The Mind Body Project
The Mind Body Project
Sit & Talk: The Four Stages of Learning
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We walk through the four stages of learning—unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence—and show how real habits move through each phase. Stories from fast food checklists to step-count myths make the ideas stick and help you spot your own stage.
• defining the four stages of learning with plain examples
• moving from not knowing to noticing gaps
• turning awareness into simple, repeatable actions
• building habits with small wins and cues
• when autopilot helps and when it hurts
• how to audit and reset unhelpful routines
• teaser for next week on teaching versus training
Welcome And Topic Reveal
SPEAKER_02Welcome to Sit and Talk. Thank you for taking a little time to join us today. If this is your first time to sit and talk, welcome. Each week we have a different mental conditioning topic we talk about and we join our live call while we share that with our live call. So I invite you to just join in on us with our live call. So let's join the live call. All right. So we're gonna talk about. So first of all, before we talk about that, what don't you know?
SPEAKER_00What the topic is I don't know what I don't know.
McDonald’s Story And SOP Awakening
Stage One: Unconscious Incompetence
Stage Two: Conscious Incompetence
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the we're all gonna talk about what you don't know, but the topic is the four stages of learning. So I really only share this with probably the most advanced groups. So, because we're gonna use some words that are gonna get confusing because it's just some variations of the same word, really, is what it is. So, but we are gonna talk about the four different stages of learning. And if you think about anything you've learned, no matter what it is, chances are you've gone through these stages of learning. And that maybe the the last one you're not in on some things, maybe some of them you are. But one of the things when I ask you, what don't you know? And the thing is, you don't know what you don't know. That makes sense. So when I first went to work at McDonald's, I was 19. I was 19 when I went to work at McDonald's. It was believe it or not, I went to work at the McDonald's here in Bowie three months after they opened. It's hard to believe we've had a McDonald's that long. But I went to work there as a manager trainee, and first they showed had to show me how to make burger, like how to actually make the patties, how to actually make the cheeseburgers, the Big Macs, all of those things. So they have these things called SOCs, their standard operating checklist. So, you know, even making a patty, like literally, you get out of a frozen, you get out of a freezer, you put it on this thing, clamshell thing, and you close it. And then after so long, that clamshell just opens automatically. I mean, there's not a lot to it, but it's a whole page of check marks that you have to make sure all this stuff, temperature, all this kind of stuff. And so it was new to me. I'd never I'd been to McDonald's, but didn't know what I didn't know that that's all that went into it. So I didn't know what I didn't know. I just it's something that never dawned on me. I just thought somehow they just show up in in the little thingy there, and and they handed them to you. So the first stage of learning is called unconscious incompetence. So without your realizing it, you're not competent, you're incompetent. So you don't know what you don't know. So there's a lot of things currently that you don't know that you don't know, if that makes sense, because if you knew them, then they wouldn't be unconscious incompetence. So think about when you're a baby and you're growing up. There's a lot of things you didn't know, you didn't know. Maybe it's I was listening to a podcast the other day. I mean, this lady travels all over the world and she stays with tribes that are actually, you know, it's not like, hey, you you can go to this tourist attraction and they can take you to this tribe. Like she finds somebody that has a connection locally that has a connection with the tribe. She pays them money to stay with the tribe. She might stay two to four weeks with the tribe doing exactly what they're doing. And she shared some of that stuff. And so the stuff, like as I listened to it, I thought, I didn't, I didn't know I didn't know that. I mean, it was very interesting things about all the different things the tribes do and all that. So, so there's a lot of things that we didn't know we didn't know. So we all start somewhere with those. All of us have unconscious incompetence because we can't. Can we? Well, now some of you might, but can we know everything? Well, you can't. I mean, you might be married to somebody that knows everything, but and and then and they're and they're probably an exception. Just tell them they're special, bless their heart.
SPEAKER_01Just men.
Health Myths And Becoming Aware
SPEAKER_02Just men. Poor men always get a bad rap. Poor guys. Always I always feel bad for them. So unconscious incompetence. So then, you know, when we begin to, when I was exposed to those standard operating checklist at McDonald's, it moved into the next stage of learning, which was conscious incompetence. So before we, without thinking about it, didn't know we didn't know. And when we start found something out, SOC's standard operating checklist, it became, oh, now I'm aware of it, but I'm still don't know about it. So we're we we are exposed to something, and then it's oh, I didn't I didn't know about this. So kind of like some of those tribes, I wanted to kind of I didn't know how they did some of that stuff. So I thought, oh, that's kind of interesting. Let me look into one or two things, see, you know, that's very interesting. Or maybe it led me to other people that had spent time with the tribes to see how it how they do it, and that there are tribes out there that still kill things. And and I mean, like this lady was talking about it was her birthday there, and so they were baking this cake for. Like, literally, it took the women 12 hours to bake this cake because they had to go get every single ingredient, make it, do it, go out and search all the stuff. Took like 12 hours, and how special it was that they would take their time to make her a cake and spend their whole day 12 hours making a cake. But not just one woman, a bunch of women making a 12k making a cake. So, so then it was conscious and competence. So let me see what I can do. So it's kind of like all of you think eating healthy is pretty common, right? Or being mindful of what you're eating. Yes, believe it or not, there are people out there that never think about that and don't know that, they have no idea. I know it's hard to believe, but it is true. So it might be they might be watching Biggest Loser and see that these folks are on a diet and go, oh, well, maybe I should eat like that. And so it makes them realize that now they're conscious of it, but I need to know more. How do I know how do I want to eat better? What can I do? Or, like some people may not even know that a salad is bad at McDonald's. So I'll tell you kind of an off-color joke. And it and you'll never think about a salad, a salad from McDonald's again. Getting a salad in McDonald's is like asking a hooker for a hug.
SPEAKER_01Babe. We're in mixed company.
SPEAKER_02We are, but but now you'll never think of a salad the same. That's what I want to show you that it's not good. You don't go to McDonald's thinking I'm gonna eat healthy. Okay. So never think that I'm gonna eat.
SPEAKER_01Where have you heard that? I've never heard that.
SPEAKER_02Well, see, there you go. I've heard I heard it a long time ago. I have all kinds of goofy stuff in my brain.
SPEAKER_00One of those things we didn't know we didn't know.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Now you know, now you'll never every time you go to McDonald's.
SPEAKER_01One of those things it just comes out.
Stage Three: Conscious Competence
Building Habits With Small Wins
SPEAKER_02Yes, but it gets the point across. Well, I didn't think about the visual image. Thanks a lot, Renee. I was just thinking of the words. Anyhow, so now you know, now you know going to McDonald's to get a salad, I should do better than that. Maybe if I'm looking to eat healthy, McDonald's is not the place for me to go. So now I just introduced you to conscious incompetence. If you if you like a salad. And then if you want to really know, then I mean if you put salad dressing, that's even worse on the salad, on the McDonald's salad. But so it's it's the same thing. Maybe you think I'm walking 10,000 steps, I'm doing great. And then you find out, oh, I need to be doing more for heart health than just walking 10,000 steps. And everybody knows that's a made-up number, correct? Okay, it's not a scientific proven number. Actually, it's six to seven thousand is the ideal number, but ten thousand is a made-up number by the the creators of the pedometer back in the 60s, I think. So, and then we still do it. So maybe conscious and confidence also, like probably seven, eight years ago, maybe eight years ago, I was on the treadmill and I was looking for something on my phone to listen to, and I came across the YouTube. This guy was talking, and he was talking about different things our mind can do and and how to train it, all the things. I thought, oh, like it never dawned on me up until that point that I thought everything was just happened, that was just the way life was, that's just the way it was. And then when I heard that, I thought, oh, I didn't know that. And then, well, now I'm aware of it. Let me see, I don't know enough about, so let me go see what I can do and to do better. And so then that leads on to the third the third stage of learning, which is our conscious competence. So that's the things we have to continually do these things to move us forward. So we probably, if you think you there's probably several areas that you're conscious and competent about. So, in other words, you're conscious of it, but you don't really know a lot about it. You want to know more about it. So you're aware of it, but you don't know much about it. And so there's areas probably that you have going on in your life that are that way. And then hopefully you have conscious competence, areas in your life that you're really conscious on the things you do to move you forward. So, would exercise be considered conscious competence? Yes, yes, because you're you're consciously doing the things to move you in a forward motion, right? Is coming to Healthy Huddle and applying some of the things we talk about, are those conscious competence? Yes, yes, so maybe even some of the things we you we do on treadmill that maybe when you're gone and you want to do it on your own or you do it at home, you apply those things. So then that is conscious competence because you're consciously doing those things that move you forward. It may be parking at the very last stall at the grocery store, at the mall, at Walmart, wherever it is, so you can get more steps because you know that that's going to help move you forward. Maybe it's even journaling, maybe it is meditation, maybe it is prayer. It's a whole wide range of things that you're consciously doing that you know will move you forward. We also call those habits because we're focusing on your habits. Because if you think about it, aren't your habits something that are you're conscious about and you're really focusing on those because we talk about creating habits because habits move us forward, and you know, habits can also move us not in the right direction, but a lot of times when we think about when we're conscious about our habits, we're conscious about them because we want them to move us forward in the right direction. So that's kind of where our habits come into play. If we go back one, our conscious incompetence, we really don't have habits. We know we need to be doing something, but we really haven't implemented anything. Whereas when we go to the conscious competence, we know we need to do something and we started implementing because we're trying, we're making, we're being intentional about that forward progress. And and so, and habits may not be automatic yet. They may just be, I'm gonna go to the gym two days a week. Um, it may not be on a set day, it may not be at a set time. I mean, you're just hoping to get there two days a week because again, you're you're aware of it and you're trying to move your health and wellness forward. So you go, I gotta go to the gym. It's you know, I'm gonna have two meal preps a week. Again, it may be not because it may be a breakfast on a Monday and a dinner on a Friday. There's no habit there, you're just trying to get it done. Same thing on really any kind of habit you have that you want to start. Maybe it's reading. I want to read three times a week. There's no habit, so you maybe you just read two sentences and you got it done. So if you ever read Atomic Habits, talks about, you know, if you if you want to start reading and you don't want and you can't read a whole chapter, read a paragraph. Can't read a paragraph, read a sentence. It's all about getting in the habit. It's about that conscious moving forward. If it's one sentence, if it's two sentences, it's kind of like reading the Bible. I mean, think, well, I can't read a whole chapter. I can't read a whole, then you read two verses, you read one verse. It it's getting in that habit because that is conscious confidence because you're you're gradually working towards forward, mentally thinking about how do I do that. And so we do those habits. We we start creating those habits. They may not be automatic yet. They may still, we really have to focus on it. We have to really think about like, okay, today I have to do this. Don't forget, it might be post-notes. Don't forget, you have to do this. Like for me, a conscious competence. I joined Kim this year in reading the Bible in a year, and I it's not it's just not part of my routine day because it happens sometimes in the morning, happens sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes happens in the evening. It just happens all different times. So it's a conscious competence because I'm aware of it and I'm looking to do it to move me forward, but it just doesn't happen automatically. So I really have to pay attention to make sure I get it done. Because it's not quite just an automatic habit, which takes us to our last one, which is our unconscious competence. What is the one thing all of you are doing right now, and none of you are thinking about it because you're listening to me? Everybody's doing it, I think. But some people don't have the camera on, so I think everybody's doing it. Breathing, breathing, cheater.
SPEAKER_00Well, I asked it wrong.
Stage Four: Unconscious Competence
SPEAKER_02I asked that at walk and talking. Yes, it is breathing. Think about, I mean, it since we've been on here, have you thought about breathing? Probably not. Now, sometimes you might think about breathing when you're on the treadmill, it's really hard. You might be thinking about breathing when you're lifting a weight, it's really hard. You may be thinking about breathing when you're sick and your chest is real congested, and and your face, your head's all like nasty, and you're like, I'm I'm fighting for every breath I got. Then you're really thinking about breathing. Or if you're in high altitude, you think I'm dying, I've never worked out a day in my life, I'm so unfit. Then you think about it. But normally, everyday things, breathing is not something we think a lot about. For most of us, you get up out of a chair, you take off walking. You don't think about that. It's you know, when a one-year-old starts to walk, they have to really think about walking. But really, for us, it just happens. And so those unconscious competence are things that we don't really think about, we just do them. Sometimes they can be behaviors, behaviors that we do. They can be habits that, I mean, there's probably working out sometimes. You might say that's an unconscious competence, but I bet for most it's not. Because an unconscious competence would be you'd have no inner dialogue about it whatsoever. None. You wouldn't have any inner dialogue about do I have the right shoes on? Do I have the right tights on? Do I have the right shirt on? Do I have the right bra on? Do I have the jacket? Do I have I don't want to get up? Do I have to get up? Can I sleep five more minutes? We have all this inner dialogue. So it's not unconscious because we're consciously thinking about what am I gonna do? But there are things that we don't even think about that we just do. So you probably don't have all that dialogue in your brain when you go, I'm gonna go brush my teeth. It's unconscious. You just go do it, you grab your toothbrush, you do it, and move on. It's not this full-out thought process about it. And our habits, we begin the more we do them in that conscious competence, they will some will become unconscious competence. Have you ever have you ever been driving down a road that you've been down a million times? Uh and you always go your normal way, and for some reason, this today you're supposed to go straight, but you turned. And you always turn, but for some reason you were you were going straight and you didn't mean to turn, but you just turned. And you turned and go, why'd I turn? Unconscious competence. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I see some complexity.
SPEAKER_01I do that all the time. Yeah, so sounds like autism.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like altism.
SPEAKER_01Dementia.
SPEAKER_02Dementia, it could be dementia.
SPEAKER_01Alzheimer's. Yeah, Alzheimer's. Well, that's what I always thought it was. I'm not saying that anymore. Conscience conscious consciousness. What is it?
Routines, Autopilot, And Mistakes
Looping Back To Awareness
SPEAKER_02Unconscious competence. So in other words, I like that. Unconscious competence. So in other words, it's saying, you know, so let's say I come to town every day. Okay. I go by the truck stop, um, I cross the bridge. I come to town all the time. Sometimes I'm boping along to the music, I'm listening to my BiWAP, whatever, I'm not paying attention, and I need to go to Walmart to get water. Well, then I find myself went right past the exit to get on to 87 and went straight across the bridge. Uncompetence, competence, because that's the way I go every day, every single day without thought. I mean, today I was supposed to do something different. My unconsciousness, competence knew I usually go this way, so that's the way I did. It doesn't necessarily mean that it was wrong. It just means that today I was supposed to go a different way. My brain wasn't thinking about it, it just happened automatic because I wasn't paying attention. So that's kind of an example of your unconscious, not paying attention, but I knew which direction to go. It just kind of happens because why? I do it every single day, and I've been doing it every single day for like 17 years, 18 years, every single day, five days a week. So it's just automatic. It's kind of like when you're driving from somewhere and you get home and you go, huh, how'd I get here? And you don't remember, did I stop at the stop sign? Did I turn the turn? Did I go by that store? I don't remember seeing that. Unconscious competence. The easiest way to explain it. And then the hope is that some of our things like that we do become that automatic. Like you, like maybe you get up, get dressed, you never even think about go, oh, wait a minute. I had a doctor's appointment today. I wasn't supposed to go to the gym, and you think I'm losing it. No, sometimes that's just unconscious confidence because that's your routine, that's what you do every day. And without any thought, you it just happens. And so it's a lot like a lot of things. Maybe if it's food, maybe you're trying to eat better, but without thinking about it, you grab something without thinking about it that's not healthy for you. Thought I never even thought about it. Unconscious competence. So that's when we have to then re go back to conscious competence to start paying attention to moving our healthy eating in the right direction. So those are our four stages. We we don't know, we don't know until we do know it, and then we realize, oh, I want to know more about it. And then when we learn know more about it, we go, okay, now I'm gonna consciously make an effort to do better or learn more or see more or understand more, things like that. And then when we do that over a time, and this may be a lifetime. It then it turns into an unconscious competence. And I would say probably for a lot of things we do, it's probably in the conscious competence or conscious incompetence. It's kind of where we're at. Oh, that's interesting. Let me know more. Or trying to do better to move forward. That's really what those two mean. So the challenge really is when you're doing things, kind of think about where are you? Are you in the stage of, oh, I want to know more, or I'm really focused on doing more? Or are there some things that you just do without even thinking about it? And that's the final stage. But you have to be careful too, because those can be unhealthy habits that you do without thinking about them. And then you have to revert back to conscious and competence of, oh, I didn't know that. Let me do better. And then it's just kind of a it's kind of a cycle that goes over and over and over again. But that's kind of how we learn. Any thoughts, comments, or questions about our four stages of learning? And since this week we're not loud today. Huh?
SPEAKER_01The doorbell seems awfully loud today.
SPEAKER_02It does seem loud today. I don't know. I wonder if I can turn that down. I don't know if to look. So the interesting thing about this week is we're talking about the four stages of learning. Next week, we're going to talk about teaching versus training.
SPEAKER_00Versus what?
SPEAKER_02Versus training. Teaches ver teaching versus training. So we talked about learning this week, and then next week's going to be teaches versus training. So be very interesting. So and thank you to each of you for joining us on Walk Sit and Talk. Look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sit and Talk.