Procrastination comes from one of the following—a lack of knowledge or skill; a fear- whether real or imagined; something is too big, it’s overwhelming; or because it’s not broken down into manageable, doable steps or chunks
For just a moment let’s look at each one of them because these again are a piece of moving us into a future that we desire; lack of knowledge or skill. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Sometimes it’s really tough.
There are five stages to learning; there is unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, conscious mastery and there’s unconscious mastery.
Unconscious incompetence basically means “I don’t even know what I don’t know.” It’s really being clueless. You don’t even get it a bit. Conscious incompetence is knowing there’s this “thing” and I barely understand but really have no skills at it. And, I am very aware I don’t have much skill there.
Conscious competence means that I’ve built some skills, and now when I’m working in this area with forethought, as I focus on it I can do it competently. Conscious mastery is that without a lot of prompting, without a many things helping me along the way, that I really have good skills at this. I can move through it fairly easily with a decent level of competency. I don’t have to really struggle because it’s relatively clear in my mind. When I think about it, it comes to me fairly naturally.
Unconscious mastery is down in my core. It is now a part of who I am. It’s deep down inside of me and I don’t even have to think about it. It is an unconscious response that I just have this knowledge, this wisdom; this ability because I’ve built it that deeply.
So sometimes this lack of knowledge or skill that we talked about that is one of the component’s that gets in the way and generates procrastination. Sometimes lack of knowledge is unconscious incompetence. Sometimes I don’t even know what I don’t know. I just have this inkling there’s something I’m missing. How do you move through that? You help yourself by reading and listening to CDs, by podcasts, by reading information on the Web or buying books, learning from experts, or even perhaps going to your doctor or therapist.
Think about this. If you were to read one hour a day on any subject, by the end of a year you would have grown a huge understanding of that subject. You would have an incredible body of knowledge in just one year!
Earl Nightingale, one of the most brilliant of the 20th Century motivators and speakers said if you were to read five books on any one topic, you’d probably know more about that topic area than 98% of the people alive. All you have to do is discipline yourself to read five books.
If you take the time to build your knowledge, to really enhance your mental base, it would give you a gigantic edge. You could move far beyond that unconscious incompetence and step it up to a much higher level.