Driving is a perfect and mundane example of unconscious competence most people have. If you could perform with the simple confidence of driving to work,you would probably be very good at what you were doing.
A friend once rhetorically asked me what trying to be funny meant, and of course it means being not funny, yet when we want to achieve some other end we approach it by trying. Yoda summed it up well, but we don't really get a chance to understand what it really means. Trying to drive on a highway is farcically dangerous, but simply driving on one is among the safest ways to drive.
There is a mental change that comes from physical competence where you no longer fear failure, and I'd argue its that lack of fear that makes the difference at elite levels where skills are largely equal. It also makes the difference in the rate at which you learn. The try/humiliate style of teaching is a way to produce industrial scale mediocrity, and so few can appreciate the difference that there is often no reason to change.
Physical realtime activities like walking, driving, dancing or chasing a ball require, what I would call, "fast thinking". There you're in a very tight reception/response loop where a mediocre decision made in a timely fashion is better than an "optimal" decision which takes longer to produce and makes you skip processing a few frames from the surrounding environment.
"Offline" activities are different, there you have enough time to evaluate different decisions and their possible outcomes.
I have been thinking about the concept of 'flow' and have come to think that it is a large part to do with your conscious mind correlating in a tight loop with your sensory experience, rather than it casting forward or back in time like it usually does. As soon as your conscious mind does skip to planning or memory, flow stops.
Everything you say is correct, but I also think people sometimes take away the wrong lesson from that dynamic, and that's what (IMHO) turns into the unhelpful "be yourself" advice.
That is, "When I'm funny/socially-adept, I'm [so unconsciously competent that I'm] not spending any effort to think about it. Therefore, if you spend no effort and relax, you will show the same skill. If you can't, you just weren't listening to my advice."
Meantime I failed two road tests and my instructor said I was overthinking it, I finally gave up and figured I'll wait till driverless cars come around
I don't know where you're from, but in the driving school I went to in Portugal most people failed their first exams. They asked for a lot of parking manouvres and were harsh on every error.
The purpose was to force you into buying more lessons, which you had to do if you wanted a second examination.
My second test was way easier, and everyone I knew there failed the first one.
Meanwhile, the IDF wanted me to drive a truck. And jailed me for 7 months for not being able to. They let me go, as I wasn't of any use to them otherwise.
FF to 2018 (that's 15 years I haven't had any sort of driving license) and lo and behold, I am a certified tractor operator. Turns out I can manage all that signage and other drivers bullshit, provided it all doesn't move too fast. And mostly doesn't come up in my work.
I've had my license for 12+ years now, but as soon as I moved into the city, I sold my car. Even with a child I get by just fine with carsharing services, Uber/taxis and public transit.
I've never needed to drive. It would be mildly more convenient if I could, but not enough for me to justify spending another few dozen hours practicing to pass the test when it'll be an obsolete skill soon enough
It's still nice to have it. You gain a lot of independence be it home or on vacation. It's nice not being dependent on taxis/public transport or anyone else. This holds especially true if you are not in an urban area, and busses that don't drive 24/7 classify as those, so it's not only the typical "rural" regions.
And no, it won't be obsolete soon. And by "soon" I mean what I wrote earlier, 10+ years.
A friend once rhetorically asked me what trying to be funny meant, and of course it means being not funny, yet when we want to achieve some other end we approach it by trying. Yoda summed it up well, but we don't really get a chance to understand what it really means. Trying to drive on a highway is farcically dangerous, but simply driving on one is among the safest ways to drive.
There is a mental change that comes from physical competence where you no longer fear failure, and I'd argue its that lack of fear that makes the difference at elite levels where skills are largely equal. It also makes the difference in the rate at which you learn. The try/humiliate style of teaching is a way to produce industrial scale mediocrity, and so few can appreciate the difference that there is often no reason to change.