SOLIDMAGIC

90% of Everything is Crap.

Crack­ing Ma­gic (1) — In­tro

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There are tons of books and courses out there, even blogs ded­ic­ated to the top­ic of self-or­gan­iz­a­tion. But for the ma­gi­cians, there is­n’t too much on this. In the past years, help­ing oth­er ma­gi­cians cre­ate their acts and shows, one thing has been very prom­in­ently: They don’t seem to be or­gan­ized ma­gic-wise. When they have a show date, then the pan­ic starts. Rush into the ma­gic garbage room, search for the props, de­cide what to per­form, get the stuff to­geth­er and fi­nally head to the loc­a­tion com­pletely ex­hausted. We all know it for years.

concept

An end­less ar­ray of books, eBooks, notes, DVDs, props, tricks, gim­micks and name it pop­u­lates their closets, base­ments and gar­ages. They seem to be lost un­der the pres­sure of the in­form­a­tion over­load. Most of us have already lost track of what we have ac­cu­mu­lated.

Be­cause I know that I will con­tin­ue to help oth­er ma­gi­cians cre­at­ing and put­ting their stuff into prac­tice, I will start this mini-series on the as­pects of get­ting or­gan­ized in ma­gic: How to se­lect ma­ter­i­al, archive it, val­id­ate it, im­prove it, learn it, re­hearse it and fi­nally built it into an act and per­form it.

Here we will go through all the ne­ces­sary steps to get some or­der into the chaos. When you join me (and it only takes a few minutes each day, which you prob­ably would waste on Face­book) you will be sur­prised of your pro­gress with­in the next 30 days.

After that, you should be or­gan­ized, have a clear plan of your act(s) and have all the ne­ces­sary ma­ter­i­al ready to use. And you should have more en­joy­ment with your ma­gic.

This little series is not in­ten­ded for the seasoned pro­fes­sion­als, who ob­vi­ously do have their or­gan­iz­a­tion already. It is aimed at the “help­less” am­a­teur, who has a day job, fam­ily etc. and can­not spend the full time on ma­gic. It is the ul­ti­mate “ma­gi­cian’s hacks series”. A crash course on how to make your ma­gic life easi­er without scar­i­fy­ing the ma­gic­al qual­ity.

What has to be or­gan­ized?
Col­lect­ors usu­ally are or­gan­ized: They know what to col­lect, where to put it and they have their col­lec­tions archived some­how already. No need to tell them what to do. For the caus­al hob­by­ist per­former, things look quite dif­fer­ent. Too much stuff avail­able in the ma­gic mar­ket, too much already bought and ac­quired, too much to sort out. ba­sic­ally, I be­lieve that in get­ting or­gan­ized in ma­gic, one has to think about the fol­low­ing top­ics:

1. se­lect
2. ac­quire
3. val­id­ate
4. archive/store
5. modi­fy
6. prac­tice
7. re­hearse
8. per­form

In my view, it all boils down to build an archive that can be used as eas­ily as an ar­tis­an would use his tool­box . In this archive, there will be sub-cat­egor­ies: lit­er­at­ure, video/audio ma­ter­i­al, moves, tech­niques and props. Ad­di­tion­ally some in­form­a­tion on the ac­tu­al acts or routines con­cern­ing present­a­tion.

In this course, I will cov­er each and every as­pect of that and will give you sug­ges­tions, tips and hacks that will make your life easi­er in no time.

The First Step
Nat­ur­ally, the first step with all change people do in their life is the real­iz­a­tion that such a change is ne­ces­sary. So you will have to ac­know­ledge the fact that your or­gan­iz­a­tion is crappy and you are liv­ing with a ma­gic mess. And you will have to have the de­sire to change that. That is your de­cision, but then you are read­ing this so far and I sup­pose that you plead guilty and have made the de­cision to do the change.

And here is the first sug­ges­tion:
STOP buy­ing any ma­gic (books, ebooks, down­loads, DVD, tricks or whatever) just for now. This does­n’t have to be forever, but only for the time un­til your archive is fin­ished and you have learned the tech­niques to se­lect apro­pri­ate stuff and have your or­gan­iz­a­tion sys­tem in­stalled.

As the Chinese pro­verb says: “You can­not fill a cup that is already full.” Don’t make your cup spill, it is too full already. We need an empty cup in or­der to in­stall some­thing new in there.

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