I'm sure that this doesn't apply to you directly, but it's an observation that I sometimes see amongst magicians. As people start to learn magic and develop their skills, they can develop a strange view about what the public understands about magic, and what will fool them.

The more magicians study magic, the more they grow to think that the public is stupid.

Have you ever a magician say:

"Nobody ever catches me when I do this.."

"Your spectators will not notice this…"

Become aware of these sayings, and you will start to hear them more and more as you talk to magicians. You will also start to see them mentioned in magic trick instructions (Usually during a weak point in a magic tricks method).

I have no idea why this happens, it could just be human nature. As magicians gain experience and knowledge, it's easy for them to develop a feeling of self importance, and an overly relaxed attitude about the observational skills of other people.

One of the biggest pitfalls to becoming a successful magician is fooling yourself that your audiences doesn't have the intelligence or attention to detail to spot parts of the mechanics used in magic tricks. The temptation is to ignore the small details. It's as if magicians feel that they have superhuman perception that 'normal people' don't have. Trust me, if you can spot the discrepancy or error in a magic trick that you have recorded in performance and watched back, some of your spectators will also notice it. They may not point it out, or become distracted by the flow of the trick and move on, but they HAVE noticed it.

On the whole, people are very clever. A group can have intelligence that is greater than the individuals that make up that group. Assume your audience is highly educated, clever, and very hard to fool. Find the weak points in the method of every magic trick you perform, and work on changing them to remove the faults. It doesn't matter how small or hard to spot a fault in a magic trick may be. If there are clues to the secret of a magic trick, someone WILL spot them eventually and call you out. Your goal is to tweak each magic trick to reduce that chance as much as possible. Anything less than that is taking a shortcut and compromising your potential to perform the trick as best as you possibly can.