In the previous post, I wrote about the importance of actively searching for flaws in your own work. The “slip is showing” mindset. The discipline of asking “what is wrong with this?” before asking “how good is this?” I stand by all of it.
But there is a trap on the other side of the spectrum, and I walked straight into it.
About two years into my performing life, after I had adopted the practice of rigorous self-assessment, I hit a stretch where performing became genuinely unpleasant. Not because the shows were going badly — they were going about the same as always, some good, some average, none disastrous. The shows had not changed. My relationship to the shows had changed.
I had become so focused on finding flaws that I could no longer enjoy performing. Every show was followed by a mental autopsy that left me feeling deflated and inadequate. I would perform a solid set at a corporate event in Vienna, receive warm applause, hear positive feedback from the organizer, and then spend the drive home cataloguing every moment that could have been better. By the time I reached my apartment, the show that the audience had enjoyed had been mentally rewritten as a litany of failures.
I was not becoming a better performer. I was becoming a depressed one.
The Overcorrection
This is what happens when honest self-assessment crosses the line into self-destruction. The line is not always obvious, and I crossed it without realizing it for several months.
The symptoms were clear in retrospect. I started dreading shows instead of looking forward to them. I started second-guessing material I had performed successfully dozens of times. I started rehearsing with a tightness in my chest that was not stage fright — it was the anticipation of the post-show critique session where I would inevitably discover that I was not good enough.
The most insidious symptom was this: I stopped taking creative risks. When every experiment, every new bit of material, every spontaneous deviation from the script would be subjected to harsh post-show analysis, the rational response was to stop experimenting. Stick to what works. Do not try anything new. New material creates new opportunities for failure, and failure, under the regime I had built, was not a learning opportunity — it was evidence of inadequacy.
Ralphie May, in his masterclass on stand-up comedy, talks about the importance of building your own success. His philosophy is fundamentally constructive — you learn from bombing, you get up and do it again, you treat failure as data and keep moving forward. That forward momentum is essential. When self-critique becomes a weight that stops you from moving forward, it has stopped serving its purpose. It has become the problem it was supposed to solve.
I needed to find a way to be honest about my weaknesses without being crushed by them.
Why the Sandwich Does Not Work
Before I describe what eventually worked, let me address the approach that did not work.
The “sandwich” technique — also called the “compliment sandwich” — is the standard advice for giving feedback. Start with something positive. Then deliver the critique. Then end with something positive. Positive-negative-positive.
I tried applying this to my self-assessment. I would start by identifying something that went well. Then I would note the problems. Then I would end with an affirmation. It felt artificial from the first attempt, and it continued to feel artificial every time I tried it.
The reason the sandwich does not work for self-critique is that the positive bookends feel hollow when you are the one providing them. When a mentor or teacher gives you a compliment sandwich, the positive elements feel genuine because they come from someone else’s perspective. When you give yourself a compliment sandwich, you know you are just buttering yourself up before the hit. The ego is not fooled by its own manipulation.
More fundamentally, the sandwich technique is a delivery mechanism. It is about how you package feedback, not about the quality of the feedback itself. A compliment sandwich containing vague positives and a vague negative is still vague. “Your opening was strong, but the middle section needs work, and your closing was great” tells you almost nothing actionable. It is three opinions packaged nicely. It generates no specific improvement.
The Framework That Works
What I eventually developed — through trial, error, and a significant period of overcorrecting in both directions — is a framework for self-assessment based on three principles. The notes I give myself must be specific, actionable, and forward-looking.
Specific means the observation identifies a precise moment, behavior, or outcome. Not “the middle section was weak” but “the transition between routines two and three had a four-second gap where I was silently moving props and the audience’s attention drifted.” Not “I need to work on my pacing” but “the reveal in the mentalism piece happened too quickly — I gave the audience approximately one second to process the impossibility before I started speaking again.”
Specificity accomplishes two things. First, it makes the observation verifiable. I can check whether the four-second gap existed by watching the recording. I can measure whether one second is an accurate description of the post-reveal pause. Verifiable observations are honest observations — they are not colored by mood or self-image. Second, specificity makes the observation contained. A vague criticism like “the middle was weak” feels like an indictment of a large portion of the show. A specific observation about a four-second transition gap feels manageable. It is one problem, in one place, with a clear scope.
Actionable means the observation leads directly to something I can do differently. This is where most self-critique breaks down. We are good at identifying problems. We are terrible at generating solutions.
“The transition had a four-second gap” is specific but not yet actionable. Actionable would be: “Write a callback line that connects the end of routine two to the beginning of routine three, and rehearse it until it fills the transition naturally.” Or: “Restructure the prop handling so that the materials for routine three are pre-positioned, eliminating the dead time.”
The requirement for actionability is also a guard against spiraling. When every observation must be paired with a concrete next step, the critique stays constructive. It is hard to descend into existential despair about your performing abilities when the note you have written says “add a two-second pause after the reveal and make eye contact with someone in the second row.” That is a task, not an identity crisis.
Forward-looking means the observation is about the next performance, not about the past one. This is the most important of the three principles, and the one that finally broke me out of the destructive self-critique cycle.
The show is over. What happened, happened. The audience experienced what they experienced. I cannot go back and add the pause I forgot or rewrite the transition I fumbled. The only value in analyzing the past performance is to improve the future one. Every note I write must be oriented toward next time.
“The transition had a four-second gap” becomes “next show: fill the transition between routines two and three with the callback line, practiced at rehearsal.” The focus shifts from what went wrong to what will go right. From deficiency to improvement. From “I failed” to “I know what to do differently.”
This temporal shift — from past to future — is what makes the difference between critique that paralyzes and critique that propels.
The Three-Note Rule
One additional constraint that I adopted, which sounds arbitrary but has been transformative: after each show, I limit myself to three notes.
Not three pages. Not three categories. Three specific, actionable, forward-looking observations.
This constraint serves multiple purposes. First, it forces prioritization. After any performance, there are potentially dozens of things that could be improved. Three notes means I have to identify the three most impactful improvements — the ones that will make the biggest difference in the next show. This prevents the overwhelming feeling of everything-needs-to-be-fixed that characterized my worst period of self-critique.
Second, it makes the improvement work manageable. Three things to work on before the next show is achievable. Thirty things is paralyzing. When I sit down to rehearse, I know exactly what I am focusing on. Not everything. Three things.
Third, it preserves a sense of progress. When I address three specific issues and they are measurably better in the next performance, I experience the motivating effect of visible improvement. When I try to address thirty issues simultaneously and see marginal improvement across all of them, I feel like I am not getting anywhere.
The three-note rule also has a built-in mechanism for handling recurring issues. If the same observation appears in my notes across multiple shows, it rises in priority naturally. A transition problem that shows up in my three notes once might be a situational issue. A transition problem that shows up five times is a structural issue that needs dedicated rehearsal time. The repetition itself signals importance without requiring me to track or rank every observation.
Separating Identity from Performance
The deepest shift in my approach to self-critique was learning to separate my identity from my performance. This sounds like a self-help platitude, and I apologize for that. But it is genuinely the thing that made the difference between destructive and constructive self-assessment.
When I was in the overcorrection phase, my self-critique was not really about my performances. It was about me. Every flaw I found in a show was evidence that I was not good enough. Every rushed moment, every dead spot, every missed beat was a referendum on my worth as a performer. The critique was not “this moment needs work” — it was “I am the kind of performer who creates moments like this.”
That framing is psychologically devastating because it makes every observation personal. You cannot fix “being the kind of performer who creates dead spots.” That is an identity statement, and identity statements are resistant to change. But you can fix a specific dead spot in a specific transition, and when you do, the identity statement quietly becomes less true.
Ken Weber writes about systematic improvement — the idea that performance quality is built through the accumulation of small, specific refinements over time. That framing — small, specific, accumulated — is the opposite of the identity-based framing. It says: you are not trying to become a different kind of performer. You are trying to make this transition better, and that pacing tighter, and this reveal more impactful. Each improvement is a discrete task, not a personality transplant.
When I frame my self-critique as a series of discrete tasks — three specific notes, each actionable, each forward-looking — the emotional weight drops dramatically. I am not confronting my fundamental inadequacy. I am working on three things before the next show. That is manageable. That is even enjoyable, in the way that any concrete project with a clear goal can be enjoyable.
The Practice of Self-Notes
Here is what my post-show note-taking looks like now, stripped of everything that does not work and distilled to what does.
I give myself ten minutes after the show. Not immediately after — I allow the initial emotional response to settle, whether it is positive or negative. Ten minutes of putting props away, thanking the organizer, having a glass of water. Enough time for the adrenaline to subside but not enough for the details to fade.
Then I open my notes app and write three observations. Each one follows the same format: What happened. What I will do differently. When I will rehearse it.
A real example from a show in Graz last year: “Reveal in routine three was undercut by my own narration — I started explaining the significance before the audience had processed the impossibility. Next show: add a three-count silent hold after the reveal before speaking. Rehearse Tuesday.”
Another: “Callback to the opening in the closing routine was too subtle — audience did not connect the reference. Next show: make the callback more explicit by echoing the exact phrase from the opening. Rehearse Tuesday with full run-through of opening and closing back to back.”
And a third: “Energy dropped noticeably during the volunteer selection in routine two — I was scanning the audience for too long, which created dead time. Next show: pre-select the volunteer area during the opening routine so the selection is faster. Rehearse the selection timing Wednesday.”
Three notes. Specific. Actionable. Forward-looking. Total time: five minutes.
That is it. That is the entire self-critique process. Not an hour of agonizing. Not a comprehensive inventory of every flaw. Three notes that point me toward three concrete improvements, with rehearsal dates attached.
The Confidence That Comes from Structure
Here is the thing that surprised me most about this approach: it actually builds confidence rather than eroding it.
When my self-critique was vague and emotional — “that was not great, I need to be better” — the resulting feeling was helplessness. I knew something was wrong but did not know what to do about it. The gap between where I was and where I wanted to be felt enormous and undefined.
When my self-critique is specific and structured — “these three things, fixed by next Tuesday” — the resulting feeling is competence. I have identified the problems. I have generated solutions. I have a plan. The gap between where I am and where I want to be has been reduced to three concrete tasks, each of which I know how to complete.
The paradox of honest self-assessment is that it becomes less threatening when it is more rigorous. Vague self-criticism is terrifying because it is unbounded — “I need to be better” has no endpoint, no completion criteria, no measurable progress. Specific self-assessment is manageable because it is bounded — “fix this transition, slow this reveal, sharpen this callback” has a clear finish line.
And when you cross that finish line — when the transition is smooth and the reveal lands and the callback connects — you have earned a genuine moment of confidence. Not the fragile confidence that comes from positive audience feedback that you half-suspect is politeness. The solid confidence that comes from identifying a problem, solving it, and seeing the solution work.
That is the kind of confidence that sustained critique cannot destroy, because it was built on evidence, not on hope.
The Balance
I do not have this perfectly figured out. There are still shows after which I feel the pull of the old destructive patterns. There are still moments when a specific observation spirals into a general feeling of inadequacy. There are still nights when I wish I could just enjoy the positive feedback and stop looking for problems.
But the framework holds. Specific. Actionable. Forward-looking. Three notes. Rehearsal dates. Move on.
The balance between honest critique and maintaining confidence is not a state you achieve once. It is a practice you return to, show after show, note after note. Some days the balance tips toward too much kindness and you miss real problems. Some days it tips toward too much harshness and you lose motivation. The framework pulls you back to center.
The point is not to be perfectly calibrated. The point is to have a system that trends toward improvement without trending toward despair. A system that finds flaws without making you feel flawed. A system that acknowledges weakness without becoming weak.
Three notes. Move forward.
That is the whole thing.