However, it is important to keep in mind that a deep focus and commitment to the mission can cause important – sometimes even life saving – clues and cues to not get processed. Chief Gasaway’s Adviceīeing mission focused is a desired trait of a high-functioning team. No understanding = blind to what is happening right before your very eyes. If that happens, there may be no space to draw the incoming visual images. In other words, the mission focus is what’s on your Etch-A-Sketch. When the mission focus is strong, those images on the mind can consume your thoughts. In this case, thoughts about the mission. At the same time it is sketching what ever else is on your mind. It is sketching all your sensory inputs (sight, sound, smell, taste and feel). This means your Etch-A-Sketch is pulling double duty. Stated another way, your mission is on your Etch-A-Sketch. When you are mission focused, it means your mission is on your mind. Thus, you will not understand the meaning of the visual inputs gathered by your eyes. If the picture does not get drawn on your Etch-A-Sketch, there will be on understanding. Once the picture is complete, you “see” the picture using your mind’s eye. There, the impulses are assembled like a puzzle to form a picture. As visual inputs come into the eyes they get turned into electrical impulses and those impulses are send down the optic nerve to the visual processor. To simplify the process, I use a common household toy to explain how visual inputs get turned into understanding – an Etch-A-Sketch. The processing of visual clues and cues into meaning, understandable information is a very complex process. Understanding the meaning of visual inputs is the second component of situational awareness development (following the first component – perception – The gathering of the visual inputs by the eyes). You can hear things you don’t understand. This not only true of visual inputs, it is also true of audible inputs.

There is a very distinct difference between seeing something and understanding its meaning. Well, technically, for so long as your eyes are open and the nerves are functioning properly, you are “seeing” what is happening right in front of you.īut simply because you are “seeing” something does not mean you UNDERSTAND what you are seeing.

You can be looking right at something and not see it. However, as bizarre as that sounds, it is indeed a fact. It seems odd that I would even suggest the notion that responders can be blind to the things that are happening right in front of them. But if you were blind to what was happening around you, doing all of that great advice would be worthless. When I talk with first responders about situational awareness and what it takes to develop and maintain it, the program participants often use terms such as: “It’s important to pay attention.” Or, “You have to keep your head on a swivel.” Or, “It helps to look up, down and all around.” All of this is true.

I am lost in blindness