While in Thailand these last two weeks, I completed training on Nitrox and advanced wreck diving on a WW2 wreck.

In a wreck, you simultaneously have to monitor normal dive constraints along with the added challenges of low visibility in a constrained environment. I was managing my air, depth, no decompression time, my buoyancy, a dive light, and a spool of nylon line. The nylon line is for you to follow blindly out of the ship if someone accidentally “silts up” the dust in the wreck by kicking it with a fin. While you dive, you have to play it out and tie it off at regular intervals with specific techniques to avoid it creating other problems.

It’s like navigating a multi-level labyrinth in the dark, with a time limit, where you risk death if you lose track of what’s happening or don’t complete tasks correctly.

It’s really fun.

In learning to dive, one of the concepts that you’re trained on is cognitive load. Every additional task you have to think about becomes harder and harder to do. The consequence of this is that it takes more time and attention and you’re less aware of what else is happening.

As you become more proficient, the cognitive load drops. Things become habit, “second nature,” and hardwired neural pathways in your brain. Your awareness expands as mental resources are freed up.

How your cognitive load impacts your awareness is an internal measure of how proficient you are as a diver. When all you see is what’s in front of you, it tells you that you’re still learning. It’s an edge that you can discern about your level of capability. At some number of wreck dives, most of my awareness will be on the experience of the ship rather than on the gauges and tactics.

I wasn’t in Thailand to dive, it was an opportunity that came up because I was attending a business conference.

One of the questions that was rolling around in my mind as I talked to people at the conference was, “How do you know where the edge of your skill is?”

In diving, awareness tells you where your edges are. What tells you about where you could grow as an entrepreneur? What tells you where your business could grow?

Featured image is Theseus in the Minotaur’s labyrinth, by Edward Burne-Jones, 1861. Used under public domain.