Category: Commandment 8: Strive for Unconscious Competence

This one sounds complicated but it’s not. In a nutshell, “unconscious competence” just means we are competent at something without having to think about it. In other words, we’ve got a thing on auto-pilot.

Here are some examples of things in normal life that are commonly “unconsciously competent”:

Most of us can drive a car and follow the rules of the road competently without having to directly focus on it. It allows us to drive defensively, perhaps to carry out a conversation with a passenger, etc.
If you’re reading this right now and understanding it, you’ve learned your letters (and the sounds they make) to a level of unconscious competence.
Most of us can walk and talk at the same time. That’s because the fundamentals of walking (and of talking!) were engrained to a level of “unconscious competence” long ago!
In the arena of learning bagpipes, unconscious competence is something most pipers neglect. Most of us will stop once we’ve played a part of a tune correctly. But this is a huge mistake. We shouldn’t stop until we can play that part correctly without having to think about it.

In the last section we talked about ten objective fundamental skills that all pipers need to master en route to self-expression. Well, what do I mean by “mastery” in this context? I mean that each of those skills has been developed to the point where you don’t have to actively think about it in order for you to perform it with excellence.

This is a tall order, but it is the name of the game. Some day (not so long from now!) you’ll be expressing yourself according to your own vision and voice, and you’ll be able to do this because the fundamental skills you need to be able to do this are operating with excellence at an unconscious level.

Also, if one of the skills breaks down (as they’ll often do), you can focus on fixing that single skill without the other skills falling apart.

Developing “unconscious competence” is a key tenet of mastery.