My Biking Skill Level: 4/10

It has been over 10 years since I put my hands on a bike.

Part of the reason why is that I live in New York City. Their public transportation makes it possible for me to go anywhere without a bike nor a car.

The other part is that I always preferred either using a scooter or walking with my two feet.

But if you asked me if I know how to ride a bike, my answer would be, “Maybe….Yes and no.”

Let me explain.

When I was first learning, I had trouble getting the initial pedaling down. Otherwise, when I’m in motion, it’s pretty easy.

But now that I’m a bit taller than I was 10 years ago, I’ll probably have an easier time now.

It’s also interesting that biking is one of those skills that you can never unlearn. Unlike other skills (like language and sports), where you have to work on them regularly or else they’ll slowly degrade.

To make it more clear, take a look at the Competence Hierarchy. It’s a pyramid chart that illustrates the progress of competence when learning a skill.

From bottom to top, you have:

Unconscious incompetence: Also known as complete ignorance.

Conscious incompetence: This is where you realize how much you don’t know.

Conscious competence: You’ve learned your new skill, but you still need to be aware of what you need to do right and what mistakes to avoid.

Unconscious competence: Your skill becomes second nature.

Biking is one of those skills that’ll remain second nature until you die. The same goes for email writing. Once you adapt a certain style (Like personality-driven emails as opposed to pure sales emails), you’ll just naturally start writing in that style.