You typically go through 4 phases on our journey learning or improving at a skill:

1. Unconscious incompetence
   You’re not good at the thing, and you don’t even realise it’s a thing you’re not good at / could improve at
2. Conscious incompetence
   You realise you’re not good at it yet. At this stage you might decide to improve at it
3. Conscious competence
   You’re somewhat good at it now—but you have to be intentional about it. It hasn’t become second nature
4. Unconscious competence
   It’s become second nature—you’re now effortlessly good at it without even thinking about it

For me the most interesting realisation to come out of framing the journey in this way is that #2 generally feels worse than #1. #1 is “blissful ignorance”. This keeps a lot of people from ever getting good at most things. Your ability to level up at pretty much anything is in large part determined by to what extent you realise that #2 is progress compared with #1 and are willing to sit with / enjoy that discomfort.