My tennis coach explained the 4 stages of competence when talking about the difference between Federer and Nadal –
Level 1 – Conscious incompetence
You know you are bad but do it anyway. When you pick up a tennis racket for the first time and just play..
Level 3 – Conscious competence
Level 2 – Unconscious incompetence
This is a very broad group. This involves all of us who think we are good because we have put in the hours, but in truth, our basics are not good enough. So, we play under the illusion that we know stuff. This typically characterizes the rung below the professional elite.
Level 3 – Conscious competence
Also known as the zone – when you’re able to flush out great strokes. This is what happens to a top level player in a game. The more he can ‘be’ in this zone, the better he will do..
Level 4 – Unconscious competence
Also known as genius. This is a level when everything you do is just based on instinct. Examples of unconscious competence is Pete Sampras in the 1999 Wimbledon final against Agassi when Agassi termed him to be ‘walking on water’ or any one of the many Federer grand slams during his peak.
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Here, we had an interesting discussion about Federer and Nadal. And his point made a lot of sense.
He termed Nadal a freak – a natural right hander who played left because his uncle told him it would help him attain unqualified success. As a result, he is a manufactured player – a player whose concentration levels are so high that he stays for amazingly long periods in the ‘Conscious Competence’ stage. Of course, that is in addition to his amazing levels of fitness.
Federer, on the other hand, is a natural right hander. He plays so much in harmony with the natural laws of the game that he is capable of creating new strokes with no apparent difficulty. Federer in his peak was capable of constant genius i.e. unconscious competence and that requires tremendously high levels of confidence (which seems to be a big problem at the moment) as like most other individual sports, tennis is played very much in the mind. And what differentiates Federer from most others is that even in his peak, when he was not at Level 4, he was good enough to catch that, switch on and play at Level 3.
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Now, let’s shift the discussion to ourselves for a bit. I think is one key question we need to ask ourselves –
What area in life do we think we can get into ‘Level 4’ i.e. What area(s) in life are we capable of genius?
Here, the answer may be ‘none’ now. Let’s not forget the 10,000 hour rule. Federer is where he is thanks to years of practice. But, the big question is – where does our untapped potential lie? Where are we capable of genius? And if we know where we are capable of genius, are we putting in the hours necessary?
Or are we putting in those hours in areas that don’t count? (i.e. surfing, chatting etc :))
I feel it is a question worth asking..
A Learning a Day 