Comfort Zone first

[Dan_P]

Hi guys,

I recently participated in a discussion on the use of computers versus gauges, and elaborated on something that has much wider application:
Diving within one's Comfort Zone

Here's the specific quote:

...As for the computer/gauge question, I think it's inverted to look at "what a computer will do against you" or "what a gauge can't do for you".
To me, it's about my comfort zone, first and foremost.
By having a plan and making predictive adjustments to that plan ahead of events, I can gauge how much further ahead I can think. When the scope of my predictions starts to shrink, I know I'm increasing mental stress upon myself in the diving I'm doing.
Stop and breathe.
If I cannot conjure a new plan, I already have one in play to fall back to.

It's not like you jump in the water with no clue what you want to do, or can do, and at the end of some dive, you make a plan;
You always have a plan in place, and then you can amend it if you want to.
That way, worst case, you're cutting a dive short and doing more deco than you need (but no more than you originally intended, and you have gas for).

The rest is one or a few stories that keep getting regurgitated, about divers who can't maintain depth, can't adhere to a maximal depth, can't figure out their average depth, and so on. That's all symptomatic of diving well and truly beyond one's comfort zone. A computer can't alleviate that problem, because while it may give you clear instructions for your deco, stress (and subsequent panic) is not symmetric like that. If you're really pushing yourself just to hold onto the dive, anything and everything might happen to tip the scale for you, and that's what the real problem is, in my opinion.

That's what's lost in translation in all these discussions about computer versus gauge, there's so much context that doesn't get taken into account. The same goes for manual rebreathers, sidemount systems with manifolds, standard gases, and so on. Heck, buddy lines is a prime example.
I've met a lot of divers who thought I'm a liability because I don't use a buddy line.
It's no different. Just lost context...

For a while, I've been approaching diver training with a "Bouyancy First"-methodology - or, rather, so I thought.
Really, what I'd actually been doing, was establish a Comfort Zone in-water first, because calm, deliberate breathing is a building block to bouyancy control.
As we all know, controlled, calm breathing is quite tricky if we're on the verge of panic.

So, the actual correct order of things in my own entry-level diver development training had been, and remains:
Comfort Zone - Bouyancy - Trim - Propulsion
(To be negotiated during first Confined session)

Subsequent training then develops or expands the comfort zone, to encompass more complex or less forgiving gas- and ascend planning, more or new gear, new milieus, more failure handlings, decompression planning, etc.
The approach is not too unlike a "Progressive Penetration"-approach as known from overhead diving standards.

The merits of diving within one's comfort zone cannot be overestimated:

If I'm diving on the verge of my capacity, I have zero surplus in my mindscape to handle problems as they emerge (or, ideally, before they do), and I become more vulnerable to outside factors (chance).
And I'm certainly not enjoying the dive as much as I could.

Here's a video on the matter of Comfort Zone, by Ben Bos: