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I am not sure if we ever really think about the process we go through as we learn anything and everything, but we do go through a four stage process.  These steps take us from the point where we are totally clueless to the point of complete understanding.  The first stage in the process is...

Unconscious Incompetence  -- a point where we don't know we don't know.   Let me use the analogy of riding a bicycle.   At a very young age while you are riding your tricycle, you see an older sibling or friend riding a bicycle, albeit clumsily.  You see the excitement of doing something different and new, and immediately find a bicycle, climb aboard, attempt to ride and... well...fall on your butt.

You did not know, or perhaps more accurately, you had no idea that you did not know how to ride a bicycle.  You assumed all you needed to do was get on and ride, and the shock of the first fall took you from unconscious incompetence into...

Conscious Incompetence  --  now you know you did not know.   So with your scratches bandaged, and perhaps with a few more painful tries, you realize to succeed you need to enlist some help and manage to find someone who is willing.  Willing to teach you the fundamentals of balance, momentum, and even some of the physics involved but certainly not in scientific terms.   Someone might hold the back of your seat until you get some momentum going.  Maybe you make it to the end of the driveway, but in the process you also learn it is less painful to crash in the grass than on the concrete.   And eventually you get better.  You fall less often.  And finally you feel comfortable enough to try it on your own.  And as you  do, you reach the level of ...

Conscious Competence -- you now know how to ride the bicycle but recognize the need for constant attention and focus on the activity.   This was the state of learning when you were observing that  friend or sibling when you wanted to first ride.  And here is where we stay for what seems like forever.   But we really don't care because we have reached our goal --- to ride a bicycle.

But the process does not really end there.  Or it shouldn't.  We are not at the point where we have so much practice, so much experience, even the experience of more falls when we don't pay attention or become distracted, that we ride totally unharmed, but we do get there.  That level is called...