The valley of despair and the rise to competence
00:00:00.000 | I think the best feeling transition when you're learning a skill is when you move from that second
00:00:04.660 | stage, the valley of despair, where you are consciously incompetent to then that slope
00:00:09.260 | of enlightenment, where your confidence goes up, your competence goes up, you're consciously
00:00:13.420 | competent. That is that transition where you start to see, Oh, wait a minute, I am actually
00:00:18.000 | doing better. And I feel better. But that's not the actual endpoint of learning or skill or
00:00:23.200 | confidence. That third phase, when you're consciously competent, you are better at this
00:00:27.020 | skill, but it still requires a lot of energy and focus and attention. Maybe you're getting
00:00:31.820 | a little bit more skilled at using more than one rewards credit card and really deliberately
00:00:36.180 | and strategically picking, which is the one I'm going to use for any given expense, because
00:00:40.560 | I know it's going to give me the highest bonus points earning for this activity, or maybe
00:00:44.980 | you're starting to learn how to do stacking, right? So you already feel really confident
00:00:48.420 | with which credit cards you're using. But now you also want to say, how can I optimize and
00:00:53.740 | maximize my points are even earning even more, maybe I'm also going to utilize an online shopping