New Year, New Intentions: 8 Resolutions to Become a More Capable Diver

Scuba diving is a sport with no natural endpoint. There is no moment where you can realistically say you have learned it all or seen everything worth seeing. This is one of the great strengths of diving; it rewards curiosity and patience rather than speed or competition. The more you invest in expanding your diving, the more every single dive improves, regardless of where you are in the world or what conditions you find yourself in.

Despite this, many divers claim to have mastered diving. They think they have seen it all and that there’s nothing left to learn. Often, diving then becomes stale. These divers haven’t actually learned it all; instead, they have become complacent and begun to close their eyes to what is around them, subsequently stopping their learning or progression.

The turn of a new year is a useful moment to pause and reflect—not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, practical sense. How did you dive last year? What felt easy? What felt rushed or uncomfortable? Which of your dives did you find stressful or difficult?

New Year offers us the chance to make a resolution that is not about pressure or guilt, but about the intention to improve. Resolutions are about choosing to be a little more deliberate in how you engage with the sport so that, twelve months from now, you are a calmer, more capable, and more thoughtful diver than you are today. So, here are Andy’s and my top New Year’s resolutions for divers; maybe you can pick one for yourself?

Take a Training Course

One of the most obvious but also most valuable resolutions is to take a dive course. Many divers complete their entry-level certification and then rely entirely on experience to carry them forward. Experience is important, but you only learn what the dives you do allow you to learn, and most of us do the same types of diving time and again with little variety.

A well-structured course introduces scenarios and skills that you might not encounter naturally, or might actively avoid. Whether it is a buoyancy-focused workshop, a rescue course, or a more advanced program that pushes depth or task loading, formal training forces you to slow down and examine how and why you do things. A good instructor will challenge assumptions and correct small inefficiencies that you may not even be aware of. The result is not just a new certification card, but a deeper understanding that improves every dive that follows.

For inspiration, look at the diving destinations that you really want to visit. It might be a cold-water destination or a specific wreck dive; then, choose the training that will enable you to reach those goals.

Assess and Service Your Dive Gear

Committing to regular equipment servicing is another resolution that quietly improves diving without adding any drama at all. Diving equipment is life support, yet it is remarkably easy to neglect once it appears to be functioning. Regulators often breathe perfectly right up until the moment they do not. Inflators and dump valves tend to fail gradually, which makes their decline easy to ignore.

Having equipment serviced on schedule is not about fear or worst-case thinking. It is about confidence. When you trust your gear, your mental bandwidth is freed up for awareness, enjoyment, and decision-making. Over time, that trust reduces stress and allows you to focus on the dive itself rather than the tools that support it.

Check out our articles on tips for regulator maintenance and BCD storage & maintenance.

Join a Dive Club or Underwater Photo Society

Joining a dive club or an underwater photography society can fundamentally change how often and how well you dive. Without structure, diving easily becomes something that only happens on holidays or special trips. A club creates momentum and routine; it encourages local diving and makes marginal conditions feel worthwhile because the social element adds value beyond the dive itself.

Diving regularly with the same group exposes you to different approaches and levels of experience. You learn through observation and conversation, often without realizing it. An underwater photography society adds another layer, encouraging discussion around composition, lighting, ethics, and storytelling. Perhaps most importantly, clubs create community. They remind you that diving is not a solitary pursuit, even when you are underwater.

If this interests you, take a look at our article on joining an Underwater Photo Society.

Participate in a Meaningful Underwater Conservation Project

Participating in a meaningful conservation project is a resolution that aligns enjoyment with responsibility. Many divers feel a deep emotional connection to the ocean but are unsure how to turn that feeling into action. Conservation projects provide a practical outlet. Reef monitoring, debris removal, species surveys, or long-term citizen science initiatives all deepen your understanding of the environments you dive in.

When you contribute time and effort, you move from being a visitor to being a custodian. This shift changes how you dive. You will appreciate what you see more than ever and be increasingly passionate about raising awareness among those who are not able to see the underwater world as you do.

Read a Good Diving Book

Making time to read a diving-related book is an understated but powerful resolution. Stories like Shadow Divers offer narratives that will expand your knowledge and open the door to more ambition within your own diving. They provide insight into mindset, discipline, and the long road toward mastery. Reading about complex wreck exploration or the creative thought process behind award-winning images encourages reflection on your own diving. As a photographer, there are no better books than Alex Mustard’s Underwater Photography Masterclass and his new Underwater Photography 52 Assignments book. They introduce ideas during periods when you may not be diving much, and those ideas often resurface later in unexpected ways.

We have reviewed several books that we recommend. Check those reviews out below:

• Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

• 52 Assignments: Underwater Photography by Alex Mustard

• Chamber Divers by Rachel Lance

• Treasures, Shipwrecks and the Dawn of Red Sea Diving by Howard Rosenstein

• Light in the Underworld by Martin Broen (not a review but an article by the author).

Learn a New Dive Skill, Commit to It, and Master It

Learning a new in-water skill, such as back finning, is a resolution that delivers immediate and lasting benefits. Many divers are competent moving forward but struggle when precision is required. Back finning allows you to hold position without touching the bottom or sculling with your hands; it is invaluable around fragile reefs, inside wrecks, or when working with a camera.

Learning it takes patience because it challenges deeply ingrained muscle memory. The process itself improves overall body awareness and balance. Once mastered, it becomes second nature and dramatically improves control, making dives feel calmer and more deliberate.

There are many skills out there you can master, and each one will help improve your overall diving skills and confidence. You could focus on your air consumption, master sidemount, improving your trim, learn DIR diving, and much more.

Check out our articles on:

• Diving in currents

• Improving your buoyancy and trim

• Kayak diving

Expand Into New Diving Environments

Expanding the range of environments you dive in is another resolution that pays dividends across all diving. It is natural to gravitate toward familiar conditions, but comfort zones can become limiting.

Diving in colder water, lower visibility, stronger currents, or different topography forces adaptation. Skills learned in more demanding conditions often make easier dives feel effortless by comparison. This does not mean seeking danger, but rather embracing variety.

Often, a diver will tell me they are very experienced and have done a thousand dives or more, but if all those dives were in the same conditions, what experience have they really gained? I like to dive it all—deep, wreck, cave, ice, drysuit, sidemount, tech, rebreather, and more. With each different type, more and more experience is gained.

Check out our article on ice-diving to see if that interests you.

Make Your Diving Dreams Reality

Booking your dream dive trip—the one that has been sitting quietly at the top of your bucket list for years—is another resolution that can fundamentally change how you approach your diving. Having a clear goal focuses motivation in a way that vague ambition never quite manages.

Whether it is a remote liveaboard, a historic wreck, polar waters, or an iconic reef system, committing to the trip turns daydreaming into planning. Once the date is in the calendar, your diving gains direction. You start asking honest questions about your current skills and identifying where you need to improve.

Working steadily toward being genuinely ready for that dive makes the eventual trip far more rewarding. When you finally descend, you are not just visiting a place you have imagined for years; you are doing so with the confidence needed to maximize the experience. I have a saying in life: I want to take four "once-in-a-lifetime" trips a year, and I book them up to three years ahead so I always have plenty to look forward to in my diving future.

Conclusion

New Year resolutions for scuba divers do not need to be dramatic or overwhelming. The most effective ones are small, deliberate choices repeated consistently over time. Taken together, these resolutions are not about becoming a different diver, but about becoming a better version of the diver you already are. Twelve months from now, the real success will not be measured in certifications or logged dives, but in how calm, aware, and connected you feel every time you enter the water.