Decompression: The Lessons from Surface Time

Decompression. As a scuba diver you’re familiar with the concept. It’s vital, if not done or done wrongly, it can be life-threatening.

Now, I won’t go into the details, but basically it’s about restoring equilibrium.

While you’ve been diving, the inert gases that you’ve been breathing accumulated in your body under the higher pressure under water, and as you start ascending to leave the water, those gases (typically nitrogen) have to be eliminated.

That happens by what is called decompression. Why am I going there?

What the gases are during your dive, is what the stimuli are during an event like Slush. Like the body getting saturated with gases in the depth, your nervous system gets saturated at some point amidst all the event inputs.

The constant stream of information, flickering lights, sounds, background noise are flooding your system and while you can cope with it for some time, at some point it just feels too much. You’re saturated.

So you need to flush your nervous system, just as divers have to flush their bodies. And just like divers, that requires time in an environment with lower pressue. For you nervous system, that means an environment with less stimuli.

Once that’s done, divers exit the water and have to wait on the surface for a certain time before going for a second dive.

You can observe certain characteristics during those ‘surface intervals’, such as taking things slow, relax, eat, hydrate, exchange the experiences of the last dive.

Something that certainly can be useful in the event and networking context.

And once you’ve reset your system, you’re ready to literally and metaphorically dive back in.

That is exactly what I tried to offer during the Slush Conference in 2025 at the nearby lovely Outrun Café. A space where people can decompress from the high pressure environment of Slush. There's nothing inherently bad about it, but it does take a toll on your nervous system.

I loved it, when a friend dropped by, exactly to do this. And after some time, just like in diving, he put his cloth back on, stating that he had decompressed enough and was ready to drop back into the craze.

During that 'surface time' we had real conversations. I enjoyed every second of it, was happy to meet a couple of new people and hear way more than their standard pitch.

And what is true for diving and events, is true for our daily lives and work.

There a periods of compression, where we're under high pressure and have to push. And that's fine. But it's not a state to be sustained. Just like you can't go on forever under water.

You need 'surface time', where you slow down. You reflect on what you just experienced, take a break, refuel yourself, before preparing to dive back in.

Even if you have never done a single dive in your life, try to remember to give yourself some 'surface time', where you decompress and restore your personal equilibrium.

With love for our oceans 💙 🪸 🐠 🐋

If like me you care for the oceans, consider supporting an organization that helps protect and restore this marvelous ecosystem, such as Only One or Sea Legacy.