Top tips for Diving Instructors: Performance Influencing Factors

Mike Mason

Published on: 09/09/2025

Understand how stress, fatigue, environment, and time pressure affect both student learning and instructor decision-making, and what to do about it

Reframing The Dirty Dozen - Part 3

Errors and violations don't just happen in isolation. Explore the third part of this series in human factors in diving: Pressure, lack of awareness and lack of knowledge. They and others make up the 'Dirty Dozen'.

Stress - A challenge we all face

Mike Mason

Published on: 12/02/2025

Stress affects us all to some extent or other. By identifying and managing stressors, we can create better conditions for performance, decision-making, and teamwork—both in diving and in life.

Survival instinct: Reaction to stress

Cognitive dissonance or why we don't always follow our beliefs

HF in Diving for Dummies: Part 9: Error Producing Conditions - what makes it more likely we make an ‘mistake’

Errors are unintended outcomes from preferred behaviours. The problem is that there are things that make it more likely to make an error, to deviate from our preferred behaviours. Understanding these error-producing conditions can help us spot them, and help prevent adverse outcomes.