I learned about timing the hard way, the way I seem to learn most things in magic: by doing it wrong and then spending a long time figuring out why.
The routine was one I performed at a corporate event in Graz. The effect was clear and visual — something the audience could see happening, something unmistakable. I had a moment scripted in which I would speak a particular word, and at that word, the effect would become visible. The word was the cause. The effect was the consequence. Or at least, that was the plan.
In performance, the word came a beat too early. Not a full second early. Maybe half a second. I said the word, and then the effect happened. In my mind, the two were synchronized. In the audience’s experience, they were not. The word happened, a gap opened, and then the effect happened. And in that gap — in that fraction of a second between the stated cause and the visible effect — something crucial was lost.
The audience reacted. They were surprised. The effect was strong enough to generate a response on its own. But the response had a quality I did not want: it was reactive rather than transported. They said “Oh!” in the way you say “Oh!” when you see something unexpected. Not “Oh!” in the way you say “Oh!” when something inevitable arrives. The word that should have been the cause was just a word that preceded the effect. The cause and the effect were not connected. They were adjacent.
The Principle of Synchronization
The distinction between connected and adjacent is the entire lesson, and it took me months to understand it fully. Derren Brown discusses cause in magic extensively in Absolute Magic, and McCabe builds on related principles in his scripting framework. The shared insight is this: the audience’s mind is constantly seeking causal connections. When something impossible happens, the mind does not simply register the impossibility. It searches for a reason. It looks for the cause. And it will accept almost any cause — no matter how irrational — if that cause occurs at precisely the right moment.
The right moment is the moment of the effect.
Not before. Not after. At.
If you snap your fingers and the card changes at the exact instant of the snap, the audience’s causal reasoning connects the two events. The snap caused the change. This is not rational. Nobody believes that snapping fingers changes physical reality. But the simultaneity creates an irresistible causal connection in the mind. The brain processes simultaneous events as causally linked. This is not a magic principle. This is a cognitive principle — one that psychologists have studied extensively and that operates in every domain of human perception.
If you snap your fingers and the card changes a beat later, the connection breaks. The snap was a snap. The change was a change. They happened near each other but not together. The brain does not link them causally. And without that causal link, the effect becomes methodless — an impossibility without even a fictional cause. Which sounds like it should be more impressive but is actually less impressive, because the mind without a cause to hold onto defaults to method-seeking. “How did you do that?” replaces “What just happened?”
The False Cause
I use the term “false cause” not in the sense of deception but in the sense of theatrical convention. A false cause is the performer’s declared reason for the magical event. It is the snap of fingers, the wave of the hand, the spoken word, the blown breath, the magical gesture — whatever the performer presents as the trigger for the impossible.
The false cause is not real. We all know this. The audience knows this. Nobody in a corporate conference room in Austria actually believes that snapping fingers causes reality to change. But the false cause serves an essential theatrical function: it provides a narrative anchor for the experience. It gives the audience a “because.” The card changed because I snapped my fingers. The thought was revealed because I concentrated. The object transformed because I spoke the word.
Without a false cause, the effect hangs in a narrative vacuum. Something happened, but nothing caused it. This is profoundly unsatisfying to the human mind, which is built to seek causality in every experience. An uncaused event is not magical. It is merely confusing. And confusion is the enemy of wonder.
Brown makes this point beautifully: the magic lives in the cause, not the effect. The effect is what the audience sees. The cause is what the audience feels. And if the cause is absent or poorly timed, the feeling is absent too. The experience collapses from wonder into puzzlement.
Timing Experiments
After the incident in Graz, I became obsessive about timing. I practiced synchronizing my false causes with my effects the way a musician practices synchronizing downbeats with chord changes — with the understanding that milliseconds matter.
In my hotel room — always hotel rooms, the endless succession of temporary workspaces that my consulting career provides and my magic practice demands — I set up a mirror and ran my routines with a focus exclusively on the timing of the false cause. I was not practicing the method. I was not practicing the script. I was practicing the moment.
Snap… change. Were they simultaneous? Run it again. Snap… change. Still a gap. Run it again. Snap-change. Simultaneous. That is the feeling. That is the synchronization. Do it again. And again. And again.
I discovered that different types of false causes have different timing requirements. A physical gesture — a snap, a wave, a touch — must be precisely simultaneous with the visible effect. Even a fraction of a second of gap destroys the connection. Physical causes are the most demanding because the audience processes visual-to-visual simultaneity with extreme precision.
A spoken word as a false cause has slightly more flexibility. The word can begin a fraction of a second before the effect becomes visible, because the audience processes spoken language more slowly than visual information. The word is still being processed when the effect appears, and the mind connects them. But the word must not end before the effect appears. If the word is complete and the effect has not yet happened, the gap is perceived and the causal link breaks.
A question — “Can you feel that?” or “Did you see that?” — is the most forgiving false cause, because a question directs attention inward. The audience member hearing the question turns their attention to their own experience for a moment, and in that moment, the effect becomes visible. The question provides both a false cause (“the feeling caused the change”) and a cognitive redirect (the audience is thinking about their feeling rather than analyzing the visual).
I experimented with all three types across my working routines and found that each routine had an optimal false cause type. Some effects worked best with a physical trigger. Others worked best with a spoken word. A few worked best with no explicit false cause at all — just a moment of silence during which the effect appeared, as if it happened on its own. The absence of a false cause can itself be a powerful choice, but only when the narrative framing has already established a context in which the effect “should” happen. The cause, in these cases, is the context itself.
The Corporate Keynote Challenge
Timing false causes in a corporate keynote presents a specific challenge that I did not encounter in my earlier, less structured performances: the business content creates expectations about what happens next.
In a magic show, the audience expects magical moments. They are primed for them. When a false cause arrives — a snap of fingers, a dramatic gesture — the audience is already in the mode of expecting impossibility. The false cause confirms the expectation and provides timing.
In a keynote, the audience is not expecting magical moments. They are expecting business content. When a magical effect appears, it is a surprise — which is one of the great strengths of using magic in keynotes. But the false cause must be integrated into the business content, not imported from the magic show format.
A snap of fingers in a boardroom feels theatrical in a way that undermines the keynote context. The audience shifts from “this is a business talk with something unusual” to “this is a magic show in a business setting.” The snap signals the magic show, and the signal creates the analytical distance that I am trying to avoid.
Instead, I use spoken false causes drawn from the business content. “When we make a decision, the future changes.” And at the word “changes,” the effect becomes visible. The false cause is not a magical gesture. It is a business insight. The cause and the effect are linked not by theatrical convention but by thematic resonance. The audience connects them not because they expect magic but because the language made the connection feel natural.
This integration required me to rewrite my scripts so that the false cause — the word or phrase that coincides with the effect — is also a meaningful statement within the business content. It serves two functions simultaneously: it is the culmination of a conceptual point, and it is the trigger for the magical event. The audience experiences both functions at once and does not separate them.
The timing is harder. In a magic show, you control the pacing completely. You can time the snap to the millisecond. In a keynote, the pacing includes audience reactions, spontaneous moments, questions, laughter — all of which can shift the timing of the false cause. I have learned to build flexibility into my scripts, creating multiple potential moments where the false cause can land, so that I can choose the right one in real time based on the flow of the keynote.
The Rehearsal Process
Synchronizing false causes with effects is a specific skill that requires specific practice. It is not the same as practicing the method or practicing the script. It is practicing the moment where the two converge.
My rehearsal process for this is straightforward but time-intensive. I run the routine from the point just before the false cause to the point just after the effect. Over and over. Not the whole routine. Just the transition. Just the synchronization. I focus on making the cause and the effect feel like one event rather than two sequential events.
The test is whether I can perceive a gap. If I can perceive a gap between the cause and the effect, the audience will perceive it too, probably more acutely. If the cause and the effect merge into a single experiential moment, the audience will perceive them as causally linked, and the magic will feel caused rather than uncaused.
I also practice the false cause with different emotional registers. The same word, spoken with different emphasis, creates different timing. A word spoken with finality — “changes.” — creates a sharp, terminal synchronization point. The same word spoken with momentum — “changes—” — creates a flowing synchronization that connects to what comes after. The emotional register of the false cause affects how the audience processes the timing, which affects whether the causal link is established.
This level of detail may seem excessive. I thought so too, until I experienced the difference between a false cause that connects and one that does not. The difference is not subtle. It is the difference between an audience that experiences wonder and an audience that experiences surprise. Wonder lingers. Surprise dissipates. And the difference between them is often measured in fractions of a second.
The Deeper Lesson
The principle of false cause timing extends beyond the specific moments of magical effects. It extends to every moment in a performance where you want the audience to connect a cause with a consequence.
When you tell a story and want the audience to feel that the climax was inevitable, the narrative cause must be established at the right moment. Too early and the connection fades. Too late and the climax feels random. The same principle of synchronization applies.
When you make a joke and want the audience to connect the setup with the punchline, the timing must be precise. The punchline must arrive at the moment the setup is still active in the audience’s mind. This is why comedians are obsessive about timing — they understand intuitively what magic performers must learn explicitly.
And when you deliver a business insight and want the audience to feel that the insight is meaningful, the evidence and the conclusion must be synchronized. Present the evidence too early and the conclusion feels disconnected. Present the evidence too late and the conclusion feels unsupported.
Timing the false cause is not a magic-specific skill. It is a communication skill. It is the skill of synchronizing cause and effect so that the audience’s mind connects them automatically, effortlessly, inevitably.
I learned this from a half-second gap at a corporate event in Graz, where a word came too early and wonder became surprise. I practice it in hotel rooms across Austria, snapping and speaking and synchronizing until the two events become one. And I apply it not just in my magic routines but in every aspect of my keynotes, because the principle is universal: timing determines whether the audience connects or merely observes.
The cause must arrive at the moment of the effect. Not before. Not after. At. This is the rule. And the rule, simple as it is, takes a lifetime to master.