I kept the notebooks.
For about eight months, every time I reviewed performance footage, I wrote my observations in a small Moleskine that I dedicated exclusively to this purpose. One page per viewing, with the date, the event, the viewing number, and whatever I noticed. Over time, the notebooks became a kind of archaeological record — layers of perception stacked on top of each other, revealing not just what I saw, but how what I saw changed as I watched the same footage again and again.
Looking back through those notebooks now is a strange experience. Because the most striking pattern is not what I noticed about my performances. It is what I noticed about my own perception. The notebooks are a documentary record of personal bias dissolving in real time, and the process is far messier, far more nonlinear, and far more psychologically revealing than I expected.
The Architecture of Self-Deception
Dan Harlan, in his lecture on magic as theater in the Tarbell Course, makes a point about video review that stuck with me. He recommends that performers record their shows and review them, because “you are going to have to see everything that you do to be able to take those notes on your performance.” What sounds like straightforward practical advice carries a deeper implication: you have to see everything, because your brain is working hard to make sure you see selectively.
Harlan’s broader framework treats magic as theater, with all the rigor that implies — the seven-stage rehearsal process, the director’s role, the discipline of notes taken during dress rehearsals and addressed before the next run. In that theatrical framework, the director is someone who watches with trained objectivity. But when you are your own director, objectivity is not your default state. Your default state is defense.
The human ego has a remarkably sophisticated set of defense mechanisms, and they are never more active than when you are evaluating your own performance. These are not conscious choices. You do not decide to be biased. The bias operates below the level of awareness, filtering your perception before you even know there is something to perceive.
Understanding these mechanisms — naming them, recognizing them in action — was one of the most useful things I did during those months of disciplined self-review.
Defense Mechanism One: Selective Attention
The first and most pervasive bias is selective attention. When you watch your own performance footage, your eye is drawn to the moments you were most conscious of during the performance itself. The big reaction. The smooth transition. The line that got a laugh. These are the moments that are most vivid in your memory, and your visual attention gravitates toward them on the recording.
The problem is that these moments are not necessarily the most important ones. They are the most salient ones. And salience is not the same as significance.
In my notebooks, the notes from first viewings are dominated by the moments I remembered most strongly from the live performance. “Good reaction at 6:30.” “Transition at 12:00 worked well.” “Audience laughter at the callback.” These are the peaks, and the peaks are easy to see because my brain was already primed to look for them.
What I was not seeing — what selective attention was actively hiding from me — were the valleys. The moments between peaks. The transitions where nothing notable happened but where the audience’s experience was being shaped by a hundred small signals: my posture, my vocal energy, the speed of my movement from one position to another, the expression on my face during the three seconds between the end of one segment and the beginning of the next.
These in-between moments are where most performances are won or lost. The peaks take care of themselves — if you have good material and reasonable technique, the climactic moments will land. It is the connective tissue that determines whether the overall experience feels polished or rough. And selective attention makes that connective tissue nearly invisible on early viewings.
By the third or fourth viewing of the same footage, the peaks stopped demanding my attention. I had already seen them. My brain, having confirmed that the good moments were indeed good, released its grip on them and allowed my eyes to wander into the spaces between. That is where the real work was.
Defense Mechanism Two: Narrative Smoothing
The second bias is more insidious because it operates on the narrative level. Your brain does not just filter what you see — it constructs a story about what happened, and then it edits your perception to fit that story.
If the story is “that went well,” your brain will find evidence to support it and minimize evidence that contradicts it. If the story is “that was a disaster,” the same process works in reverse. Either way, you are not seeing the performance. You are seeing a performance that has been edited to fit a predetermined narrative.
I caught this happening most clearly when I compared my first-viewing notes to my fourth-viewing notes for the same recording. For a show I had done at a technology conference in Graz, my first-viewing notes said: “Strong opening, audience was with me from the start.” My fourth-viewing notes, for the exact same opening, said: “Opening has dead air at 0:45 when I’m setting up the first effect. Three people in the front row check their phones. Energy dips until the first audience reaction at 1:20.”
These are not contradictory observations. The opening was strong in the sense that the audience eventually engaged and the first effect landed well. But “strong from the start” was a narrative smoothing — my brain had taken the overall positive outcome and projected it backward, erasing the thirty-five seconds of drift that preceded it. The camera showed me that those thirty-five seconds existed. My ego, on the first viewing, had edited them out.
Defense Mechanism Three: Comparison Anchoring
The third bias surprised me when I identified it. I call it comparison anchoring, and it works like this: when you watch your own footage, you unconsciously compare what you see to the worst version of yourself you can imagine, rather than to the best version you aspire to.
The result is that mediocre moments look acceptable. Your posture is stiff, but it is not as stiff as it was six months ago, so your brain categorizes it as “fine.” Your pacing is too fast, but it is not as fast as that time you rushed through an entire routine in three minutes, so your brain categorizes it as “improved.”
The anchor is the wrong reference point. You should be comparing yourself not to your worst past performance but to the standard of performance you are working toward. But the ego, seeking comfort, chooses the more flattering comparison.
I found this bias the hardest to overcome because it masquerades as reasonable self-assessment. “I’ve improved” is a true statement. But “I’ve improved” and “this is where it needs to be” are different claims, and the ego conflates them. Repeated viewing, especially by the fourth and fifth pass, gradually shifts the anchor. You stop comparing to your past self and start seeing the footage against the standard of what a polished performance should actually look like.
Defense Mechanism Four: Technical Tunnel Vision
This one is particular to performers, and especially to magicians. When you watch your own footage, there is a powerful temptation to focus exclusively on the technical execution of the effects. Did the moves go smoothly? Were there any flashes? Did the method hold up?
Technical execution matters, obviously. But it is one dimension of a performance that has many dimensions, and if you spend the entire review session evaluating the technique, you will never see the presentation. You will never notice that your facial expression during a key moment was blank rather than engaged. You will never catch the fact that your script has three unnecessary sentences in the middle of the second effect. You will never see that your body language during the setup contradicts the emotional tone you are trying to establish.
In my early review sessions, my notes were heavily skewed toward technical observations. “Handling at 8:22 was clean.” “Slight angle issue at 14:05.” These are useful notes, but they represent a narrow band of the total available information. As the viewings accumulated and the technical observations became repetitive — I had already noted the angle issue on viewing two, there was nothing new to say about it — my attention was forced to expand into the presentational dimensions. That is when the notes became truly valuable.
The Erosion Timeline
Based on my notebooks, here is roughly how the bias erosion worked across viewings, mapped against my actual notes for a thirty-minute show I performed at a private corporate event in Innsbruck.
Viewing one notes: “Really good energy in the room. Effects landed well. Strong finish. Need to work on the transition between second and third segment.” Four observations, three positive, one mildly critical but vague.
Viewing two notes: “Stumbled on the word ‘extraordinary’ at 4:18 and it threw me for a beat. Middle section dragged slightly. Not sure if audience noticed the angle problem at 22:00.” Five observations, mostly self-critical but unfocused. The stumble — a minor verbal trip that the audience almost certainly did not notice — occupied most of my mental energy.
Viewing three notes: “Hand movements are too contained during effects — contrast with speaking sections is noticeable. Need to maintain more open body language throughout. Vocal energy drops at transitions. The setup for the third effect is too long by about forty seconds — audience attention wanders. Left side of room is less engaged than right side throughout.”
Viewing four notes: “The audience member I bring up for the second effect looks uncomfortable during the first thirty seconds of the interaction. I am giving instructions too quickly and she does not have time to process. Need to slow down the onboarding. The callback to the opening line at minute twenty-two gets almost no reaction — either cut it or rewrite the setup to make the connection clearer. Background music during the third segment is competing with my voice during the quieter moments.”
Viewing five notes: “The overall arc peaks too early. The strongest moment is at the end of the second effect, around minute eighteen, and then the last twelve minutes, while solid, feel like a slow descent rather than a build. Need to restructure the order of effects so the emotional trajectory rises through the end. The audience’s energy at the finish is appreciative but not climactic.”
Look at the progression. The first viewing produced a narrative: it went well. The second produced emotional reactions: I stumbled, it dragged. The third produced technical observations about body language and vocal energy. The fourth produced audience-centered insights about spectator comfort and reaction patterns. The fifth produced structural analysis about the arc and emotional trajectory of the entire performance.
Each layer was invisible until the previous layers had been processed and set aside. You cannot see the forest until you stop reacting to individual trees.
Why This Matters Beyond Magic
The psychology of bias erosion through repeated exposure is not unique to performance review. It operates in every domain where self-assessment is required. The first time you reread your own writing, you see what you meant to write. The third time, you see what you actually wrote. The principle is universal: the self is a biased observer, and the bias does not surrender to a single act of will. It surrenders to repetition.
I started applying the same multi-pass review discipline to my keynote presentations, to written proposals, to any high-stakes communication where the gap between intention and execution could cost me. In every case, the pattern held. The first pass showed me what I wanted to see. The later passes showed me what was there.
The Practical Commitment
I still keep the notebooks. The entries have gotten more efficient — I know what to look for on each viewing, so I waste less time on the early passes. But I have not shortened the number of viewings, because the deeper I go into performance craft, the subtler the issues become, and subtle issues require more patience to surface.
The discipline is not in having the insight. The discipline is in sitting with the same footage long enough for the insight to find you. Your ego will fight you every step of the way. Let it fight. Let it win the first round. By the third round it starts to tire. By the fifth, it steps aside, and you finally see what is there.