Useful everywhere, all the time. Taught to me by Mike Vance, former Dean of Disney University.

  • 1. Unconscious Incompetence: you have no idea what you don’t know, you’re in the dark, totally incompetent, like you didn’t even know you had a thing called a pancreas, much less have any idea what it does or how to remove it if it goes bad.
  • 2. Conscious Incompetence: You learn, discover, become aware of, by trial and error or by Mr. Miyagi sweeping your leg, that there is Stuff You Do Not Know. Holy crap, I have a what? A pancreas? Ok, alright. Umm…what’s it do, exactly? Pay attention: you got something to learn. Yeah, this is how other people have been doing it for years, ok?
  • 3. Conscious Competence: Now that you have Been Enlightened, you work on gaining skills and knowledge, you get some adroit on you, and low and behold, you can actually parallel park your dad’s F150 IF you keep your wits about you, keep your eye on the ball, pay attention, and stay off your phone.
  • 4. Unconscious Competence: This is when you do what you do so well that other people want to show other people how well you do it.