10,000 hours to mastery...
Acquiring proficiency in a range of skills requires a great deal of time invested. The mastery of any craft entails countless hours learning component skills, building the neural pathways & muscle-memory until it becomes "second nature."
The Four Stages Of Competence provides a great framework for understanding these learning processes from a meta-level.
We begin not knowing. Though not only do we not know, we do not know what we do not know. This is unconscious incompetence.
Then, something happens to make us aware of what we don't know. A step up the ladder has been taken to conscious incompetence.
Then, comes the learning. Slowly but surely, we ascend into conscious competence.
And finally, after a great deal of practice, unconscious competence.
It's been remarkably fascinating observing this progression through the quadrant in my own music production... and seeing how time plays out as a dimension in its unfoldment.
Having started playing piano and guitar, I was once completely, unconsciously incompetent when it came to the nature of how records were actually put together. Slowly but surely during my teens, I learned a bit by bit, acquiring a 4-track tape recorder and drum machine to start piecing together my own compositions. I'd went into a studio to work with an engineer to do a few others. And at 18, I bought an MPC-2000XL to start making beats on. Yet, I was still largely unaware of just how much more detail there was to learn.
The large majority of my life was spent in unconscious incompetence. For example: even though I'd heard of compressors and had some idea of what EQ was supposed to be all about, there were depths to their applications I had no clue about. Then somewhere along the way, the switch was flipped to conscious incompetence. And shortly thereafter, the progression through conscious competence began.
Conscious competence is a stage that takes a while to ascend through. Knowing of something is alot different than being able to do it consistently without thinking about it. I'd probably say the entire last 7 years of my music production has been spent in conscious competence, within more and more little component skills activating from the unconscious as discovering greater details as hitting various blocks requiring time to slow down and work through or new perspectives found through experimentation.
The conscious competence stage isn't just one rung on the ladder, but could be broken down to thousands upon thousands of minute mini-steps. Especially within a domain such as music production.
Programming the articulate variations in MIDI patterns, grasping the complexities of synthesizers, becoming fluent in all the different functions of a Digital Audio Workstation, the intricacies of recording guitar & tweaking tones, the hundreds of separate yet interconnected parameters of dozens of different plugins/tools, the precision required in refining the alchemical mix at the engineering stage, attuning one's ears to the sensitive distinctions in reverbs and distortions... each of these is an entire domain unto itself with evolutions through the quadrants specific to the component, let alone pulling them altogether.
Yet, the higher up the conscious competence phase one goes, the more into unconscious competence one gets. I don't know if there is a distinct demarkation point between the two, or how to distinguish when one truly has made the leap. For what once required diligent focus and conscious thought to walk through a process becomes increasingly smooth, quick, and easy to execute with repeated practice. Whereas the jump from unconscious to conscious incompetence happens within a single moment, the transition from conscious to unconscious competence occurs over time and may have no clear crossover point.
Progression through conscious competence wasn't always the most fun. There were alot of hiccups and speedbumps. And for the first while, many of those obstacles stirred up yet more out of the unconscious incompetence blindspots, bringing yet more things to be learned.
Yet, there came a point where momentum built. Through slowing myself down to a sustainable pace, the end result of powerful flow I'd wanted became increasingly achievable as I was able to chunk things down into smaller tasks - more intimately understanding how to progress through each of them, and doing so with increasing conscious competence. Perhaps some of them, I've even finally been transitioning into unconscious competence with.
And that is damn rewarding in itself.
It's been a long road. Probably a good 20 years, all-in-all. Maybe about 7 consistent.
Yet, it's been so fucking worth it.
There was tons of frustration along the way as I climbed that mountain of developing all these component skills, refining my ears, and putting it all to practice. But on the other side, there really has been a sense of smooth sailing. A real peace and satisfaction.
While I'd been producing great musical results the whole way, they're coming way quicker and easier these days.. And the sense of quality increasing with less effort is something real fantastic.
Perhaps this is what the road to mastery looks like, regardless of what endeavor one commits themselves to.
Perhaps this type of growth - not just building skills through the rise from unconscious incompetence to competence, but also growing the character and personal expansion - is part of the larger reason we're here on this planet with so many years to commit to some form of mastery or another. Perhaps only through such mastery, can we ever produce the fruits of our greatest legacy and serve at our highest capacities - and achieve the inner rewards for having made it through the cycles.
In any case...
That's my little story for today of an unseen yet great, subtle victory.
May you take what you shall from it as inspiration to fuel your own ascension through The Four Stages Of Competence in whatever particular craft or field that nourishes your own heart and soul, music or otherwise.
And may you enjoy but a small sample of what this victory of mine sounds like, as indulging in this latest sneak preview of a work-in-progress... 🙏
(Listening on quality headphones and/or speakers recommended.)