How does one benchmark their own skills?
To rate is relative. One must rate it against something.
Rate it against how the dull crap knife cut before? Well I'd say I would rate myself extremely high since the knife is 500% better than before. So 500/100.
Rate it against 100 random people on the street? I'd say my skills are likely better than all of them, making me the top 1%. So 1/100.
Rate it against unknown random people who spend hours day on a niche Jknife enthusiast forum? Probably the bottom 10%. So 10/100.
Now let's average those out ... hold on... *grabs abacus* ... subract that... square root... hold the 7... OK GOT IT. My skill is 5.11
Seriously though, here is my theory. Every time you get rabbit holed into a new hobby, you try to get better by yourself, which tends to plateau quickly. Then you want to find out more to get better. To find out more you reach out to others, by which you surround yourself by people that know more and are better than you, which does 2 things:
1) you realise how little you know and how long you have to go.
2) you realise how bad you are and how many more people are better than you.
This crash of reality triggers 2 distinct waves of negative energy that needs to be overcome by your willingness to push through, or you drop it. You come to the realisation that if you want to get better on issue No 1, you have to educate yourself and gain knowledge. On issue No 2, you need to practice (properly) and gain skill. Or you could stagnate where you are if you are happy with your skill. Or you could walk away from it all. You then have an existential crisis in which you find yourself at a crossroad once you reach that stage and have to ask yourself: Is this worth it? Do I have time to invest in this? Am I interested/motivated enough to continue?
When I first joined this forum and I started to understand how complex sharpening was, I was deterred by the new lingo, types of stones, stone names, forum etiquette, knife types, symmetry, asymmetry, double bevel, single bevel, wide bevel, polishing, thinning, finger stones (whatever the hell those are), wet/dry sandpaper, rehandles, knife balance, smiths, metals, honyaki, techniques... My first instinct was "well **** this". I walked away and just tried to keep getting my crappy henckles sharper on my 2 stones. I eventually got enough info on here to get to a point where I understood they need to meet at an apex and understand what a burr was... then my knifes were finally "sharp". And honestly I haven't really moved on from there that much. I decided that I don't have enough time in my life to gain all the knowledge I need to have and practice to make my knives 20% sharper. So I made a decision to hone the current skills that I have and will not be going deeper down this rabbit hole. I have to many other hobbies to get better at in my short time on this planet.
I will end this long rant for anyone who is still reading this with the work of Phychologist Noel Burch who describes the 4 stages of competence:
Unconscious incompetence
The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage.
The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn which is what I was saying above.
Conscious incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
Conscious competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.
Unconscious competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
Perhaps a question would be, what stage of competence are you at right now?
