For about six months, my show did not get better.
I was performing regularly — corporate keynotes, private events, the occasional conference. I was practicing in hotel rooms most nights. I was reading, studying, reviewing video. And the shows were fine. Audiences responded. Organizers were satisfied. Nobody complained.
But the shows were the same. The material was locked. The delivery was locked. I was performing the same thirty minutes at the same level, show after show, like a machine calibrated once and left to run.
I did not recognize this at first. The consistency felt like mastery. In my consulting world, we would call this operational excellence. The system was functioning as designed.
The problem was that the system was designed for who I had been six months earlier. I had stopped improving.
The Plateau of Comfort
The thing about a plateau is that it feels like solid ground. You are not falling. You are not struggling. You are standing on a level surface, and the view is decent. From up here, you can look down and see where you started, and the distance is impressive. The temptation is to stay.
I stayed for longer than I care to admit. The show worked. Audiences enjoyed it. I was getting booked. And changing things carried risk — if I modified a transition that was working, I might break something functional.
So I played it safe. Same material, same delivery, same response. I told myself consistency was the goal.
It was not the goal. It was the trap.
The Points Game
The thing that broke me out of the trap came from an unlikely source. I came across a masterclass by Ralphie May, the stand-up comedian, in which he described something he called “the points game.”
The concept is simple. Every time you go on stage, you score yourself:
Five points for trying new material. Two points for adding something to existing material — a new line, a new beat, a new moment. One point for rearranging your existing material in a different order.
The target is a minimum of twelve points per set. Over a year at that rate, May argued, you would build thirty minutes of strong new material. Not because of any single brilliant breakthrough, but because of the relentless accumulation of small additions.
What struck me about this system was its psychology. The points game does not ask you to be brilliant. It does not require inspiration. It asks you to try one new thing every time you perform. That is all.
Twelve points per show means you are always combining new material with modifications and rearrangements. The specific mix does not matter. What matters is that you are never performing the same show you performed last time.
When I mapped this onto my own situation, I saw immediately why I had plateaued. I was scoring zero points every show. Zero. I was performing the same material in the same order with the same delivery. No new material. No modifications. No rearrangement. I was a comedian — or in my case, a mentalist-magician — who had stopped writing.
My Adaptation
I adapted the points game for my own context. Since I perform magic and mentalism as part of keynote presentations rather than doing pure comedy sets, the scoring needed slight adjustment:
Five points for introducing a new effect or a new presentational framework for an existing effect. Three points for modifying the scripting of an existing piece — changing how I set it up, altering the story around it, revising the language of the reveal. Two points for changing the structure of the show — reordering effects, adjusting the pacing between segments, modifying the opening or closing. One point for any other deliberate change — a new gesture, a different way of inviting a volunteer, a moment of improvisation.
My target was ten points per performance. Every show had to include at least ten points worth of deliberate experimentation.
The first time I tried this, I felt physically uncomfortable. I had a corporate event in Graz, a familiar venue, a familiar format. I knew exactly how the show was supposed to go. Introducing ten points of change meant deliberately deviating from something that worked, in front of a paying audience.
I did it anyway. I modified the opening — instead of my usual introduction, I started with a question directed at the audience. Three points. I changed the order of two effects in the middle section. Two points. I added a new line during one of the mentalism pieces, a spontaneous observation about the volunteer that I had never scripted. One point. I tried a different closing gesture. One point. I altered the pacing of one transition, slowing it down deliberately. One point. I experimented with using silence instead of narration during one key moment. Two points.
Total: ten points. And the show was different. Not dramatically different — the audience would not have noticed that it was experimental. But I noticed. I could feel the edges of my comfort zone being tested. Some of the changes worked. Some did not. The new opening question fell flat because I did not have a good follow-up planned. The altered pacing in the middle section actually worked better than the original. The silence experiment was powerful — more powerful than the narration it replaced.
After the show, I sat in my car and wrote down what worked, what did not, and what I wanted to try next. This took five minutes. It was the most productive five minutes I had spent on my craft in months.
The Compounding Effect
Here is what I did not expect: the improvements compounded.
After ten shows using the points game, I had attempted roughly a hundred individual modifications. Of those hundred, maybe thirty worked well enough to keep. That meant my show had evolved by thirty small improvements in just ten performances. Some of these improvements interacted with each other in ways I had not anticipated. The silence experiment I tried in Graz, for example, worked so well that it changed the emotional arc of the entire second half of the show. That changed arc made a different closing feel more appropriate, which led me to restructure the ending. One change cascaded into three others.
This is the compounding principle applied to performance. If you improve by just one percent each time you perform, the math works out to something remarkable over time. One percent is almost invisible in any single instance. You would not notice a one-percent improvement between two consecutive shows. But one percent compounded over fifty shows is not fifty percent improvement. It is a fundamentally different show.
I tracked my own self-assessment scores across those first fifty shows of using the points game. My average self-rating across the six dimensions I monitor — technical execution, audience connection, pacing, scripting delivery, stage presence, and emotional impact — went from an average of 6.2 to an average of 7.4. That is a 1.2-point improvement on a 10-point scale. It does not sound like much. But a 7.4-average show feels completely different from a 6.2-average show, to both the performer and the audience.
The One-Improvement Rule
Alongside the points game, I implemented a simpler discipline: after every show, I identify one specific thing to improve before the next show. Just one. Not a list. Not a comprehensive overhaul. One thing.
After a keynote in Vienna, the one thing was: I spoke too quickly during the setup of the second effect. Fix that.
After a conference in Salzburg, the one thing was: I did not make enough eye contact with the right side of the room during the mentalism segment. Fix that.
After a private event in Klagenfurt, the one thing was: the transition between the card piece and the prediction piece was clunky. The audience’s attention drifted during those fifteen seconds. Fix that.
One thing at a time. One repair per show. One upgrade per cycle.
The discipline of choosing just one thing is harder than it sounds. After a show, especially one that went well, your mind wants to move on. You want to bask in the success or prepare for the next engagement. The last thing you want to do is scrutinize the performance and find the single element that was weakest.
But that single element is where your next one percent lives. And if you consistently identify and fix the weakest element after every performance, the cumulative effect is that your weakest points are constantly being elevated. Over time, the floor of your performance rises. And a higher floor means a higher ceiling.
Why Gamification Works
I am a strategy consultant. I have advised companies on gamification — point systems, leaderboards, reward structures. And yet I was not applying any of it to my own practice. I was relying on intrinsic motivation alone, which is powerful but inconsistent. Some days you are fired up. Other days you are tired, or performing for an audience that does not seem responsive, and the motivation to experiment evaporates.
The points game bypasses motivation. It creates a structure that makes experimentation automatic. You do not need to feel inspired to score twelve points. You just need to follow the system.
This is not romantic. It does not match the image of the artist who improves through spontaneous creative breakthroughs. But it matches what I have observed about how real improvement happens: slowly, incrementally, through disciplined repetition of small experiments. Improvement is not a leap. It is a ladder, and each rung is a minor adjustment you chose to make when you could have chosen to stay.
Where I Am Now
I have been using the points game and the one-improvement rule for over a year now. The show I perform today is recognizably the same show I performed a year ago — the basic structure and material have not changed fundamentally. But if you watched the two versions side by side, you would see a different performer. The timing is tighter. The scripting is more precise. The audience interactions are more natural. The emotional arc is more deliberate. Dozens of small improvements have accumulated into a qualitative shift.
I still score myself after every show. Some nights I earn fifteen points. Some nights I barely scrape ten. On the rare occasion that I catch myself scoring zero — falling back into the comfort of performing the familiar show in the familiar way — I know I have slipped back to the plateau.
The points game is not a guarantee of improvement. Some experiments fail. Some changes make things worse. But the system ensures that you are always trying, always testing, always pushing against the edges of what you know. And in a craft where the difference between good and great is measured in minor adjustments, the simple act of trying one new thing every time you perform is the most powerful improvement strategy I have found.
Twelve points per show. One specific improvement after every performance. The math is simple. The discipline is hard. The results compound in ways that surprise you.
That is how you get off the plateau.
One point at a time.