Angela Kamanzi My Journey in Entrepreneurship
Several years ago when I was a pre-teen, I decided to take a touch typing course. I admired those secretaries who could typeset very fast. I wanted to learn that skill. Touch typing wasn’t easy. Your seat had to be at the appropriate height so that you can position your hands on the keyboard without slouching or straining your wrists. Then you had to lift the appropriate finger while keeping the rest of the hand almost immobile. Mastering touch typing required a lot of exercises. Eventually you had to be able to typeset a whole page without ever glancing at the keyboard.
Our mind goes through four steps while processing information.
- Unconscious incompetence:
This is where we all start. Initially we don’t know what we don’t know. That’s why it’s so important to remain 100% teachable, as I wrote last week. As long as you know that you don’t know what you don’t know, that there’s something you don’t know, the knowledge of which could change everything, you remain open to learning. - Conscious incompetence
When I asked my parents to pay for a distant course on touch typing for me, I was consciously incompetent about touch typing. You become consciously incompetent once you have identified what you don’t know. You may realise that you don’t know how to ride a bike, or that you don’t understand the financial side of your business. That’s when you decide to acquire the knowledge you need. - Conscious competence
When I was learning touch typing, I knew I had to sit up straight, position my hand and fingers in a certain way, keep my elbows close to my body and keep my eyes on the text I was typing. I was consciously competent because I knew how to do what I wanted to do, and I was thinking about it while doing it. If you’ve ever learned how to drive, as soon as you understand what the instructor tells you and start putting it into practice while thinking about it, you are consciously competent. - Unconscious competence
Today if you ask me where a particular key is on a keyboard, I’m not able to tell you! However as soon as I position my hands on the keyboard, I automatically know which finger will type that particular key. I have become unconsciously competent in touch typing, because I’ve done it over and over again until it got imprinted in my subconscious mind.Unconscious competence is the level you should aim to reach in order to become successful. This is when you do things automatically, without even thinking about them. We know that everything we’ve ever achieved, we’ve first conceived it in our minds. We also know that being happy and entertaining happy thoughts as long as possible helps us attract what we want. Becoming unconsciously competent in happiness, knowing how to automatically flip from a negative thought to a positive thought, should be our main goal daily.
So, what are you unconsciously competent in?
Angela
