Stage Focus: focus on collecting recipes.

Now that you’ve collected a large database of recipes and started applying them, you should begin to develop some contextual understanding of when to use which recipes.

[Define Principles] Start looking for more maxims and applying them to your practice, and seeing if they make sense to you. - [note, add in example of copywriting maxims]

[Create Your Own Processes] Try breaking away from the clear recipes you have, trying to change things in them, and seeing what happens. Make your own versions of the recipes by piecing together different recipes and looking up help as you need it.

The only way you graduate from novice is by breaking away from fixed recipes. You need to try improvising, combining recipes, and letting yourself make mistakes. More importantly, when something goes wrong, start looking for how to solve it without blaming the recipe.

At this point you should have a large repertoire of recipes and maxims that you can apply, but not a lot of clarity around what is important in deciding which ones to use. You might get overwhelmed by decisions easily, and as a result, revert to simply following a recipe and hoping you get lucky.

Now you need to start trying to figure out what data and information is important and what isn’t. This can be hard to do on your own, which is why the Advanced Beginner to Competent stage is benefited greatly by a mentor who can provide rules and guidelines on what information to focus on. Without a mentor, you’ll need to find guidelines and rules online or in books to help you, or through trial and error, develop them on your own.

One method for doing this might be to deliberately restrict yourself in a situation to not using all of your available recipes. Maybe you force yourself to write without any adjectives, or draw using only pencil, or play with only your pawns and king. By deliberately limiting what data you can focus on, you’ll develop a more intuitive understanding of what is and isn’t relevant in novel situations. Thinking Inside The Box

To become Competent, deliberately limit what information you can consider in order to develop a more intuitive understanding of what is and isn’t important.

See Also: Book BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell

At this point you’re emotionally invested in the outcomes and you’re starting to develop an understanding of what inputs are important, but you haven’t completely internalized what data you need to focus on. There’s still a choice being made about what to focus on, it’s not intuitive.

This is where tactics start to get hazy. It’s difficult to practice making something intuitive, so you need to keep employing deliberate practice around what to focus on and set as your goal and assess the outcomes in order to reach proficiency. As you get better at picking what data and goals to focus on, you will slowly develop a more intuitive understanding of which decisions will do well and which ones won’t and you’ll move from competent to proficient.

It will be an emergent shift. You won’t be able to do it as deliberately as you did the last three, rather, you’ll wake up one day and realize you know what to focus on. You’ll look at a chess board and know what your goal should be. You’ll look at a setting and know what variables to focus on with your photo. You’ll look at a site and know which marketing tactics will work well for it.

To become Proficient, keep practicing and collecting more experience until your chosen perspective becomes intuitive. Until you have a sense of what to focus on and what goals to set instead of having to choose it deliberately.

... to reach expertise, you need to not only intuit what to focus on but also how to do it. Everything must feel completely intuitive like recognizing the faces of your family or navigating the streets around where you grew up. In most cases, you won’t be able to explain what you’re doing to non-experts. You’re going by feel and subconscious reason instead of conscious deciding and choosing.

To reach this stage, it again comes back to deliberate practice. You must keep experimenting and practicing and limiting yourself in order to see how different goals you intuitively set lead to different outcomes until you can intuitively set the process as well.

Practice following your instincts and seeing where they lead, and allow yourself to feel good or bad about the outcomes in order to learn the most from the experience. You have to let yourself be emotionally involved in the whole process in order to develop expertise. [interesting]

The move from proficient to expert will take the longest, so be patient with it. Keep practicing, keep experimenting, and with time, you’ll develop the intuition you need.