The service I use to organize the notes I take from books, Readwise, just quietly released their first AI feature.
When I say quietly, I mean a new button for chatting with AI just appeared this week. There’s no special coloring or emojis to alert me to it. The actual alert bell, where they normally announce features, is silent. 🤷
Can you tell that a magical new feature has been released?
I’ve previously tried to hack my way into this functionality using the following experiments: a) Exporting my notes from Readwise into Google’s NotebookLM. b) Downloading Ollama on my laptop and integrating it to Obsidian, which houses my exported notes. c) Downloading all my highlights then uploading them into a custom GPT in ChatGPT.
All of those experiments sucked! For example, no matter what I asked it, the custom GPT always gave me a highlight from a book called “Your First 100 Days in a New Executive Job.” It must be first in the database or something; it had a hard time looking deeper.
With this new Readwise feature it’s a legit, practical, and effective way to seamlessly interact with my notes!
Notice that it can even search my podcast highlights.
When I ask a question, I get the normal chat-style response we’re all used to. In addition, it links to sources in my database of highlights, and shows them off to the side. From there I can click on the highlight to go to that book and see the highlight in context.
This should make my own research more effective. Sometimes I know I’ve read about something, but can’t find the note. Or, I’ve got a new concept and want to find notes that could be related to flesh out my concept page in Obsidian.
This weekend ChatGPT also just unlocked their newest models, o3-mini and o3-mini-high. My weekend is pretty busy with life events, so it’ll be another week or so before I can play around with all of these in more detail, but I’m looking forward to it.
Are you doing anything new with AI? Email me about it at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz. I’d love to hear, and I’d love the opportunity to share it with the community in a future newsletter!
Kevin
A Quote
“
For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb in "The Bed of Procrustes"
Three Things
1 - 📔 ”Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne - One of the litmus tests for a strong book is how much I talk to my family about it, and this book generated a lot of conversation. The fact that I live in the area where the book takes place added that much more interest for me. Part history book, part narrative non-fiction, I really enjoyed learning more about Native American life.
2 - 🌐 Not Boring on Meter - If you think my newsletter was long, check out this nearly two hour, 100-page, newsletter Packy McCormick did on a company called Meter 😮. Meter is working to turn internet access into a utility, just like water or power is in the US today. They focus on vertical integration and are selling to enterprises. If successful, it would greatly simplify getting internet access for businesses, and inject healthy competition into current companies, like Cisco and Palo Alto Networks.
3 - 🎨 Craft.Studio - I love meeting cool people doing cool things! I recently met someone here in Austin who specializes in creating motion graphics. It looks like magic to me! If you need someone to create motion graphics for your business, check him out!
(This is a 7️⃣ minute read)
Deep Dive on the Four Stages of Competence
We all like being competent in our work. Being effective triggers all sorts of feel-good chemicals. 😊
Being competent is also a key dimension of trust, especially in business settings. Your employees, peers, boss, and customers will not trust you if you do not have competence.
There are myriad skills, behaviors, and dimensions along which leaders can demonstrate competence. But unfortunately, humans are often unconscious of their own incompetence along many of these dimensions - our blind spots.
So how do you go from being unconsciously incompetent (where you don’t even know you’re bad at something) to being unconsciously competent (where you’re so good you don’t even think about it anymore)?
There’s something call the Four Stages of Competence, created by Noel Burch in the 1970s, that maps out this progression. I’ll share the model today and even walk you though one example where I’ve gone on that journey.
Something to ponder while you read today’s deep dive: Where might your own unconsciousness habits be limiting your effectiveness? 🤔
Quick Primer on the Model
The Four Stages of Competence model has the following stages. I’ll share key traits for each stage, and clues for how to move out of each stage.
Unconscious Incompetence You don’t know what you don’t know.
🔑 Key Traits: - You lack skill but don’t realize it. - You might overestimate your abilities. - You don’t yet see the value in learning this skill (if you’re even aware of it). 🏃 How to move to the next stage: - Exposure to the skill. Becoming aware of its complexity. - Receiving feedback that makes you aware of your incompetence.
Conscious Incompetence You know what you don’t know.
🔑 Key Traits: - You recognize your incompetence. - You feel frustrated because you realize you’re bad at it. - You actively seek help to improve. 🏃 How to move to the next stage: - Practice, practice, practice. - Learn from your mistakes. - Get guidance from experts or teachers. - Learn your body’s signals.
Conscious Competence You’re good, but you have to think about it.
🔑 Key Traits: - You can perform the skill but must concentrate. - Mistakes still happen if you’re distracted. - You feel more confident, but it’s still mentally taxing. 🏃 How to move to the next stage: - Repetition until the skill becomes second nature. - Fine-tuning the techniques through deliberate practice. - Getting real-world experience where you apply your skills.
Unconscious Competence You do it without thinking about it.
🔑 Key Traits: - The skill is second nature. - You perform it automatically, without much effort. - You might struggle to teach beginners because you forget how hard it was at first. 🏃 How to move to the next stage: - Teaching others can help refine your skill even further. - You might start learning an even more advanced version of the skill.
My Unconscious Incompetence
Our strengths define our weaknesses, and I’m no different.
I can move fast and understand complex systems, but those strengths can cause me to lose my audience in a few different ways.
I talk fast. I ask a lot of questions. I see connections between ideas, concepts, problems, and people. I start to get excited and convey nervous energy, like a goldendoodle about to get ice cream.
This dog is thinking of nothing else but that ice cream.
At some level I was aware of the problems this can cause, but I would often put it on others instead of myself. I would think that I was fine, it’s just that other people needed to keep up. (Later I learned that I was playing the role of villain in the drama triangle)
I was frustrated, but directed it at others, not myself. That’s an unconscious incompetence clue 😁
The Turn to Conscious Incompetence
It was my coach that most effectively highlighted the issue for me. As part of us working together, I would share recordings of meetings I was in.
By the way - this was a power move! It’s like watching videos in sports. While uncomfortable, seeing yourself on video enables direct feedback, and shortcuts a lot of BS. Try it.
Thankfully I’m eager to learn, and I have great trust and appreciation for my coach. She was able to quickly and directly point out the issue.
We’d talk through my intent, my feelings, and my observations. She’d point out the effect my behavior was having, and the disconnect between that effect and my desired outcome.
When I exhibited these behaviors, my audience might get resigned, or disengaged, or confused. None of which are productive, and none of which I was trying to create!
So now I’m aware of my incompetence, which makes this stage of the journey the worst one 🤣 At least in unconscious incompetence I’m blissfully ignorant of my ineptness!
In this stage I know I’m bad, but haven’t yet built any tools to improve. 😩
Because this stage sucks, it’s also where ego protection turns on and many people won’t make it through to competence!
Their brain chooses to remain unconscious of their incompetence as a form of ego protection rather than go through the pain of changing.
Don’t let that be you! It’s fun to get better, and eventually you’ll embrace the suck of this stage.
The Body Contains Clues
Getting through this stage can be fun if you let it.
It adds another layer onto your day. In addition to “the work” and trying to get things done, my job is to pay attention to this behavioral factor I’m working on.
If you have a coach - or ChatGPT - you can share with them once a week what you’ve noticed and get feedback. You’re building awareness and techniques.
I had a lot of fun just being an observer of myself, and trying out little experiments.
For example, talking slowly was an experiment. I normally listen to podcasts on 1.7x, but I swapped it to 0.8-1.0x for a while just to experience slowness. (FYI, it was awful.)
I would then practice at work. My goal was to talk so slowly that it was painful for me. If it didn’t feel awkward, then I was probably going too fast.
I would also practice sharing one observation, or asking one question. Even if I had 20 things I wanted to talk about, I was only allowed one. I had to practice picking out the most important thing.
Going though all these cycles of observation I noticed something new; what almost always preceded me talking fast and asking a lot of questions with goldendoodle energy was that the hair on the back of my neck would start to stand up.
Weird, I know.
But I get excited by problems, and my body would start to get amped up in anticipation.
Me, when there's a problem to solve.
Noticing this was a huge unlock for me, because it was a sequence I could break.
Instead of: Problem –> excitement –> hair –> talk fast / ask questions / share connections / draw crazy person whiteboard –> lose people
I could switch it and go: Problem –> excitement –> hair –> (AWARENESS!) –> deep breath –> share one thing calmly
This trigger was the beginning of the pivot from conscious incompetence to conscious competence, and the clue came from a body signal.
Many leaders overlook the power of body awareness in behavioral change. What signals might your body be sending?
Wearing in a New Path
From here you’re off to the races!
The hardest turn is going from conscious incompetence to conscious competence. After that it’s just practice and refinement. You expose yourself to more situations where you can learn, and then the compound interest of time takes over.
I like the framing of your default pattern being like a path through the tall grass. You’ve walked that path a million times and it’s worn down to the dirt.
Every time you go down the path you’re ensuring that it continues to be the path of least resistance.
The well-worn path isn't necessarily the most effective path.
Learning a new technique means going off the default path into the tall grass. It’s effortful and you want to get back on the old comfy path, but you have to resist that urge.
Eventually you’ll wear a new path and the old one will start to fill up with grass again.
Until the new path is worn in, it’ll take effort. This is what conscious competence feels like. You can do it, but it’s hard.
Reversion to Incompetence
Competence is not a state you achieve, never again experiencing incompetence.
Depending on the situation, your sleep, who you’re with, etc., it’s possible you can revert to old pathways.
For me, I value personal responsibility. If I were in a situation in which I was being held accountable for the outcome and the team was struggling, I would be at risk of reverting to my old ways - even though I know they are less effective!
It’s because in times of stress your system goes unconscious again as it shuts off the prefrontal cortex. Until the new path is worn down to be easier than the old path, you’ll be at risk of falling back into old patterns.
If that happens, that’s okay. Keep working on it and eventually it will be fully unconsciously competent.
Life at Unconsciously Competent
What are you so good at you don’t even have to think about it? How does that feel?
Imagine if more of your life were that way. You’d be super fast and super effective. You’d feel in flow a lot of the time. A lot of what you do would look - and feel - effortless.
It would feel like having a cheat code for life in whatever you were trying to do.
That feeling is available to you in whichever areas of your life you choose to progress through these four stages!
You just have to get comfortable being uncomfortable, and get through that painful hump of conscious incompetence. 🐪
Call to Action
Is there a leadership habit you’re trying to change?
Just like I did, spend some time this week observing yourself. See if you can find a clue to become aware of being on a negative pathway. This will give you an opportunity to intervene.
Find one small experiment you can run this week. What’s a small action you can take to move yourself closer to competence.
PS - If you don’t have something you’re working on, time to get yourself an honest mirror to show you where you’re unconsciously incompetent. Seek out feedback this week. Ask if they’ve noticed something that’s limiting your effectiveness, and start there.
