Not enough people watch game tape.
I'm always surprised when I hear podcasters say they don't listen back to their recordings. When I played American football in university, we watched 'game tape'.
Every week we'd gather together in a small lecture room and the head coach would put our practice film up on the projector. We'd watch ourselves practice. We'd watch ourselves play.
All mistakes were laid bare. Of course, the coaches were at practice too. They had already given us live feedback. And yet we still came back to watch the film. We'd still revisit our errors and plan adjustments.
We'd look at film from our previous games and compare it to the playbook. Did we make the right call? Did we run the right routes?
And when we were done watching our own film, we would watch our opponents. We'd see how they'd lined up against other teams. We'd look for habits. Ticks. Any pattern we could decipher, which would give us an edge come game day. Watching game tape was part of the craft. Just as important as practice itself.
It's too easy to sweep small mistakes under the rug. We survive a tough week at work, wipe our brow and crack open a beer. Next thing you know it's Monday, and you're back under the fire.
Sometimes we make mistakes so big that the actions we must take to correct them are immediately obvious. But often, we let near misses fly under our radar.
If you want to be on top of your game, you've got to be in the film room.
"Have a regular practice of review. Revisit your past decisions and evaluate them. Even if things went well, were there variables you underestimated? If things didn't go well, what could you have done differently?"
Structured review isn't about overthinking things or dwelling on your sins. It's about looking for patterns so you know when to interrupt them or double down.
