Situational awareness is further lauded by elite military units, police trainers, criminals, intelligence analysts, and human factors researchers. In other words, people who have to make very important—often life-or-death—decisions based on limited information consider situational awareness a critical skill. This should tell us something—if those individuals for whom correct decisions are most immediately relevant all stress the importance of situational awareness, it may be a more critical skill than we realize.
While agreeing with the general idea in the post- that SA is important, I think you are slightly overstating the case by calling it the zeroth skill. Where SA helps is in helping you collect more information for your decision making process, but we the world has a lot of data that could be collected. Not all information has the same value for decision making.
In any case, as a person with low SA, I’m interested in seeing the rest of this sequence. What would be helpful, if you’ve also thought of it is: is this a skill that you can “switch off” when it’s not required? If I were in a setting where it’s safe to do so, it could be of value to turn off SA and focus more on—a book perhaps, or my own thoughts.
What would be helpful, if you’ve also thought of it is: is this a skill that you can “switch off” when it’s not required? If I were in a setting where it’s safe to do so, it could be of value to turn off SA and focus more on—a book perhaps, or my own thoughts.
Based on my experience, yes. I am an absentminded person currently trying to retrain myself to function as a critical care nurse–see my related post here. At work/in clinical, I am slowly developing the skill of being aware of everything as it happens, keeping an ongoing plan/list of priorities, separating out important changes in a patient’s condition from noise, and knowing when I have to re-prioritize. Of course, focusing on modelling the world around me constantly (or at least the few cubic meters of my patient and relevant equipment) is exhausting and makes me worse at nearly everything else, from remembering theory to social skills.
However, in a written exam (or at home posting on the Internet), I don’t hesitate to block out distracting stimuli and focus on one thing. I can still churn out an essay in 2-3 hours, and I write novels for fun and can focus about as well as I used to be able to, although exhaustion is a confounding factor. (I’m sleep deprived a lot of the time, because of shift work, which wasn’t the case when I was in high school). My comfort zone is still absentmindedness, being ‘zoned out’ and focused on my own thoughts, and I don’t think this will ever change–but I already have a degree of situational awareness that I can switch on at will, which will probably increase over my next few years of work experience.
While agreeing with the general idea in the post- that SA is important, I think you are slightly overstating the case by calling it the zeroth skill. Where SA helps is in helping you collect more information for your decision making process, but we the world has a lot of data that could be collected. Not all information has the same value for decision making.
In any case, as a person with low SA, I’m interested in seeing the rest of this sequence. What would be helpful, if you’ve also thought of it is: is this a skill that you can “switch off” when it’s not required? If I were in a setting where it’s safe to do so, it could be of value to turn off SA and focus more on—a book perhaps, or my own thoughts.
Based on my experience, yes. I am an absentminded person currently trying to retrain myself to function as a critical care nurse–see my related post here. At work/in clinical, I am slowly developing the skill of being aware of everything as it happens, keeping an ongoing plan/list of priorities, separating out important changes in a patient’s condition from noise, and knowing when I have to re-prioritize. Of course, focusing on modelling the world around me constantly (or at least the few cubic meters of my patient and relevant equipment) is exhausting and makes me worse at nearly everything else, from remembering theory to social skills.
However, in a written exam (or at home posting on the Internet), I don’t hesitate to block out distracting stimuli and focus on one thing. I can still churn out an essay in 2-3 hours, and I write novels for fun and can focus about as well as I used to be able to, although exhaustion is a confounding factor. (I’m sleep deprived a lot of the time, because of shift work, which wasn’t the case when I was in high school). My comfort zone is still absentmindedness, being ‘zoned out’ and focused on my own thoughts, and I don’t think this will ever change–but I already have a degree of situational awareness that I can switch on at will, which will probably increase over my next few years of work experience.