Does “More” Do More Harm Than Good?
You know the feeling? You see a new trick, and instantly you think: I need that. You buy it, watch the explanation, practise a bit—and then it ends up in the drawer, alongside the other fifty you were going to show “someday.”
That was me for years. My collection grew, but I didn’t really get any better—I just had more stuff.
This is one of the most interesting observations I’ve made in forty years: the magicians with the biggest collections are rarely the most captivating performers. They have hundreds of effects—and not a single one that truly gets under your skin.
Psychologists call this the “Paradox of Choice”—psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote an entire book about it. The more options we have, the harder it is to decide, the less we invest in any single option, and the more dissatisfied we end up. This applies to jam in the supermarket just as much as to tricks in our collection.
Behind it lies something we all recognise: the collector’s mentality. When new things keep coming in, there’s no time to truly master anything. We scratch the surface of everything and dive deep into nothing. We know how many tricks work, but we don’t yet understand why they work—and the audience feels the difference.
People can’t put it into words, but they notice when something’s missing. The performance is fine, but it doesn’t truly move them.
Every truly great magician I’ve ever met had something in common: a manageable repertoire. Five tricks, maybe ten. But each one was perfect—not just technically, but in everything: the timing, the presentation, the understanding of what happens inside the spectator. Depth over breadth, and that has always been the better path.
I sometimes ask myself: How many tricks can I really do? Not: how many do I know—but how many could I perform right now, and they would actually move someone? The answer is sobering, even after forty years. But it’s also liberating.
Until next time,
Alexander