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Started logging my dives on a waterproof notepad instead of my phone, and the difference in my air consumption is honestly wild
I used to keep all my dive logs in a notes app on my phone, which sounds fine until you're on a job and your hands are wet and you're fumbling with a touchscreen in gloves. About 4 months ago I switched to a rite in the rain notepad in my drysuit pocket and a grease pencil, and the change has been way bigger than I expected. On the phone I'd jot maybe the depth and time and call it good. With the notepad I actually write down my starting and ending pressure, the job, the vis, the current, and how I felt before and after. Doing that by hand makes me slow down and actually think about the numbers instead of just tapping through screens. After about 6 weeks of this I noticed my average air consumption on similar working dives in the harbor here dropped from around 0.7 to 0.55 cubic feet per minute, mostly because I was seeing the trend in my own handwriting and catching when I was breathing too fast or working too hard. The phone was fine for logging, but the notepad made me actually look at the data. Curious if anyone else here has switched their logging method and seen it change the way they dive, or am I just late to this?
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david70314h ago
Switched from an app to a cheap slate with a pencil about two years ago and had a similar thing happen. Writing it out by hand forces you to slow down, and for me the big one was tracking my breathing rate in the water along with pressure. Once I saw in my own writing that my sac spiked on the cold dives in January I started wearing a thicker hood and warming up better before splash, and that alone dropped my numbers. Also writing down how I felt before and after helped me spot that I was rushing my setup, which had nothing to do with the dive itself. Phone logs are fine but you end up skimming them, and a page in your own handwriting is harder to ignore.
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