*Planted: 2 March 2025 | Last Tended: 3 April 2025* In my experience, learning is not a straight line from ignorance about something to mastery of something; in fact, it's often a spiral outward: you start from nothing, and as you arc upward toward one direction you start to feel like you're getting the hang of it. ![[the_learning_spiral.jpeg]] But then as you get the hang of it, you start to realize that *you're less proficient in this skill than you thought you were*, so now you're aware of good you *aren't* at this thing. That's the arc back down toward "beginner-ness" -- you become hyperaware that you're still working on mastery, and you feel like a beginner again. But then you start to arc toward mastery, probably gleaning some new insights and perfecting some second-order stuff in this skill, and you start arcing upward toward mastery again -- until you find the next thing that you realize you thought you knew but didn't, and arc back toward beginner-ness again. Here's an example from one area in my own life: learning dance. At a certain point I'd clearly passed the beginner level of the dance style I was learning -- I could execute the moves consistently well. But as I kept practicing and learning more I became hyperaware of how awkward the earlier, more "beginner" moves actually felt -- I was learning that I wasn't as good at them as I *knew that I could be*, but I had had to achieve a certain level of proficiency in order to recognize that. This felt like an awkward moment where I felt like an advanced beginner again. But as I began working on new mastery of an old skill I become even better at it, which pushed me up toward the top of the spiral again. ##### The spiral of learning looks like a circle if you’re not zoomed out enough Does the spiral of learning start far out and spiral in, with the coils getting tighter and tighter toward a target? Or are you at the center, knowing nothing, and it spirals outward in small circles because learning is easy at this stage, and progress is harder to see in later stages? I don't know, but it seems like if you're not zoomed out enough learning can look like going in circles instead of a spiral in, and you have to be cognizant of that.