I'm a believer in the four stages of competency:
1. Unconscious incompetent - you don't know what you don't know.
2. Conscious incompetent - you know that you don't know.
3. Conscious competent - you know but have to concentrate hard to make it happen.
4. Unconscious competent - you know it and it's so routine you hardly ever think about it anymore.
I believe I'm fairly solidly into stage 3. The funny thing about all this is the more you know the more you realize you don't know.
Roden
Roden,
Your list of stages of competence is the stages of learning we, as people, go through in all that we endeavor to do.
Welcome. A half million words. Wow. I am lucky to produce a few hundred in the same time period.
I feel I am firmly in stage 2, with spurts of stage 3. But, then again, I may be lost in stage 1 and just don't know it.
I have put in the time in a construction trade to the level where I feel I can master anything that comes my way. This though, writing, I know will take as long or longer to master.
Good writing.