It’s not you. You’re not getting worse. You’re just experiencing Conscious Incompetence.
Imagine you’re sitting in a crit seeing the beautiful work your peers are doing. You look down at your sketchbook. “I’m not good enough. I didn’t draw the mechanical system correctly. My line weights aren’t as vibrant as my neighbor’s. I don’t think my axonometric is drawn in the right perspective.” etc., and your thoughts continue to spiral.
Why am I here? Am I not good enough?
Stop. Full stop.
I feel like I cannot emphasize this enough. The feeling you are experiencing right now is a part of the learning process. You are not behind.
What is actually happening is that you are in the second step of the four stages of competence: Conscious Incompetence.
The Four Stages of Competence:
This is a psychological idea first mentioned in the book Management of Training Programs from 1960. It can be applied to any new skill. It’s essentially a thought process on how we learn new skills and is broken down into the four phases we go through from beginner to master.
1) Unconscious Incompetence
You are so focused on doing that you don’t know what’s “right” or “wrong.” The focus is on the action. You don’t know what you don’t know.
2) Conscious Incompetence
Here you start to learn what is “right” and “wrong.” You are still doing the actions, but your skill level does not necessarily match your knowledge of the subject. This is a hard step to be at, where it’s easy to give up and feel discouraged. Don’t!
3) Conscious Competence
Your skills are better. You are still doing the action, and the “right” way if such a thing exists. However, you have to put thought into it. The actions you are performing still take effort to do them “correctly.”
4) Unconscious Competence
The final stage. Your skill and knowledge levels are the same, and these actions are now second nature. You don’t have to think, and you do things the right way the first time.
Examples:
This can work with any skill, and two examples I want to show are with what I know best: architecture and music.
Architecture – Learning a New Software Program
Let’s take learning a common software program, like Rhino, to start.
Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence
In this stage, you might start by just opening up the application and playing around. You see all the toolbars along the top and sides, and you might start using the buttons to draw lines and shapes. You don’t even know that you can type commands into the search bar. Maybe you don’t even have a mouse and are trying to draw with your laptop’s touchpad.
Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence
Now that you are more familiar with the program, you start to do research on how to do something. Perhaps you see a friend of yours with a really cool 3D shape, and you want to try to recreate something similar. So you ask them for help and start watching tutorials, and you see these incredible models in comparison to yours. But your shape still doesn’t look quite right. It takes a lot of troubleshooting to find the error.
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence
At this point, you’re much more comfortable in the Rhino. Yet, occasionally you still need to look up certain commands or follow tutorials. You may have an established workflow, but maybe that includes some bad habits. If you’re not careful, you might forget things (like labeling all your layers) if you’re not aware of it.
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence
At this point, you are basically a Rhino expert. You have a strong workflow in the program. You know exactly how to set up new files so they not only fit the way you like to work, but are also the most efficient and the “better” way to use the program.
Music – Learning a New Song
Another example could be trying to learn a new song on the piano from sheet music.
Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence
You pick up a brand new piano piece. You sightread through the first time, but aren’t really paying attention to all the right notes or rhythms. Maybe you’ve never even heard what it’s “supposed” to sound like, so you can’t even tell if the chords you’re playing are wrong.
Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence
By now, you’ve probably looked up the song and know what the end goal should be. So you can tell when you hit a wrong note. It doesn’t sound right. Or maybe there’s a challenging rhythm that you can’t play up to the speed it’s supposed to be at.
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence
At this point, you can play the piece better, making the occasional mistake. You most likely still need to look at the music as well. You have to focus and concentrate, especially with the hard passages.
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence
Finally, you know this song inside and out to the point where it’s probably memorized. You can actually fully enjoy the piece while playing and even move to the music. You don’t have to think to the point where muscle memory kicks in.
What To Do If You Feel Like Giving Up:
Keep trying. Maybe you need to use a new drawing technique. A new process or workflow could help. Remember that there can be more than one way to do something. Experiment, ask for help from professors, professionals, and especially your peers. Watch tutorials, try looking at things from different perspectives, and most importantly, continue to practice.
If you are feeling stuck, you’re probably in Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence.
There comes a point in architecture school where you will most likely reach stage two. It feels like you are getting worse because you are starting to understand what you are doing wrong, but your skill level does not match your knowledge of the subject.
You are not actually “getting worse.” You are becoming aware of where you need to develop your skills.
You are learning. This is all part of the process. Embrace it.
Don’t get me wrong, feel your feelings, architecture school is hard. But afterward, take a deep breath and get back to work. You got this. I believe in you.