This Kenyan phrase has done its far share of rounds on social media platforms to mean “You will know you don’t know”.

I took trouble to know that this is an old psychology – The Four Stages of Learning. Written by Calvin Sun.

Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence (when you don’t know what you don’t know). This is a stage of total ignorance and unashamedly bragging about it. It’s to have wrong intuition of a given situation.

Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence (when you know what you don’t know). It is the beginning of knowledge. It’s in this realm that the thirst to discover buds. A yearning to learn based on accurate analysis of gaps of knowledge on a given subject.

Stage 3 – Conscious Competence (when you know what you know). This is the space of Subject Matter Expertise. When there is structure to knowledge. When you can demonstrate mastery of a given subject and can train others to the level of knowledge and competence you have.

Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence (when you don’t know what you know). This is a space of native genius. When you do not need to think, consult or plan to show prowess over a given subject. This is the space where somebody says s/he can do something at 3am when woken up from deep slumber and not fail an inch. It is the ability of explaining complex principles easily without gamble.

The natural path of growth is to move from stage 1 to 4

Je Wajua?