What are the most efficient feeback mechanisms you use in daily (non-diving) life that allow you to multitask... even taking care of critical situations under stress? How are you oriented?
I've actually been thinking about this a LOT, ever since I got the surprise slapdown in Fundies that my situational awareness sucked.
Frankly, above water, most situations where you have to take care of critical situations reward intense FOCUS, not multi-tasking. In the ER, I do best if I can shut out all the extraneous material and focus on the critical patient. I do it well. That particular skill is NOT what I need underwater.
On the other hand, I can drink coffee, talk on the cell phone, shift gears and change lanes . . . and I've been analyzing what I do as I do it, trying to figure out how I've learned to do all these things at one time without compromising any of them significantly. And one insight is that each individual component has to be able to be accomplished virtually without thought -- which is where the drills come in. Do S-drills until you can do them in your sleep (I try, but even in my sleep I lose buoyancy); get buoyancy under such control that it's no longer a conscious process at all; get keeping track of your buddies to be so natural that you don't have to think about it, and you have a much better chance of combining the three without losing significant quality on any of them. Combine three processes that have to be managed at the conscious level, and performance is going to suffer seriously, probably in all three.
Getting the physical cues of position in the water, and rate of change of position, down to where they are second nature, will free up tremendous processing to deal with other issues. Not NEEDING to keep a moment-to-moment eye on your machine that tells you ascent rate will allow you to look around, check your buddies, check current influences, maintain visual reference on the upline, whatever. My husband slapped my hand during one of our ascents the other day, because as I got focused on my computer to monitor my depth, I forgot where my light was shining, and I was blinding him. If I'd felt more confident about my ability to know I was stable in water WITHOUT a visual reference, I'd have been able to pay more attention to my light, and to my buddy, and to where we were and what was happening. Instead, I needed the one input and discarded the others.
I personally think the discussion of these things is incredibly valuable . . . giving me ideas and tips to try to optimize my performance of skills I need for every single dive. I don't mind drills. I've done many, many years of them in different disciplines. It takes determination and practice to achieve competence -- I don't care what kind of activity you are discussing, that will be true.