Why is it so hard to concentrate?

You know how sometimes you’re in the middle of telling someone a story and then you…..

Sorry, what was I saying?

I am a world-class procrastinator. I have been since I was a child, guaranteed to be the one sat on the school bus, hurriedly trying to finish my homework that was due that day which I’d had a week to complete. With the advent of the internet and smartphones I got even worse. It’s not that I don’t want to finish the work, my biggest problem is distraction. The slightest thing will send my train of thought for what I was doing out the window and send me off down a different hole. A bit like Dug, the Dog from Disney’s “Up” I am easily distrac…..Squirrel!

This is a huge problem. Most tasks, whether it’s planning a dive, getting kit ready or navigating a wreck take a degree of concentration. Studies have been done on the effects of distraction and shown that it results in increased stress, frustration and time pressure. Distractions come in many forms. Some are self inflicted with smartphones and the internet being two of the most obvious as social media, games and videos are made for easy consumption that’s been designed to keep us scrolling; some are imposed with people asking questions, other tasks appearing that take priority, or even just conversation or noise around you that distracts you from focusing. Trying to return from a task after a distraction can also take time and effort, with some experts quoted as saying it can take more than 20 minutes to return to a task.

One of the other issues that comes up is the fragmentation of tasks or multi-tasking.

Trying to complete multiple things at once often means we lose focus on at least one of them, and chances are high that we actually entirely forget to return to one completely.

Everyone experiences distractions. The issues come from when we forget to return to a task, or miss steps, especially if that task is more complex. There’s a great example in Under Pressure from Jon Kieren, who is an experienced rebreather instructor and yet managed to forget a crucial step in the assembly of his unit, which could have been fatal had he not realised something was wrong. And why did he miss a step? Yep, a simple distraction, caused by chatting to his student while setting up the unit. That was enough to cause him to skip one step, and because he’d followed a slightly different procedure to his usual one he didn’t catch that he’d not completed it. It’s a classic I’ve seen many times, especially in dive centres. Someone comes over to ask the instructor a question, while they’re in the middle of teaching. They’re then trying to watch their students set up their equipment, while answering the other person and probably setting up their own kit at the same time. A short while later the student is struggling with a regulator hose that seems to be too short because they put their tank on backwards and it wasn’t picked up in the buddy check! Multi-tasking is great for getting things done but not so good for getting complex tasks done correctly.

So how can we combat this? We’ve all heard the advice that says we should practise focusing more, turn off or remove any tempting distractions, or tell people not to talk to us when we’re busy but reality doesn’t tend to work that way. Actively blocking distractions that are likely to come your way is the easiest, so apps that lock your phone for a certain time period or moving yourself to somewhere people can’t find you to interrupt should work. The other option is block out noise with noise, a technique I’ve been using to great effect recently by playing music through headphones when I’m working. This means people can’t talk to me (well, they can try but I don’t normally hear them!). I do normally give them a warning that if my headphones are on, it’s because I need to concentrate, so won’t respond to them.

These techniques work for expected distractions but what about the unexpected ones? Sometimes something will just grab our attention, and then it can be incredibly difficult to get back to what we were doing. During the Level 2 Face to Face courses the students are tasked to fly a simulator. During these tasks there are often situations or pieces of information that come up and distract someone for a few seconds or minutes, causing them to lose focus on their primary task and concentrate on something that’s not important. Some people are great at ignoring these and getting on with the task at hand, only to find out that they should have dealt with the situation at the time! Trying to figure out what is a distraction and what is a necessary diversion can be incredibly difficult.

I was teaching a course one day with two students. They were doing fairly well working together and had planned out the dive. One of the students was to be in charge of navigation, and the other would be in charge of the deco schedule. They were briefed that just because they weren’t in charge of something it didn’t mean they shouldn’t be aware of what was happening. Part way through the bottom time, I signalled to one student that he was “out of gas”. He promptly swam up to his buddy, they started sharing gas and began their ascent. They reached their gas switch depth, starting the procedure to switch and then started an underwater discussion about their deco schedule. I was hovering to the side of them watching as the reef started to disappear as we floated in the current. When it was just at the limit of vision I got their attention and asked “which way?”. The one in charge of deco promptly looked straight at the other….who looked around wildly, as he quickly realised he didn’t know where to go. The smallest distraction of the conversation about the deco schedule was enough to take both of their eyes off the route. The debrief was extensive and they both realised that any extra task or problem was a distraction and that their job was to work as a team to eliminate any distractions and complete the dive safely.

Summary

Distractions are tough to avoid and even more difficult to recover from. Finding your way of avoiding them will help but we’ll never truly be able to eliminate them all in everyday life. We can get others to help us avoid them during critical tasks where concentration is needed by making sure the team is aware that we must only be disturbed in an emergency. This will help to reduce mistakes. Even better, we can get our team to help us get back on track when something has distracted us by having multiple people assigned as back ups for jobs, or by using checklists to show which point we had got to in a task.

Jenny is a full-time technical diving instructor and safety diver. Prior to diving, she worked in outdoor education for 10 years teaching rock climbing, white water kayaking and canoeing, sailing, skiing, caving and cycling, among other sports. Her interest in team development started with outdoor education, using it as a tool to help people learn more about communication, planning and teamwork.

Since 2009 she has lived in Dahab, Egypt teaching SCUBA diving. She is now a technical instructor trainer for TDI, advanced trimix instructor, advanced mixed gas CCR diver and helitrox CCR instructor.

Jenny has supported a number of deep dives as part of H2O divers dive team and works as a safety diver in the media industry.

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