If you’ve been following along so far looking for that magical answer for how to get from conscious incompetence (#2) to conscious competence (#3) then here’s where you’re bound to get disappointed. There’s no easy way to get good at something (but you knew that anyway).

Ira says that the most important thing is that you do a lot of work. He offers tips like putting yourself on deadlines (thanks Ira). This is where Malcolm Gladwell’s infamous “10,000-hour rule” comes in. (Gladwell claims that the key to success in any field is simply a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.)

In reality, it takes way less than 10,000 hours before you start to feel like you are doing at least some things right.

Conscious competence can be one of the most rewarding stages of learning a new skill because you can start getting more positive feedback and a sense of mastery as time goes on.

About three months into practicing yoga, I started getting the sense that I was doing my poses right (for the most part). I no longer had to constantly correct myself. Instead, I was able to focus on my breathing and not get exhausted. I also fell less often.

We’ve all felt this way before, though we often forget. Try to remember what it was like when you first learned how to walk. One day you just stopped falling.

Finally, unconscious competence.

Unconscious competence is what most of us aspire to when when we first start learning a new skill. Some people think of this as true ‘mastery.’ We want to be able to do things right without having it consume all of our mental energy.

Fortunately, the human body develops habits (both good and bad) fairly quickly. If you continue to do something the same way over and over again, the behavior requires less conscious effort each time.

At some point you don’t have to think about it anymore. You’ll notice that while doing an activity that used to take a lot of effort, your mind suddenly starts slipping into other, totally unrelated thoughts. You think about your day, or a conversation you had with a friend earlier, and your body continues to move automatically because it just knows what to do.

In yoga, this is the point where you realize that your practice stops being so physical and starts being mental. The challenging part becomes: Can you clear your mind while your body is moving through a repeated set of steps, like a physical mantra?

Throughout our lives, we reach some level of unconscious competence in many things. For most things, we don’t really need to get anywhere close to perfection, so we learn to do things well enough for us to stop thinking about them.

It’s not necessarily bad to be complacent about things — in fact it’s necessary sometimes. You can’t be consciously focused on improving everything, because then you won’t get better at anything. It’s just too much.

But it’s worth recognizing that every one of us is constantly making decisions (both consciously and unconsciously) about what we care about getting better at.

I urge you to think about what things you’re consciously trying to improve, and what things you’ve become complacent about.

I’ve decided I want to get better at writing, so I’m writing 750 words a day every day. I’m also getting better at brushing my teeth. I don’t do yoga anymore.

What have you chosen?

Thanks to Cody Brown, Chris Castiglione, Jake Heller, Nikhil Nirmel, Cloe Shasha, and Mathias Vestergaard for reading drafts of this.