but there are some great ways to help get you there. A lot of it comes down to consistency, perseverance, and a hard head, but there are certain ways to speed things up for yourself as well. It’s not easy, that’s for sure, but if it was everyone would know Japanese like the back of their hands.

Right now I’m putting together strategies that I’ll share with you next week on reaching these states of competence. Not everyone will get there, and not everyone is meant to get there, but we can do quite a few things to make your odds better as well :)

Have any of you seen yourself going through these phases? Where are you right now (or, where do you think you are…?).

Have no idea where you are because you’ve never started learning Japanese before? You should try TextFugu, where you get guided through the whole competence process. Want to know more about conscious competence, the above graph, and more? The Dip by Seth Godin covers all this and is a really interesting (and inspiring) book that covers this sort of thing.

See you next week!

P.S. We try to be consciously competent on Twitter

P.S.S. Our Facebook skills, however, are somewhat consciously incompetent.

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