Feature Filmmaker

Ep. 54 - Moving Towards Mastery

September 24, 2021 Anna Thalman
Feature Filmmaker
Ep. 54 - Moving Towards Mastery
Show Notes Transcript

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The average amount of time it takes to make one feature film (from when it's announced to when it's released) is 2 years, 4 months, and 19 days. That doesn't even include writing the script or prepping/packaging it before it gets financed. 

Parenthood and feature filmmaking are long-term ventures. In our latest podcast episode, we outline what you can expect that journey to look like for you. By the end, you'll be able to identify which of the four stages of learning you are in right now and what to do next.

Do you feel like you are failing repeatedly without seeing any progress or results? You're in stage two. Don't worry, the growth is happening. It's just internal and nearly imperceptible.

Does it take you a lot of focused effort to do what is effortless and easy for others? Do not despair. This is a natural part of the process. You're in the final stage that precedes mastery. You're almost there! 

Knowing the stages of learning can help you know how to move forward and transition to the next stage on the road to mastery. And as you go, you'll be better equipped to enjoy wherever you are now and find purpose in this part of your experience. 

Which stage are you in?

Listen to the episode to find out!

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www.InvisibleMansion.com/filmandfamily

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Anna Thalman:

Hi,

Kent Thalman:

I'm Kent and I'm Anna. And this is film and family of podcast about feature filmmaking for professionals in the film industry with families it's subscribed to never miss an episode.

Anna Thalman:

Let's jump right in. All right. Today, we wanted to talk to you about. Learning new skills and how to achieve mastery. So this is a process that I always go over with my clients. It's called the stages of competence, um, in psychology. This is a learning model and it relates with the process of moving from incompetence to competence in a skill. So this applies to when we're teaching our children new skills. To learn them or when we are learning them ourselves, it's just really helpful to have an overview and understand what's happening inside our brains, as we learn so that we can know what phase we're in and kind of what actions to take to move into the next phase as we progress. There's four stages. So stage one is called the unconscious in competence. Okay. And it might help you to think about, one area of your life, where you are trying to learn. And just see where you fit in. What part of the process are you in right now? So the first stage with the unconscious and competence, is basically when you. Are in the dream phase. So you're imagining what it would be like to make a feature film, or to be a parent and have your own kids. And everyone starts in this phase until they actually experience something for the first time.

Kent Thalman:

This is really normal in like film school. It's a really hard phase to be in. Well, it's not a hard phase to be in, to be honest, but it's, it's something that I think we all go through when we watch masterpiece after masterpiece, after masterpiece, after masterpiece, and you watch these best of the best films and then mediocre films, you don't even think are that good? And then there's like really terrible films that you kind of don't even watch anymore. And then you try to make a film and you realize you're making some of the worst films you've never seen. And, and that, that leads us into the second stage, which is conscious incompetence, but unconscious incompetence is this phase where we really like. It's exciting because there's nothing stopping us because we haven't even tried it yet. And so we're always sure that we're going to be the best parents in the world and that we're going to make the best movies ever.

Anna Thalman:

So it's a fun stage, actually like the ignorance of imagining. And we usually do that. Imagine, like you said, Kent, that we're going to be really good at whatever we want to do that we're going to be great parents, that we're going to be amazing directors, that we're going to be able to drive a car. Just like we've seen in a million people do a million times. And you are in this stage. If you have no firsthand experience, no matter how much you may have read about something or learned about it. Or even observed someone else using the skill that you want or being in the role that you want to have until you've actually experienced it firsthand. You are in stage one. One of my favorite analogies is to think of a baby learning to walk. So babies, when they. Are born. Obviously they don't know how to walk. And for awhile, the baby just lays on their back and watches people walk. that is the dream stage. Unconscious incompetence. The baby is not able to walk and not really aware that they're not able to walk. But might start to think about walking or observe people walking

Kent Thalman:

I think one of the nice things about this phase is that, you know, sometimes we think of it as a bad thing, but I think we should always be in this phase. In different ways because people in this phase usually are too ignorant to know how unrealistic quote unquote, their dreams. And it reminds me of a line from the movie amazing grace, which was a really cool Michael Apted film from like 2006. We're an unfamous Benedict Cumberbatch says, who's who's talking about running for parliament is told by his friend that no one our age has ever taken power and he said, which is why we're too young to know that some things are impossible, so we'll do them anyway. And, I like that idea of I guess we haven't really learned for ourselves yet how hard this is. So we're just going to do it anyway and everyone's going to warn us against it and we're just going to do it, you know?

Anna Thalman:

Yeah. And we always start our, every episode of this podcast saying, let's jump right in and that's really how you have to learn something. So it's true that if you don't, Enter this dream phase. You're never going to take that leap to jump in. So once you've jumped in, you jump into stage two, which is conscious incompetence. So suddenly you're becoming conscious or aware of your incompetence, your inability to. Do the skill, whatever that skill might be. If we go back to the baby analogy, the baby tries to walk for the first time and falls down. Right? No baby walks the first time they try. So they try to walk. They fall down.

Kent Thalman:

I bet there was one,

Anna Thalman:

maybe two. Well, the thing is with the baby. It's their, their muscles are actually not even strong enough to support their weight. and so inevitably the first time they try, they will fall. And they will keep trying and they will keep falling and hopefully they'll keep trying and keep falling, all the way into the next stage. So this stage can be really difficult because it feels like you're always failing because you are in this stage every single time you try, you fail. And it feels like there's no progress, but it's not true. You really are progressing because the beautiful thing is whenever the baby falls down and gets back up that trying and falling and getting back up is what strengthens the baby's muscles to be able to support his or her weight. The muscles are growing from that experience of, of failing over and over again. And the same is true for you and this stage. You know, when we're learning a more complicated skill could take years.

Kent Thalman:

Well, what's interesting to me about more complicated skills, for example, parenting. Which is something we talk a lot about or filmmaking, which is what we talk a lot about. Those are very complicated skills right there. They're huge. And they're really big. And they're made up of like a gazillion smaller skills, right? Like finishing your first feature depending on what roles you play. Even if you play one. Let's say it's not even directing. It's just cinematography. Cinematography alone requires tons and tons of little skills associated with it. Specifically are skills associated to like shooting for 30 days. And there's skills related to organizing and running big crews or small crews. And I'm working as a thrifty sort of running gun thing, or learning how to save money or make money stretch a long way. And then there's the actual skills of cinematography. And then there's, relationship building and narrative storytelling and understanding narrative sense and whatever. There's so many little skills. And so that's why I think that this phase also once again, we should always be looking. To jump into this place of conscious incompetence, because even if we've made a hundred feature films, let's say there's always some other skill. That's a part of like, yeah, maybe we're really good at starting and finishing a feature film, but that's only one. Sort of skill of like starting and finishing the whole pipeline. But if you go deeper than you can find, well, you know what, I've never really done a heavy VFX film, or I've never really like told a story in this way, or I'm not actually good at, I don't know. Maybe I'm not that good at directing non-actors or whatever. and so, I think it's good to find little things that maybe we're not good at and work hard into those things because. All likelihood is that we're not gonna be able to just ride a one trick pony for very long, and that's really going to kill our career. If we think I'm just going to do this one little tiny piece of the puzzle, over and over and over again. So, but I just think that that's the best way to grow is find somewhere where if you aren't at all in a place where you're like, I am in over my head, I really am fully aware of how bad I am at this thing. Then you, I actually think that. First, you know, early filmmaking is often some filmmakers best work because when they are in that conscious incompetence, it requires like they're most aware, most aggressive sort of attention, you know, their, their mind has to be so pressed. Upon the mechanism. And sometimes it really hurts a film, right? Like when it's so incompetent, but then sometimes magic starts to happen because, you know, they're just, they have to put so much effort. And so if it's not hard, I just always think that there should be at least at one foot there where you're just extending yourself at all times. And even worse than that, not only does it maybe not lead to the best filmmaking, but, it just means you're not. So this phase is super, not comfortable, but we have a whole podcast called come and make yourself uncomfortable because it's an important phase to be in, in some way in your life, I think, because it means you're growing.

Anna Thalman:

Absolutely. And I think it's good to just know where this fits in, in the process that when you're in that stage where you're failing and failing and you are incompetent. That your muscles are growing from the failing that you are growing and learning, even though it doesn't look like your results are changing or there's any progress, it's all internal before it's external. So the baby is learning mentally,, and building muscle internally. And that will eventually manifest itself in a physical step. But, but at first it's all internal. Another analogy. That's great. It's learning to drive a car, which is another one where it's not as big as feature filmmaking or parenting, which are. Huge. I don't think you can even call that one skill. In the film and family academy, we break it down as simply as we can into steps. And each one of those steps, I think, is a skill that you develop, that might be comparable to learning, to drive a car, which again, Still breaks down into a skillset. You have to learn how to turn the keys and start Diggnation how to turn on your blinker, how to look at your blind spots. There are lots of things going on that you have to be able to do at the same time or in sequence and know when to use them at what time. So yeah, every skill has basically a set of meta skills that you will need to learn. And all of that growth is going to be internal before you see an external manifestation of it. So if you feel like you're in this stage in any part of your life where you're continuously failing at reaching your goal, know that you are growing and that this is part of the process of learning, and it's a very healthy part of it. Stick with it and you'll get to the next stage. So the next stage is. Kind of a fun stage at first, it can be frustrating as well. Stage two and three are where most people give up, but I still think stage three feels a little better than stage two. Stage three is called conscious competence. Which means you are competent now. Yay. But it takes conscious effort and focus. So this is what you were talking about. Kent with the, some of the best work can come from probably this. Cause you're not incompetent. You are competent, but it takes a lot of focus.

Kent Thalman:

I remember the day I became consciously competent. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was a good day, but I never have to go back to that on that other incompetence stuff.

Anna Thalman:

So going along with our baby analogy, this is where the baby takes their first step, which if you're a parent, you know, is very exciting when your baby finally succeeds and you've watched them try and fail and try and fail, and they finally do it. And even a baby has a realization of I did it

Kent Thalman:

took a step and you know, what's really great is like when you get into the conscious competence stage, you can actually start making adult analogies and not just baby analogies,

Anna Thalman:

I guess I'm not there yet. So anyway, so the baby takes. His first step and with enough focus is able to take steps. So there's definitely still a lot of failure. In this stage, you are aware that you're competent and with enough focused effort, you can do it. But there's still failures and there's still, that degree of focus needed to complete the task, which can be sometimes frustrating. I think the tendency in this stage that people have is just to compare themselves to other people and to see other people who have reached a greater level of competence. And say, why is it so easy for that person? You know, you think of a baby watching people walk. Why is it so easy for my sibling? Who's a few years older to walk around and run and, and move their body. And I have to focus on every single step and I still fall down. So same thing with driving. I mean, I remember when I was first learning to drive, I. Had to focus so hard and I couldn't imagine how people could drive and eat at the same time or talk on the phone

Kent Thalman:

and talk on the phone all the time.

Anna Thalman:

Good for you. Don't crash.

Kent Thalman:

I did tickets without any effort. I bet.

Anna Thalman:

I bet you do. So the conscious, competent. Is exciting in some ways, because you are capable of reaching your goal, but it is still phase where people give up and it is still phase where if you compare yourself too much to other people, in your progress, you might just decide that you're not cut out for it, or, or that you haven't progressed as much as you want to be progressing. So it is easy to get stuck in this phases.

Kent Thalman:

Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I feel like the only way to move through phases is this really persistent repetition, because like you said, you can get stuck in this phase. You can get stuck in any phase. And I think it's because you'll get stuck in any phase. If you either give up or you don't. Just do it frequently enough. so for example, one thing that I have a hard time doing is really progressing in terms of weightlifting, because I'll go to the gym hard for a week or two, and then I'll go off for three or four weeks. Sometimes I'll go months without going. And then I'll get back into like this heavy routine, same with running. And that's just part of my life. I'm filmmaking a lot. I know. Uh, parent right now, especially in our life, there's lots of other things going on. So I don't feel really guilty about this. This isn't like one of my top priorities, but I'm not going to be benching 400 or anything, like some of these big, big guys, because I just don't do it enough. I'm off too often. To revert back and go back to other phases and always jumping back into it. I'll still keep progressing, but it'll just be a really long journey. And in that progress might see a lot of repeat learning and not just learning, but just building, you know, you build that muscle. So physical analogies are nice because it's like, gardening or farming, you know? There's no magic shortcuts, right? You gotta do the work and you got to go through it and. If you let your whole farm die, whatever progress you made, you're pretty much starting over anyway, but you know, maybe you've learned, but anyway, they're not really analogies. It's just different skills or different. Whereas like riding a bike comes back pretty fast. But I feel like with filmmaking it's like if I were to just take like a 20 year break. The industry and the technology and the machinery of it all will change so much. It'll be a rough re-entry and maybe some of the theoretical stuff will come back really fast and that's natural, but the more consistent you are, the more likely you're going to be able to move through the phases. So I, I, that's just what came to my mind as you mentioned that, that's a

Anna Thalman:

good point. I do think consistency. You're already going to have a lot of repetition. That's just what practice is. But consistently practicing something means you don't have to lose progress and go back and start farther back than you were before, because you've lost time. Your muscles may be, have atrophied a little bit or a lot or a lot, or. Your skills you need to sharpen them. but if you're consistent that that's the thing. It also makes me think of the 10,000 hour rule, which is from,, the book outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. And he talks about how masters have spent 10,000 hours. In their craft. And that seems to be sort of a threshold. Once they pass the 10,000 hours, they start to really Excel at whatever they're doing. And that was true. Even across disciplines, hockey players and artists. And no matter what you're doing there is that threshold where there was a statistically significant difference. The of people who put that many hours of practicing into something. I think that repetition over and over and over again, gets us to a level of mastery that will bring success.

Kent Thalman:

and I think that that's really important to remember. as parents and as filmmakers, which is the two biggest things, I feel like we talk about here, not just parenting, but like relationships and generally marriage and whatever. And it's like, we sometimes wonder why have I not, why is this not any better yet? why haven't I had a big break yet? Why am I not making the kind of money I want to be making yet? Why am I not so skilled? why isn't this easy yet? And I think we have to remember, just ask yourself, I mean, if you have to stop and do the math, have I put in 10,000 hours yet? Have I truly moved into stage four of mastering this skill? And if not, it just makes sense. Why, people would look at you and go, I mean, it's not just a granted, wow, that person has truly. And achieve whatever level yeah, they're getting it. Yeah. And it doesn't have to, we don't have to feel bad about that. And I don't really believe that there's such things as prodigies most of the time, especially in filmmaking, filmmaking's too big. You can be a prodigy, like one thing, but filmmaking, it's just too many things and same with same with our relationships with our families. That takes a long time to work on. And honestly, most of the time we're not working on those skills, we're just living life and trying to ignore sometimes the responsibilities relating to our relationships. That's certainly the case in our childhood. We don't work on our relationship with our parents. We, it just is what it is, you know? And then as you grow up, you start to read parenting books. That's when you're actually putting the work and you start to read marriage books or relationship books or self-help books or whatever. Or you sign up for film and family academy and you start to watch coursework on these things, or you get coached on things and you learn, thought work in the model. Those are ways that you actually start to master yourself in terms of how do I think, how do I improve my relationships? How do I become a better filmmaker? And those are the hours. Those are the 10,000 hours. It's not just 10,000 hours of. Well, I hit record and I've rolled for 10,000 hours. Shouldn't it be the best? Like It hasn't been 10,000 active hours of actually learning

Anna Thalman:

That's such a good point because that process of evaluating and learning and improving can only happen if you're doing the right kind of practice, which is also something that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book. If you are practicing something incorrect, Then you become better and better at doing it incorrectly or poorly,

Kent Thalman:

the better you are doing the wrong thing, the wrong, or you are

Anna Thalman:

yeah. Like if what you've practiced when you're practicing, parenting is yelling at your kids, you just get better and better at yelling at your kids. I'm definitely practice. I'm pretty good at that one sometimes. but if you want to do something else, instead, you have to practice that and it's going to take conscious effort. To practice something intentionally to evaluate yourself and say, how did I do today? to read the parenting book and learn skills, learn how to build the skills that you want. I don't think all skills take 10,000 hours. I think what Malcolm Gladwell was looking at specifically was people who were very successful. Outliers in their industry. So there are people who really stand out. and a lot of them had a good amount of success before they became world famous, recognized as the masters of their craft. So you can still have success along the way. It's not like you have to wait until you're old and have done this for 10,000 hours to have any amount of success, but if you really want to stand out in the industry, that's, that's a whole level, right?

Kent Thalman:

Yeah. Well, and that's a really good point to make conscious competence is usually when you start to make a decent living, doing this stuff as a filmmaker, or when you start to actually I have good days with your kids and you start to go, oh I'm really growing as a, as a person, as a parent, as a spouse, I am growing as myself. Not just things are getting better because the circumstances are good. I am growing. I am able to become more resilient and I'm learning. And, and so that kind of progress is huge. That's why I think we need to stay in that conscious and competence phase, meaning do it for 10,000 hours. Actually have a conscious working practice And imagine, who are the people with 10,000 hours of parenting, intentional parenting, really reading the books, really trying really evaluating day after day. That's an easy one to get a lot of hours on, especially for any of us who are full-time. Yeah. Yeah. And, like filmmaking, sometimes we feel like it's hard to get a lot of hours on it, but, what are the periphery skills that you're going to need to learn? Well, relationships is one of them. It's just essential to all careers. So soft skills are huge for anything. And then there's the hard skills and the hard skills aren't as important, but get 10,000 hours in on the hard skills. If you want to be a DP and you just start well, I don't have 10,000 hours of, you know, managing a big crew and using tons of big lighting equipment and stuff. then just get 10,000 hours using a camera and. Get 10,000 hours of Maybe learn to draw and render light and get a camera and shoot film and digital and, you know, just shoot random stuff constantly and edit and color your own stuff so that you get other knowledge about it. You know, figuring out what those periphery skills are and you'll quickly find yourself mastering those. So deep enough that you're going to start to get hours on sets where you do have crew And it's just going to take time, but it's not going to happen until you've mastered the other stuff. And so, you know, if you're directing and you're like, when do I ever get, to be on set, directing actors? Well, maybe you start acting, maybe, start making lots of short films so that you can, you know, those are quicker. And so you can get on set and direct more actors go into theater and you'll get to direct actors day after day after day after day, because all you do is, are hearse, you know? so if you're an actor, that's how I think some of the best actors come from theater. I really do because actors from theater. They are so good at memorization. They are so good at taking dialogue. That is maybe not even that well-written or it's just for some reason, hard to write or sorry, it's hard to deliver and they just deliver it like expert Shakespearian actors. We all know are some of the best in the world because those are hard lines to make human when they come out of your mouth. And yet when you can make it human and you can deliver it all from a place of reality for yourself as an actor and you access that realism, you know, so theater, it just puts you in this place where you're just, you're putting in hours and hours every day. So you're really racking it up. so figuring out whatever those skills are for you and put yourself in a position to be doing that. Like crazy, which is one of the reasons I did this really awful thing, which is make lots of wedding videos. That's not something I wanted to do as a feature filmmaker, as an aspiring feature filmmaker. I really love cinematography. I liked directing, but it gave me a lot of documentary experience. It's a weird kind of document. It's not my first choice. but I got a lot of hours on a camera with lenses. I got a lot of hours coloring my own footage and editing. And a lot of those skills started to get so second nature to me that I started getting paid to do those things on. In other ways. And then I started applying that to other things that I liked more and then that passion and work turned into paid work. And so, I mean, that's just a simple example, but it goes into all of our skills.

Anna Thalman:

I think it's important to remember that conscious competence. Is not that different from unconscious competence in many ways, they're both competent. So the last stage is stage four is unconscious competence. which is basically when. It becomes unconscious. You don't have to think about it anymore to walk or to drive or to do whatever the skill is. It happens automatically on default. Both of those stages are competent. One just requires a lot more focus and the other doesn't require as much focus. So it allows you to focus on the next skill that you're learning. It allows you to focus on the next thing and keep expanding those skills and to do it with. Having as much effort, which for a skill like driving or walking, you don't really need to expand on that. It's just something that you don't have to think about anymore. So one last thing, but with film, I think that's why it can lead to master. If you keep going through all of these stages, because once you don't have to think about where's the record button and how do I set up this camera for the shot and how do I switch my lens and all the little details, then you can think about next level thoughts, next level that you're learning. But competence will do just fine. If you, as a parent have to focus and you're in conscious competence, but you are performing the way you want to as a parent with that conscious attention until your kids leave home, that can work just great. It does require effort, the whole time, but. That effort is competent. It is creating the results that you want most of the time with some slip-ups.

Kent Thalman:

Right. Yeah. And you know, that's really interesting. how often can we tell the difference who's behind the wheel, an unconsciously competent driver, or a 16 year old who's been driving for three months. We, no one can tell the difference. And here's the thing you might say. Well, I can tell the difference when they do that stupid thing or make that big mistake, but the unconscious competent. Drivers make those mistakes too, because they're paying so little attention to their driving. Right. They're trying to do six other things anyway, because they're just think driving is so easy and they slip up. I think it's the same with filmmaking. Sometimes masters make films that are milking. They're not actually their best work, because it's so easy at that point that getting the financing is fast for them. And getting a movie made is fast. And maybe because there's not as much resistance or pressure, they're not on their a game. Whereas

Anna Thalman:

I have to pay attention So you might

Kent Thalman:

not. Yeah. And then you get these guys who were trying so hard. It requires all their focus to be able to make a good film. That they actually make a masterpiece. And then everyone says, whoa, these guys are at the same level as this other guy, or this is the next Spielberg or whatever. And well, frankly they're not probably at the same level because they just don't have the same experience and they probably haven't graduated that to that unconscious competence, but they seem to be willing to do the work. It probably takes them longer. It probably takes them a lot more effort, but in the end we watched the movie and we think it's great. And I think that's encouraging because if it feels like parenting is really hard, it doesn't actually mean necessarily to you're way worse at it. Now, sometimes you just will feel that way. And it's. It is just hard and you know, same with marriage. if you think that you're not that good at being married or if your marriage isn't that great, you know, putting in tons of effort, it just means you've got to put in tons of effort and you'll eventually get to the point where it's actually really easy to just feel great in your relationship. But for a long time, it's just going to take a ton of effort. So. That's I think it's nice realizing that because I think what happens is a lot of us have this thing pop into our head where we're like, why is it so hard? It shouldn't be this hard. It doesn't seem this hard for everyone else. Well, because when we're driving down the road, we don't look at all the other cars and go look how hard of a time all these other cars are having. it actually might be that one of the drivers is really scared and it's their first time on the freeway and they are having a hard time. But you can't. maybe they're really nervous. You know, they're really trying to stay in their lane. You can tell, but that's the driver's experience from the outside. And often people can't tell from the outside what our home life looks like, people on the outside can't tell what it looked like to make a film. so film that was really hard and had a lot of drama might be awesome. It might be a great film and a film that was easy and a super good experience might be the same, you know? But you just, you just don't know, how did the crew get along? Did people like it was everyone was making tons of mistakes? Did they lose like a whole day of footage moving still might turn out, even though it was really hard. So I think it's good to realize that and, look this super, super hard. Like it's going to be super hard for 10,000 hours of it, you know,

Anna Thalman:

graduate. That expectation that it shouldn't be hard, then you can settle into this conscious competence, and just focus, you know, say it's going to be hard. I'm in the stage where I have to focus still.

Kent Thalman:

Yeah. And if you're so fixated, if you're so fixated on your, you're developing competence and how difficult and the difficulty of it. that's stealing away from the focus that you really need for the task at hand, because you are still in that conscious, competent phase. And so by fixating on why is this so hard? You're actually making it harder.

Anna Thalman:

yeah, because you're being self-conscious. So you're focusing on comparing yourself or. Being critical of yourself, as opposed to just focusing on the task.

Kent Thalman:

So stage two and a half is self-conscious competence.

Anna Thalman:

I love it.

Kent Thalman:

I feel like my job in this episode of the podcast has been to keep you in the conscious competence phase by making jokes that.

Anna Thalman:

Yeah, making a lot of jokes. So stage four, I basically talked about already. the way that, you know, you're in stage four is that you don't have to think about it anymore. And because you don't have to think about. when we enter stage four and often I see this with my clients, when I coach them and they reach this level of competence in a specific skill they've been working on, is that they won't even recognize the change and sometimes I'll point it out to them and say, do you remember why you wanted coaching in the first place or what you first came struggling with in the first place. And now it's not even a struggle for you. And most people don't even don't even notice it until I pointed out. And so it's just so gradual Where your brain has delegated it to the default subconscious And that's probably true for you in so many ways. And you just don't even really recognize those.

Kent Thalman:

Not all skills required, 10,000 hours to master and so little tiny skills. It is true that sometimes it seems like this impossible task and even graduating from conscious incompetence to conscious competence is a massive accomplishment. cause you can actually do it. And I remember when we first ran, when we got our first marathon. I remember Anna, you said that you'd heard someone mentioned running 10 miles a day, and that sounded unfathomable to you. Yeah, like impossible. And then you realized one day that you'd been running 10 miles a day for a couple of weeks and you're getting to this place where we could talk the whole time. And it was really exciting. Right. And is that unconscious competence almost right? It's kind of is. I mean, at least. At that

Anna Thalman:

mile 10 mile milestone. Yeah.

Kent Thalman:

Right. And, at the pace that we were running it, right. If we decided to run six minute miles, then it would have been a whole different game. You know, you're no more, are you unconsciously competent at that? But it just getting them running in, you know, you start to get. Unconscious competence and it doesn't take 10,000 hours. It took less. And it's the same with a lot of these skills in the film and family cademy, you know, feature filmmaking is one thing, but some of these people don't bring stuff to the table and just in the 12 week coaching period or less, they'll start off by feeling like time management or more just my thoughts around money or whatever. So bad or so hard or so in this realm of another world that I could never, see myself on the other side of this and less than 12 weeks suddenly. They're so good at this stuff that they go back and look back and say, oh, I forgot. I even had that problem. That is crazy to me. It's honestly crazy. Every time I see it, it's not because I don't have any faith in our, you know, the coaching and in the model and in the coursework that we have. But it's kind of amazing to see human beings progressed so much in this course. Every single time people go through it. And not just this course, but this membership, to see people go through and in 12 weeks, see several parts of their life, totally dramatically change and shift. And it's, it's stunning. It's like, it's just a Testament to me of when we focus on something hard, when we start to focus on it and, and, and work at it the right way and practice it the right way, transformation is. Not only possible and real it's inevitable and we see it over and over and over again.

Anna Thalman:

Well, and it's easy to see and other people, I think what surprises me is how many times I see these massive changes and how unaware someone can be of their own change. They don't even see it happen. And for me, it's every week I see their improvements, I see the progress but then by the end they still don't even see it. And so it's very difficult to see our own progress, but it is happening. And I want you to know that it's happening and hopefully these stages help you see it a little bit more as you move through them. And. The other little tip that I think helps is to focus in. On something smaller, breaking down a big process into smaller steps is one way to see a lot of rapid growth. I think when you focus in on one area of your life or one state of the filmmaking process, and you can really focus on developing your skills in that area. Then then you start to see that progress quicker because you've broken it into smaller pieces. All right. That's all we have for you two. That helps and hope. You can see some progress in your life, through these stages and identify where you might be in the four stages in whatever you're working on. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you'll love the film and family.

Kent Thalman:

Yeah, the academy is a membership and it includes coursework and coaching. And it's risk-free. If you follow all the steps in the program, you'll finance and finish your first feature film by the end, or we'll give you your money back. And the best thing about it is that we will teach you how to do this without. Having to sacrifice your relationships with yourself or with your family or with anyone, w we'll do this without having to sacrifice your values or, the things that you feel like make you, you, or, your sanity. and you can sign up for a free consultation@wwwdotinvisiblemansion.com forward slash film and family. Or you can just click the link in the show notes. Yep. We'll

Anna Thalman:

see you next time.=