The intermediate plateau
Dear friends,
In my time away from social media, I’ve been reflecting on my skills in several crafts as well as how to improve them.
If you’ve spent any time developing a skill, you might have stumbled onto what we in language teaching call the intermediate plateau. When you begin a skill, you generally learn a lot really quickly and see a sharp increase in your abilities. This is because your baseline ability is low, and there’s really nowhere to go but up. But there comes a point when you’ve learned all the basics and you have to put them into practice in order to improve. This requires a great deal of time, but you don’t necessarily see a sharp increase in skill level.
The plateau is frustrating, but important. In my opinion, this is where what you’ve learned gets acquired through repetition and practice.
So what is learning and what is acquisition? There are different schools of thought on this, but for our purposes I’ll say that learning is the explicit study of a skill, while acquisition is the internalization and automatization of that knowledge.
The clearest example of this is in language learning. Most people have acquired our first language—you didn’t sit down as a toddler and study vocabulary and grammar. A second language, however, is generally learned, at least initially.
There are so many theories in language about whether rehearsal of learned skills can lead to acquisition. For me as a speaker of several languages, this was exactly what happened. And it happens for many of us, too, in different skills. Think about driving. You have to learn procedures at first, but eventually you drive without thinking too hard about what you’re actually doing.
Here’s a short guide for you if you want to independently improve a skill:
Break it down into smaller pieces. If your skill is astrology decide what sub-areas you need to improve. Planet significations? House delineations? By pinpointing the area of need, you have more clarity regarding what to rehearse.
Find authentic input. This is targeted but real info that models the skill you want to develop, but doesn’t go too far beyond your level. It can be difficult to find this, but it’s a worthwhile venture as it’ll allow you to make connections to your current knowledge and solidify it. If the input you’ve found (either podcasts, texts, videos, etc.) feels overwhelming, the level is probably too high.
Rehearse… Find opportunities to practice that have few risks attached and use them! The more rehearsal, the better, as this is where you’re developing your output. It’s also a good idea to find a situation where you can receive feedback. For example, this could be developing an herbal formula and sharing it with other herbalists or with a teacher. Explain what you did and why.
…using scaffolds. This is educator lingo, but the visual is helpful. Scaffolds are supports that allow you to perform a skill better than if you didn’t have them. For example, if you’re trying to improve your understanding of the houses, use reference material to support your delineations.
Slowly take away the scaffolds. As your foundation becomes stronger, you can use less and less scaffolding. Rely less on books and more on the knowledge you’ve developed. But don’t be too quick! To continue with our previous example, perhaps you can reference a text fewer times as you craft your delineations, or look at your notes fewer times in a consultation. Also remember that using reference material to confirm or refute an idea that you were unsure about is something all practitioners do!
Assess and reassess your needs. Every week or so, check in with yourself to make sure your needs are being met. Developing skills isn’t always a linear process, but if you don’t feel as though your overall trajectory is towards a greater depth of knowledge and ability, perhaps you should step back and see if you’re addressing the right skillset.
Assess and reassess your motivation. Do you want to be doing this right now? It’s as important a question as if you need this right now. Motivation is probably the number one factor in learning, especially independently, and it’s much better to approach something you want to do than to torture yourself by doing something you’d rather not.
I won’t lie about this; the process of overcoming the intermediate plateau is a bit of a grind, but approaching it in a structured way with a plan can make it much easier to overcome and more bearable in general. Additionally, when focusing on a specific skill, you often develop a bunch of other skills at the same time, even if you aren’t conscious about it. Knowledge can be thought of as a series of interconnected webs, and often as you strengthen one area of the web, other areas are fortified as well.
Enjoying the grind,
Robert