Recently, I walked by a building that was being wrecked. There was a guy in an excavator-type thing (but with grabbier claws) and he was daintily picking at the building.

And of course there was some other dude standing there with a high-vis vest and a cigarette, just sort of watching.

A real value-add this extra guy.

I was wondering why they were working the way they were? Why was the driver being so timid? What was the extra guy doing?

There's a general progression as we learn something:

We start in unconscious incompetence. We don't know what we don't know.
Then we move to conscious incompetence, when we start to know what we don't know.
Then after we've learned a bit, we move to conscious competence, where we know stuff, but it takes effort and doesn't happen by itself.
At some point, we move to unconscious competence, where we don't even need to think about what we're doing.

Think about the skill of walking. For most of us, we're in unconscious competence. We don't think about walking, we just walk.

There's a real value in knowing where you are in the progression. I knew with respect to demolishing buildings that I was in unconscious incompetence. As I saw the driver push the claws into rubble he'd already cleared, it occured to me that maybe he was trying to break it further to make it easier to pack. Maybe that was important.

As I walked away, I saw a City of Toronto By-Law Officer approach.

It's not only important to realize where you are on the progression, it's important to think of where others are on the progression.

And it occurred to me - maybe they didn't know what they were doing either.

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⚒ Demolishing buildings 🏢