Probably the most prominent feature of humankind is the capacity for learning. Acquisition of new skills in order to adapt to the demands of the environment is a distinctive quality that is intrinsic to our nervous system. Other animals can develop some novel abilities that are not encoded in their genetics, but nobody comes close to humans in that. A child can be dropped at any place on this planet and the environment will shape his speech, his way of moving, and all his habits, very few things are predetermined. This feature of the system can be both a blessing and a curse because some of the learned patterns that helped us as little children stop being useful when we are adults. Understanding the nature of the learning process is crucial in acquiring efficiently new skills and also in getting rid of behavior that does not serve us any longer when we grow up.
It was assumed for a long time that the plasticity of the brain (the capacity to change in response to stimulus) is only available to young children. We were led to believe that after a certain age we can forget about learning novel skills and about developing different behavioral patterns. Neuroplasticity is indeed much more accessible for children and young adults: the human brain does not develop fully till the age of 25 and within this window incredible opportunities are accessible. However, the capacity to change is the essential feature of our nervous system and it is accessible throughout the whole lifespan of a person. The learning approach should be different for adults as compared to children. At an early age, the learning that happens is mainly passive: a child soaks in everything from the environment like a sponge, for better or for worse. There is so much information to process for a newborn baby that it would be impossible to do it consciously. When a child is born all the stimuli that arrive inside the system are indistinguishable from one another. Only with time, the nervous system starts to arrange incoming information into different categories. Depending on the type of input the brain learns to differentiate where the sound waves, the photons of light, the chemical signals, etc. should be processed. As the child grows, this process becomes more and more automatic. After certain centers are developed, he starts to improve his capacity to control complex volitional movements and to pick up on the queues of the language that his parents speak. The languages that the child was exposed to very early in life will be always processed in a different way than the ones that he will learn later. Even if it is more than one language, the child associates the words and structure of sentences with the context. Learning happens organically without any deliberate practice, just from exposure. The understanding of grammar and pronunciation are built in through imitation and it is indeed impossible to learn languages to the same degree as an adult (do not let it discourage you to do it anyway though!). This illustrates beautifully how much little children are wired to learn. The age at which the change occurs is argued upon, but one thing is crystal clear: if you want your child to be multilingual, exposure to different languages should happen as early as possible.
For adults, the situation is very different. An adult can rarely learn something without deliberate practice. Furthermore, passive learning in adults is mainly associated with negative experiences that are charged emotionally (traumatic experiences). There are many ways to learn, but understanding the underlying principles of retention of skill will allow you to construct a practice that will bring you to your goals more efficiently.
There are 4 stages of learning that we can differentiate in the process of retention of any skill (introduced by Noel Burch):
1. Unconscious incompetence.
- When you are executing a skill wrong and you do not know about it.
2. Conscious incompetence
- When you are executing a skill wrong, but now you are aware of it.
3. Conscious competence
- When you can execute a skill correctly, but you have to apply a lot of cognitive effort and focus in order to do it.
4. Unconscious competence
- When the skill is so integrated into your system that you cannot fail to execute it, and you do not need to be focused to do it, it becomes automatic.
Our default state on most of the things we do daily is the first stage: unconscious incompetence. Let this soak in: it is highly probable that you are oblivious to most of the things you are doing wrong (in a way that does damage to the structure and/or does not allow for efficient movement), from brushing your teeth to walking to reacting emotionally to certain situations. This stage can linger for years and sometimes even for a lifetime. To create a change you first must become aware of your faults. Awareness sheds light on our mistakes, it is an essential part of the correction. Sometimes it is impossible to become aware of something without an external observer so people often do not seek change, simply because they do not think of the need for one. Without conscious pursuit, awareness can come accidentally when you start having pain that forces you to recognize a wrong movement pattern, for example. This is why it is so incredibly important to find a good teacher that can point out your blind spots before any damage is done.
The presence of awareness brings us to the second stage: conscious incompetence. Now you know that the action is performed in a way that is not optimal. When this happens and you start paying close attention to how the action is performed, the brain brings all the resources to figure out what is the most efficient way to accomplish a pattern. Mistakes indicate where the change should take place and trigger neuroplasticity. Mistakes are an essential part of learning, do not run away from them but pay close attention. An important part to understand: when you build a new skill, the process is un-doing the connections that did not serve the purpose. At the beginning of any new endeavor, the nervous system uses too many resources, and then it has to clean up until it finds a way that is efficient and consolidates it by the process of myelination (literal wrapping of synapses in a lipid-like structure, just like an electrical wire), simultaneously getting rid of the connections that did not do the work. I want to make an emphasis on this: the building of an efficient pattern is not adding more connections, it is getting rid of useless ones. This is also a reason why when a bad habit is consolidated it is so hard to get rid of it. The most important hallmark of this stage is your ability to perceive and recognize what the keys to competence are and implement them in the practice.
The stage of conscious competence is the sweet point when after a long time of practicing a skill results start to show up and the efficiency of a pattern increases. This is a very rewarding stage because you can clearly see improvement, now you are aware of the change that had occurred and can compare the before and after. At this stage, you seek activities that will ensure further improvement of a skill, because now you are capable to give yourself better feedback. However, performing the skill correctly still requires a lot of cognitive effort and attention.
The deliberate practice in the previous stage eventually progressed to the state of unconscious competence: the skill is installed in the system and does not demand as much cognitive effort anymore. This is the stage of learning where the brain moves information about the skill on a more foundational level of control. As soon as this process is complete, a profound change in the system happens: the skill becomes an integral part of it. With this comes a completely new level of efficiency. In other words, it can be called mastery. This is also the stage that produces flow states.
We can all agree that the level of mastery is the desired place where we want to bring all our skills eventually. However, I find it extremely important to keep the learning alive and always come back to the beginner stages in order to refresh the system and dig out subtler levels of ourselves that otherwise we would stay oblivious to. This keeps the system sharp and engaged and not just allows you to build a specific skill, but makes you a better learner in general. Besides, if we only do things we are good at, we might doom ourselves to becoming slaves of developed habits. Moshe Feldenkrais said: “The freedom to learn is a great liability; initially, it is also a restriction. There is no freedom of choice or free will when there is only one way of acting. Learning makes it possible to have alternate ways of performing anything. The ability to learn is synonymous with free choice and free will. But once learned the choice is made, the die is cast, and the tabula rasa is no more. Herein lie the liabilities as well as the restriction.” There is nothing permanent about the way we move and the way we are, learning can happen at any stage in life with the right process. It is up to each individual in which direction it will be directed. This is the beauty of being a human, and I believe the responsibility of each one of us is not to waste this priceless gift.