Day 2 - Assessing Proficiency

 Figuring out how to test your progress is a skill in of itself. Every skill is different but also depends on your learning goals. 

You will learn in module 3 how I tested myself for the skill of learning to speak Spanish in the past and future tenses. It was a simple recollection of select verbs and conjugation from memory. But it’s not always that simple. 

One thing I like to do is give myself an assignment before I even start learning the skill. Here are a few examples I’ve done or thought of in the past:


Drawing:

  • Join life art events

  • Post daily on Pinterest

  • Post on other social media and increase engagement

  • Promise a piece of art to someone at the end of the month


Learning an instrument:

  • Post daily videos on Youtube

  • Promise a “concert” at the end of the month

  • Get tested by someone with more experience than you weekly


Digital Marketing:

  • Increase web traffic by 2x in one month

  • Run ads with over 2% click-through rate


From these examples, some have obvious metrics, some don’t. Sometimes, the progress simply comes from being accountable and doing more. One thing you’ll notice in all the examples above is that they involve others in the process. 


When you join events, you can also compare yourself to others practicing the same skill. Ask another person’s honest opinion on how you’re doing.


When you post your progress online, you can get feedback in the form of increased statistics and comments. 


When you involve a mentor, you can get direct and honest feedback on your performance. 


Self-assessment pitfall: Dunning-Kruger effect


From Wikipedia: 

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.[1]


David Dunning and Justin Kruger (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

I first came across this concept when, in SkillUp Academy, trainees had the ability to rate their own mastery of their skills. A trainee approached me saying he couldn’t rate himself because he suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect. Essentially, he was afraid of overestimating his ability in the different skills.


Most people suffer from this or its opposite: being under-confident in their abilities.


The only way that I know to get better at self-assessing is by also involving the mass. No one is one hundred percent objective, so the feedback you’ll get from one person is just one opinion. Even when the feedback comes from an expert, it doesn’t mean it’s the truth. Experts disagree all the time — and they should. There is never a single answer.


Replication


The above applies to things that are unique, which is surprisingly rarer than you’d think. A good way to assess if you’re good at something is to try to replicate something you already know is at the level you’re looking to get. 


You can replicate art and music “easily”. For example, when I learned to play the Ukulele, my only goal was to be able to play Over the Rainbow at regular speed. If I could do that, I knew I’d be somewhere between beginner and intermediate in the skill. 


If you try to replicate Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings, you know you’re aiming for mastery. 


If you learn to program, you could replicate a piece of software that’s known to be of the level you’re trying to reach. Like, don’t go replicate Google’s search engine if you’re a beginner. Here are 10 websites to get free programming challenges.


If the skill you’re trying to learn has clearly defined and replicate-able challenges for you to take, do it.