The Importance of Recall
What do you remember?
I remember golfing with my friends. Some of my closest friends. I was in my twenties. I was a decent golfer, got down to the low teens, regularly in the low 80s. Two of my roommates were excellent golfers. They were both accountants. They did not fit into Happy Gilmore’s stereotype of golfers. They were a plus-two and a three.
We would finish our rounds and either go home or have a beer in the Burro Room in one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Mi Casa in Costa Mesa, California. I would be happy with my round, maybe mad about shooting an 8 somewhere that prevented me from breaking 80. They would be deconstructing their rounds in detail.
“Remember when I thinned that nine just a little bit and left it about twenty feet past the hole, then two-putted for par?”
No, I didn’t remember. But they did. And I think that’s part of the reason they were much better golfers than me.
Crash Davis had that sort of recall, too.
When he walked into the Bulls’ manager’s office for the first time, he meets the skipper of the team, Joe Reardon, and the pitching coach, Larry Hockett.
Crash: “And you, Larry Hockett, should recognize me, because five years ago in the Texas League, you were pitching for El Paso, I was hitting cleanup for Shreveport. You hung a curveball on an 0-2 pitch in a 3-2 game in the bottom of the eighth and I tattooed it over the Michelin tire sign and beat you, 4-3.” The video is here. (Not of the at-bat, that would be weird.)
Now, Crash Davis had 21 days in the major leagues. He wasn’t a Hall of Famer. But he remembered every detail in a Texas League game from five years before.
I am a firm believer that if you are able to maintain that level of recall on anything, whatever interests you the most, that dictates your path. That allows your subconscious mind to work on solutions to your passion when you’re not actively considering it or participating in it. It allows you to daydream about things, to innovate, to build muscle memory without taxing your muscles.
What is the topic that just sticks for you?