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Understanding stress – Part 8: Time Distortion

7 Comments / Article, Attention Management, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Information overload, Neuroscience, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Tunneled Senses, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

Welcome to part 8 on the series dedicated to stress. In the previous segment I talked about the vulnerability of your brain to become overloaded under stress which can impact your situational awareness. In this article I’m going to talk about how your perception of time can become distorted as a result of stress.

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Understanding Stress – Part 7: Information Overload

3 Comments / Article, Attention Management, Checklists, Communications, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Information overload, Neuroscience, Safety, Situational awareness, Stress, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

Welcome to Part 7 of my series on stress and its impact on situational awareness. I appreciate all the very nice comments I have received by email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Keep them coming. Your messages inspire and motivate me more than you can ever imagine. Thank you so much! In the previous segment I

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Twelve Ways to Situational Awareness

6 Comments / Article, Communications, Complacency, Culture, Decision Making, Gasaway Consulting Group, Human Factors, Incompetence, Information overload, Safety, Situational awareness, Situational Readiness, Size Up, Staffing, Stress, Teamwork, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

Ho, Ho, Ho. Merry Christmas everyone! With Thanksgiving day in the past, it is officially the Christmas season! I know everyone’s feeling particularly festive this time of year and I have caught the Christmas spirit in a very situational awareness sort of way. Surely you’ve heard of the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” -You know –

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Technology Can Help AND Hurt Situational Awareness

25 Comments / Article, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Information overload, Mental Models, Safety, Situational awareness, Technology, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

You don’t have to look far and wide to locate clever marketing campaigns that make outrageous claims to improve our lives or solve our problems. I’ve been noticing this trend now as it relates to products claiming they “create” situational awareness. I was recently at a conference and had an opportunity to have a discussion

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Episode 234 | The Dirty Dozen – Killer Situational Awareness Barriers

Leave a Comment / Auditory exclusion, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Complacency, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Expectations, Experience, Fear, Gut Feeling, Habits, Hallucinations, Human Behavior, Human Error, Human Factors, Hyper Vigilance, Information overload, Intuition, Judgment, Long-Term Memory, Meta Awareness, Miscommunications, Mission, Mission Myopia, Multitasking, Muscle Memory, Overload, Overwhelm, Perception, Perception Of Reality, Prediction, Pressure, Radios, Repetition, Risk Assessment, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Selective Listening, Sensory Conflict, Shared Mental Models, Short Term Memory, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Tacit Knowledge, Task Fixation, Tunnel Vision, Tunneled Senses, Under Confident, understaffing, Vigilance, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

This episode discusses some of the most challenging barriers to situational awareness while working in high-risk, high-consequence environments. This is part 2 so if you missed part 1 – Episode 233 – be sure to check it out first and that will help you understand the challenges we are going to discuss here. Length: 36

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Episode 233 | The Process for Developing Situational Awareness

Leave a Comment / Auditory exclusion, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Complacency, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Expectations, Experience, Fear, Gut Feeling, Habits, Hallucinations, Human Behavior, Human Error, Human Factors, Hyper Vigilance, Information overload, Intuition, Judgment, Long-Term Memory, Meta Awareness, Miscommunications, Mission, Mission Myopia, Multitasking, Muscle Memory, Overload, Overwhelm, Perception, Perception Of Reality, Prediction, Pressure, Radios, Repetition, Risk Assessment, Routines, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Selective Listening, Sensory Conflict, Shared Mental Models, Short Term Memory, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Tacit Knowledge, Task Fixation, Tunnel Vision, Tunneled Senses, Under Confident, Vigilance, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

The episode discusses the process for developing and maintaining situational awareness. We will discuss the foundation, walls and roof of the SA development process. This is part 1 of a 2-part episode. Length: 36 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking

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Episode 226 | New Carlisle FD LODD Review

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Assumptions, Attention Management, Automatic Action, Benchmarks, Building Construction, Command Location, Command Presence, Command Support, Communications, Complacency, Confusion, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Error Creep, Expectations, Experience, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Behavior, Human Factors, Independent Goal Setting - Freelancing, Information overload, Interruptions, Judgment, Lost Focus, Mayday, Mayday and RIT, Mindfulness, Miscommunications, Mission, Mission Myopia, Muscle Memory, Overwhelm, Perception Of Reality, Personnel location, Repetition, Risk, Risk Assessment, Routines, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Shared Mental Models, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Teamwork, Tunnel Vision, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

This episode is a review of the lessons learned from the August 5, 2014 structure fire incident that killed Assistant Fire Chief Jamie Middlebrook. Length: 36 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision

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Episode 217 | Overstaffing

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Attention Management, Attitude, Cognitive Memory, Command Location, Command Presence, Command Support, Communications, Confusion, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Expectations, Frustration, Human Behavior, Independent Goal Setting - Freelancing, Insubordination, Interruptions, Lost Focus, Over Staffing, Personnel location, Pressure, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Staffing, Stress, Teamwork, understaffing, Weather, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

This episode explores how over staffing can impact situational awareness. Length: 29 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to a higher level, check out the Situational Awareness Matters Online Academy. CLICK HERE for

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Episode 206 | Competing Goals

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Assumptions, Automatic Action, Benchmarks, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Expectations, Goals, Independent Goal Setting - Freelancing, Miscommunications, Mission, Progress Reports, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Shared Mental Models, Teamwork, Technology, Time Distortion, Training, Tunnel Vision, Tunneled Senses, Under Confident, understaffing, Vigilance, Weather, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

This episode examines how competing goals can impact situational awareness. Length: 31 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to a higher level, check out the Situational Awareness Matters Online Academy.

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Firefighting: It’s a whole new ballgame

6 Comments / Accountability, Article, Complacency, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Emotions, Fear, Human Behavior, Leadership, Mayday and RIT, Personnel location, Risk Assessment, Safety, Situational awareness, Situational Readiness, Staffing, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Stress, Teamwork, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

There is little doubt the economic recession of 2008-2009 had a significant impact on the nation’s fire service. Hardly a day went by where there wasn’t some news about an organization that downsized, rightsized or capsized. There are all kinds of explanations and terms being attached to what happened. One I heard at the time

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