When you first learn a new topic in school, it initially seems like you can understand everything. Everything the notes say seem to make perfect sense and it feels as though everything is just common sense. You feel so clever. That's because you're just learning of the part that you have already heard from other places, just a part of your general knowledge. The very fundamental portion of your subject of inquiry, where as a person, we will interact with every day of our lives.

Then the second stage kicks in. Perhaps it is a line you do not understand, or a statement that seems to contradict what rules you know that seem to govern the subject at hand. The more you try to puzzle it out the more contradictory it becomes. Why can't i make head or tail of this confounded line? You have become stupider. Wasn't everything much simpler when you understood what little you knew? Did it not work as fine? Sometimes it feels as though the more that you learn the worse you become at it. Now even simple things seem difficult, logical sequences get out of hand as you try in vain to apply whatever new rules you thought you had learnt. Maybe you'd wish you were back at the simple stage, but it is impossible now, there's simply no way to return to where you had come from, to go back to where things were simple. Like a flower blooming to the sun, there is no way you can close yourself away from the light of knowledge, no way you can prevent it from illuminating your inadequacies, your ignorance, your inabilities.

Finally, the third phase kicks in. Similar to the second phase, it is usually triggered, like a hand groping in the dark and finally finding its owner's spectacles, by the sudden capture of a thought or idea. More often than not, it is like putting on a pair of glasses. Suddenly everything becomes clear. It is a change in mindset. Whether powered by thoughts that push everything together in the right direction, or by suddenly realising the deeper meaning behind a formula, suddenly everything seems simple again. The world opens up. The sunflower does not fear the sun. (Yes, Robert Jordan loves his descriptive language.)

And I believe that this cycle permeates every aspect of our lives. It happens in studies, in our lives in general, for me, in basketball, even something trivial like DotA.

And the trick of the thing is this. Just as life is born out of death, the cycle of adeptness rolls as it rolls. Very soon, when you thought that you had everything figured out, you're going to realize that slowly, inexorably, things start to become out of sync again. Oops, you're in another funk.

Thankfully, this is not consistent. The linearity of the three phases of adeptness is debatable. Within the limits of my experience, I have found that adeptness is linear in things like studies, meaning that... No, that's all wrong.

It is not the linearity of the three phases of adeptness that's debatable but the number of dimensions that adeptness exists in. In other words, does the cycle of adeptness exist as a circle, or a spiral? Like a ring or a spring? Arguments abound for both theories. Let me state a few examples.

To focus on a simple topic, say Physics. I have always found the cycle to be that of a spiral. Meaning that whatever revelations I have, will not conflict with what I learn in the future. When I have achieved full understanding of a topic, it does not morph itself into something unfathomable again. When I get it, I get it. Once the mind frame is there, you know for sure that it is and will be correct. Once that happens, you can move on to the next topic. In that sense, every additional subject you learn builds upon the previous and so your comprehension and awareness of the topic in general goes up and up. Like a spiral, or a ladder depending on how you think of it.

Now for example number two. Lets look at something very simple this time. So much can be gleaned from playing a simple computer game like dota. You are playing against a very large number of players, and thus you will expect that the overall skill standard to be very consistant. There will always be beginners joining the game, and intermediate players will make up the middle, with just a handful of really top players. every time someone stops playing, somebody starts. It should be consistant. But what is this? you're not. You think you are getting better as you play, and start developing skills, timings, item builds, whatever. But then one fine day, something happens and all of a sudden, you start losing. And losing badly. Why has this happened? you have no idea. Without warning, you are at stage one again. But this shouldn't be the case. When you play, you are comparing yourself against a sample of the whole population of players. Overall you will be playing against their average, and as we have established earlier, that average is consistant. So why do you fluctuate so? Why are you back at where you were before? Why is it a circle.

But there are times too, when this cycle can be broken. When you can, for better or worse, force yourself back to stage one, the easy stage. It is done by remembering the exact frame you had before you started sliding, and focusing yourself back into that frame by the use of key words, or anchors, I guess they would call it in NLP. With these words, and maybe a little imagery, you can enter a frame of mind, a frame you can choose because of its benefits to you. I have tried this in basketball, in roadmarches, and it seems to work. Perhaps this is what one needs sometimes to break out of the circle of adeptness. But before you do that, make sure that what you're in is a circle, and not a spiral.

If anyone reads this and actually understands it, or feels the same way, please drop me a tag.