Don’t Worry If You Realize You Don’t Know Anything — Dunning-Kruger Effect and Five Stages of Learning

Have you ever felt that you learn something very hard only to find you know nothing about it? Maybe many of you have. I also have. I started writing blog posts these days to convey what I learned. I learned from a book and have experienced that output let me realize many things I don't understand. I'm almost falling behind as writing reminds me of my ignorance one after the other.

Then when you're in that kind of situation, what do you think? You may feel discouraged, of course. Everyone wants to be knowledgeable rather than unknowledgeable, skilled rather than unskilled.

However, you don't have to get disappointed. There is some evidence. I'll tell you why you don't have to get disappointed.

Photo by Yente Van Eynde on Unsplash

Why am I writing this?

I want to tell you that it's not the time to quit learning, even if you start something and realize your ignorance.

I'm writing this for myself. I — the person in the middle of writing this article — am in trouble; the more I try to write, the less confident I get. I've started writing blog posts to output my learning. However, the more I write, the more I realize I know nothing. This realization let me down. The idea came to mind that I wouldn't be able to be better at writing.

At the same time, however, I remembered a proverb: Rome wasn't built in a day. Perhaps I've just started building my "Rome." if so, it's not surprising even if it seems to me there's no progress. Yet, my learning motivation will wane if I struggle for a long time without a sense of progress. Or repeated realization of my ignorance may make me feel I'm trying to do something I will never accomplish.

So, to keep my motivation, I need to answer the question; how can I stay motivated when I realize I know nothing? Based on what I learned, I'll answer this question in the following sections. And by answering this question, I can tell you that it's not the time to quit learning, even if you start something and realize your ignorance.

That's why I'm writing this.

Dunning-Kruger effect

What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?

According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people lacking knowledge and skills in a field tend to overestimate their competence.

When we start to learn something, everything is new to us. The more we study, the more knowledge we get. The more knowledge we get, the more confident we get. In the initial learning phase, we get optimistic enough to think we know much more than we do. But we don't know what we've learned is just basics of basics. In this phase, we're climbing Mount Stupid.

At some point, however, we stop getting more confident even if we study more. The more we understand, the less confident we get because we realize our lack of knowledge and skills. We begin to understand how profound what we're learning is. It's when we've reached the top of Mount Stupid. Once we reach the top and continue learning, we climb down the mountain and head for the Valley of Despair, where we lose our confidence.

Once we reach the bottom of the Valley of Despair and we still keep learning, we move on to the next phase: the Slope of Enlightenment. Unlike when climbing Mount Stupid or descending into the Valley of Despair, we already have enough knowledge to estimate our expertise correctly on the Slope of Enlightenment stage. So the more knowledgeable and skillful we become, the more confidence we regain.

What we can say from the Dunning-Kruger effect

Dunning Kruger effect implies two things:

• If you feel you've understood something entirely, you may be climbing Mount Stupid; you may know less than you think.
• You may be in the Valley of Despair if you feel your hard work only reveals your lack of expertise.

I want to highlight the second one because that's key to keeping our motivation to learn. You may feel you'll never be an expert if you study hard for a long time only to realize your lack of expertise. However, it's not a sign of your unpromising future. Instead, it's a sign of your progress. It indicates that you have enough knowledge not to overestimate your ability. You've already passed the top of Mount Stupid. That's progress!

Five Stages of Learning

What is the model of the Five Stages of Learning?

The Five Stages of Learning are the stages learners experience. There are five stages of the relationship between consciousness and competence.

The first stage is Unconscious Incompetence; you don't know that you don't know anything. You don't even know why you need to know because you're not interested in it. Let's take communication skills, for example. Some people aren't interested in communicating with others; they're in the Unconscious Incompetence phase.

The second stage is Conscious Incompetence; you know you don't know anything. But in this stage, you know why you need to know and you want to know. For example, some people want to improve their communication skills and start learning but still can't behave as they've learned; they're in the Conscious Incompetence phase.

The third stage is Conscious Competence; you know how and can do it but still can't do it unconsciously. Let's think about a person who understands the importance of friendly smiles for smooth communication. They manage to keep a pleasant smile while talking with others sometimes but forget to do so when tired; they're in the Conscious Competence phase.

The fourth stage is Unconscious Competence: you can do it, and you don't need to be conscious. You can do it as a habit. Don't you know someone around you with many friends thanks to their excellent communication skills? Ask them how you can do as they do. If the answer is something like, "Umm, I don't know how to explain...," they're in the Unconscious Competence.

The fifth and final stage is Conscious Unconscious Competence: you can do it unconsciously and tell others how to do it. Communication instructors are in the final phase – Conscious Unconscious Competence. They have exceptional communication skills and are also good at teaching how to communicate.

What we can say from the Five Stages of Learning

We can say from the Five Stages of Learning that you don't need to conclude you'll never be able to acquire it even when your learning reveals your immaturity one after another. It's natural for us to realize the lack of knowledge and skills because Conscious Incompetence awaits us when we start learning something.

You don't need to quit learning or conclude you'll never be able to acquire it just because you know nothing about it. If you're suffering from a lack of competence, you're on the right track. Before starting learning, you were unaware of your ignorance.

Conclusion

We've seen the Dunning-Kruger effect and the Five Stages of Learning. We've also considered what we can learn from them to keep our learning motivation even when we're depressed because of poor learning improvement. As the Dunning-Kruger effect and the Five Stages of Learning show, awareness of ignorance is essential for learning. It's your small growth.

We tend to give up learning in the Valley of Despair, but when we face it, we've passed Mount Stupid. Or we can also say we've moved from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence. Knowing these two concepts will help us keep our motivation.