AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 9:38 am
The danger of trying to go fast is in not actually achieving unconscious competence at certain skills and thus winding up in a situation of dragging along several WLs worth of conscious competence. AKA not actually transcending precious levels but finding yourself spinning plates at multiple WLs and getting overwhelmed.
‘Why would you want to move through the WLs quickly?’ To me is about the same as asking ‘Why would you want to get to black belt quickly?’ Because you have a vision (wissen) of black belt which is attractive and is motivating you forward.
It’s not about rushing, it’s about a desire to be efficient/effective with your time and resources, and wanting to avoid stagnation, coupled with the vision/desire to be operating at a different level. Festina lente.
[snip]
And maybe we only can get a sense for appropriate speed up to 6 or 7, as above that it gets into choose your own adventure territory.
This is what comes to mind for me: my relationship with time within an evolving system is just different (than in other aspects of conventional modern life). As a component within the system, I am not in complete control of its rate of change.
Example: Let's say I want to set up a permaculture garden on land that is close to a 'blank slate'. Intellectually, I might know aspects of the ecosystem I want to create: I know about nutrient cycles, the weather patterns, sun exposures, drainage, soil types, flora and fauna I want to cultivate, and so on. It is certainly a huge head start in knowing all those relationships. That being said, at the level of implementation, there is a certain mandatory time component to just letting the system equilibrate and establish the balance that it is going to establish. At best, that can be sped up with careful attention to starting conditions or perhaps more careful monitoring of the roll-out, but it can't really be
forced. This is how I interpret the idea that 'steps can't be skipped'. I could have a blitz of a weekend where I go out and buy and install all the plants and set up the chicken tractor and build out the retaining pond, etc., and this is going to look on Monday morning from the outside (and probably for a while from the inside) like my
goal has been
accomplished, but there is simply no shortcut for time in such a system. There are a million ways to slow down the progression of a forest to "old growth", but there isn't really any way to dramatically speed it up. Roots need to get established. Species need to balance. Seasons and cycles need to pass. If I really want to be abstract, I might say: the possibility space needs to be more fully explored. That just takes time. The parts of the system need time to interact with each other in different contexts so that everything may adjust/balance out accordingly.
Which brings to mind my relationship with 'goals', which is also just different within evolving systems. "Old growth" is not permanent. An evolving system isn't static, so my goals cannot really be
discrete. It can't ever be permanently 'solved', so the way I think about 'goals' is more akin to a North Star. Specific numbers cease to be as meaningful/useful as a guide than the ideas behind them. Ideas become the North Star (e.g. "My goal is $500k to be 'financially safe' vs. " 'safety' is one of the North Stars that I use to navigate decisions/options within my system"). In the above example of the permaculture garden, I'm not even sure starting out the garden with such a blitz would ultimately prove more 'efficient' either*, because the term 'efficient' (at least how I think of it) only really make sense in the context of knowing what your final endpoint is. The more vague or uncertain the final endpoint/goal, the less useful 'efficient' seems to get.
*I can't tell you how many times I've tried to grow plants that, by all available information, should grow fantastically well in my climate/soil/sun conditions/hardiness zone/etc. At least half of the time, it is a catastrophic flop. Other times I've had amazing success from very unlikely beginnings. More than likely my thumb is not so green as it could be, but I get the sense a lot of gardeners experience this as well.
I see the 'unconscious competence' aspect as something like 'becoming one with the system', not in the sense of necessarily mastering skills or meeting any specific milestones, per se, but developing an intuition within the system as to its current state of balance and where adjustments might be made to keep the ship heading in the direction of the North Star. In other words, the 'competence' is in relation to the
system*. Any skill of sufficient development to point the ship reliably to where it needs to go seems "enough" to me. (The captain of the ship should have a pretty good idea of how the engine works, but need not know how to rebuild it from parts while blindfolded.) I have no idea if this 'becoming one with the system' can be sped up, but I have my doubts, in part because familiarity takes unpredictable amounts of time (at least, it has for me), and also because the system is simultaneously evolving--there are always new little things popping up. But then again, I only have my own experience to speak from.
*I've been using the term 'relationship', and I think that has a nice angle to it. Quality relationships (as in, with people) have a necessary time component built into them as well. Similarly, more idea-focused goals. Contrast, for example, a person with the mindset of "I want to get to 'know' Bob efficiently" or "I want to have 20 friends" with someone who thinks more along the lines of "Bob and I have seen a lot together, have been through rough times and good times, and have through it all come to understand each other on a fundamental level" or "I have deep roots in the community and have enough positive, meaningful relationships to fit my needs."
(Of course, that opens up the question as to whether a person could
intentionally design/participate in faster- vs. slower-evolving systems. There would seem to be all kinds of interesting trade-offs in doing so: e.g. a slower-evolving system could perhaps require less "course correction" or might be easier to develop intuition about given its slower rate of change, but a faster-evolving system might be more resilient/responsive to perturbation...I haven't really thought much about that.)