You don’t know what you don’t know.
Read it again.
The 4 Stages of Competence:
- Unconscious Incompetence: You don’t know what you don’t know.
- Conscious Incompetence: You know what you don’t know, but you can’t do it yet.
- Conscious Competence: You know what you’re doing, and you perform well.
- Unconscious Competence: You do well automatically.
Harsh truth: Most people don’t know what they don’t know.
In my life, I’ve never seen anyone learn something the “easy” way.
People usually learn things the hard way.
Instead of preventing the problems, they let the problems occur.
When problems occur, they feel the pain.
Pain makes them concerned.
When they’re concerned, they start to learn.
This is human nature.
The Big Short is one of my favorite movies.
Quick summary: It’s about a group of traders who predicted the financial storm before anyone on Wall Street.
They knew this was a big opportunity, but it meant a financial crisis—millions of people would lose their homes.
But the harsh truth is, no one on Wall Street gave a f*ck because they weren’t concerned about it.
Why bother to care?
They were printing money.
And of course, the crisis happened, and millions of people lost their homes.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
Read it again: You don’t know what you don’t know.
But it’s better to open your mind and accept that there’s a lot you don’t know.
Then, question what you’re missing.
Next, explore the topics you don’t know.
This is how to learn in “easy” ways.
It’s impossible to know everything; we’re not Google.
Some problems can’t be prevented.
Wear the head guard and tackle them head-on.
That’s the only way.
Other problems, however, can be prevented by learning from other people’s failures.
This is how you learn the lesson the easy way.
I’m not telling you that learning the easy way isn’t painful.
You’ll still feel pain, but it’s a different kind of pain.
It’s the pain of:
- Forcing yourself to learn new skills.
- Doubting yourself and what you don’t know.
- Accepting your failures when trying to learn.
But the lessons are gentler than letting failure teach you.
