How to Prevent Magic Burnout

We’ve all seen it happen…

You introduce a friend to the fascinating world of magic tricks, and they get HOOKED. Suddenly, they’re pulling out a deck of cards everywhere you go. They’re practicing their double lifts on the bus, perfecting their coin vanishes at work, and busting out their favourite tricks on everyone they meet.

‘There’s no rush,’ you tell them. ‘You’ll burn out!’

But they don’t seem to notice. They carry on practicing magic fanatically… Until a few months down the line, they quit.

This is a common—and worrying—occurrence that happens ALL the time.

People are introduced to the hobby and fall in love at first sight. They stock up on all the equipment they need, and get going. But it all becomes too much for them, and life gets in the way.

In fact, statistics from our research at the Merchant of Magic have shown that almost 70% of total beginners drift away from learning magic within 6 months of ordering their first proper magic trick, book or DVD. The remaining magicians tend to stay studying magic long term (5 years+).

So the question becomes: how do we keep ourselves interested in magic for the first 6 months and beyond without getting ‘burnt out’?

Here are four of the most common mistakes that lead to this problem, and the steps you can take to prevent them from happening to you (or someone you know).

Mistake No.1: Getting too caught up in the big picture

Something that can be overwhelming for new magicians (and cause them to quit) is becoming too obsessed with perfecting their sleight of hand. They might watch a performance by a great card mechanic like Richard Turner, and allow themselves to think ‘I’ll never be that good’.

Some magicians are SO good at what they do that it can be intimidating for new magicians; they’re struggling to make ONE card vanish while other magicians are making TWENTY cards vanish.

I know that this is something I personally found difficult; I would look at all the complex sleights and moves and get frustrated that I was still stuck on more basic ones. Your brain tempts you into thinking you’ll never be good enough—so you should just give up.

The key to avoiding this magic burnout is taking it one step at a time.

If you want to be able to vanish ten cards at once, don’t make that your initial goal. Make your initial goal vanishing ONE card—something much more achievable. Once you’ve got one card down, bump your goal up to TWO cards. Then, make your next goal THREE cards, and so on until you hit your goal of ten.

Breaking your goals down into manageable steps is a great practice for not only magic, but life as a whole. It will help you avoid becoming overwhelmed by the ‘bigger picture’ and focus on making incremental progress.

Mistake No.2: Learning too many magic tricks without perfecting the ones you know

This is another HUGE mistake, and the solution will not only prevent you getting burnt out, but save you a whole bunch of money on magic too.

You see, when somebody first gets into magic, they might learn a simple card trick. Once they’ve finished learning it, they try another one. And another one.

Before you know it, they start buying tricks. They see something that looks cool, so they buy it. Before it’s even arrived in the mail, they buy another one.

They learn tricks after trick, but they don’t ever stop to PERFECT theme. So eventually they end up with a whole pile of magic tricks they don’t really know how to do. They have so much magic that they forget how each trick works. Guess how this makes them feel?

Overwhelmed.

Yep, that key word again. It leads to magic burnout every time..

It can be really tempting to buy trick after trick, but the best thing to do would be to focus on ONE trick at a time and master each one. Once (and only once) you’ve truly mastered each trick can you move onto the next. This will stop you getting swamped with tricks you don’t actually need.

Another way to combat this mistake is make sure that you incorporate these tricks into routines that you perform consistently. The more you perform a group of tricks, the more natural they will feel, and you’ll master them much faster. Plus, you’ll be WAY less likely to forget them.

Mistake No.3: Practice ‘binges’

Here’s another common mistake we see beginner magicians make a lot. When they discover a new technique or trick, they think they need to master it straight away. So they might spend a few hours at a time JUST practicing one single sleight.

This is basically asking for magic burnout to hit you!

If you practice in ‘binges’ you’ll eventually get tired of doing so, and you’ll gradually drift away from magic as a result.

The simple solution is to break your practice sessions up into ‘little and often’ — maybe 30 minutes a day as a starting point.

Mistake No.4: Performing to the same audience… Day in, day out

There’s no quicker way to get bored of performing magic than performing to the same crowd EVERY time you do magic. It’s going to take the excitement out of magic for both you and the audience.

This is unavoidable when you start out learning magic and you only have close friends and family to try your material out on, but as you progress—you really need to start mixing up your audiences.

Performing for new audiences is going to help keep you feeling excited and motivated about your magic as you never know what’s in store or the reactions you might get. Each night is a new night to impress and amaze—you get to experience that ‘WOW’ moment a spectator has when they see great magic for the first time. And that’s a great feeling.

So, in conclusion:

– Don’t stress about perfecting your magic right away. Break your goals down into manageable steps and tackle them one by one.
– Focus on choosing ONE trick and mastering it before you move onto the next one.
– Practice ‘little and often’ rather than in huge chunks.
– Vary your audiences to keep things exciting. I hope you learnt something in this blog post! Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

NEXT:

The 4 Core Magic Tricks You Should Master

Am I Too Old To Start Learning Magic?

Why Close-up Magicians Should Practice BEFORE they Perform

by Dominic Reyes 3 Comments

By Dominic Reyes

One of the most common problems we see holding back close-up magicians is the idea of learning on the job…

The belief that it’s OK to just learn the basics of a few magic tricks, then to go out right away and start performing for the public without any practice. It’s an attitude that magic shops have partly been responsible for. Magic Shops turn over new releases every day, they depend on a stream of magic enthusiasts eagerly buying new self working magic tricks all the time. The process of:

Buy

Play

Perform once or twice,

Buy again…

It’s a cycle, with tricks being sold as consumer items to purchase, play with and perform to your friends in coffee shops or pubs a couple of times, then it’s back to shop again. This way of marketing magic as a ‘past time’ often to a young base of close-up magicians, is fine as a recreational activity, but it’s often packaged as a way of developing as a magician.

Let’s look at the pro’s and cons of this attitude:

Four Reasons why it’s fine to start performing before you have practiced a trick

1) Getting out to perform before you have mastered your material, means you don’t have to view yourself as a hobbyist. You can start calling yourself a ‘pro’ right away and charging people to see your magic.

2) The best real feedback, and an honest response come from the general public.

3) It’s hard to learn the fine tuning, timing and professional touches of a trick without live performance.

4) You’re never going to see these people again, so it doesn’t matter if you give a bad show, or that they think you are a terrible magician, or that ‘live’ magicians in general are not very good. You don’t have any duty or debt to represent magicians in general. You can practice and walk away, so really there is no risk to you.

YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT

Why it’s best to practice your material BEFORE performing to the public.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying magic as a hobby. Not everyone wants to go out and perform to the public. That’s fine, and for many people, it’s the best option for them to get the most out of magic. We don’t all need or want to be performers.

The danger of the amature is that:

The less you know, the less unsure you are , and the happier you are to appear a professional. ‘The foolish don’t not know that they do not know…’

It’s so easy to sit around playing with magic tricks with your friends, then decide to print some business cards, grab a few simple magic tricks, and to get out and call yourself a magician. Often the result, unless your real skill is a dynamic, interesting personality (Which is something you HAVE mastered over time) is that you will present your magic, at very best, in an AVERAGE generic and unpolished way. There’s no WORK behind it. It’s generic, and can be copied by the next magician that visited the same magic shop as you..

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I’m often asked: How can I learn all the finer points of a trick before I’ve had experience?

Yes, I agree with magicians that say that you can only really learn the finer points of a presentation through performance. I find that too. However, that doesn’t mean a process of practice, rehearsal, and adjustment shouldn’t take place first. Practice has two main stages:

Practice of the mechanics, and timing.
Rehearsal of the presentation

Many magicians who fail to develop the patter, eye-contact, gestures, and timing that a polished routine demands, have often skipped REHEARSE stage. That means they just go through the mechanics, but stops at the ‘acting’ part of the preparation. They find they freeze up when in-front of a live audience, or they forget their words etc. This freezing, also happens when magicians try to perform a trick they have not worked on, in a live busy environment.

Look at the rest of show business.. Plays, Movies, everything… Look at the magicians that are successful: Dynamo, Derren Brown, Blaine, Copperfield.. You will find distinct, focused practice at the core of their work. Skill is developed, then their act is rehearsed and refined. ONLY then, will live performance continue the development. Doing less than that and you are like a cheap generic DJ that just presses start on a series of playlists. Anyone can do that… Don’t be just ANYONE.

Your first live performances CONTINUE your practice, rather than replace it.

You have responsibilities to everyone in magic

If you think you can perform half mastered tricks to the public, and that it doesn’t matter if you mess up, because you don’t know the people. Think about the impression you leave. You might not see those people again, but they WILL remember YOU. They will also tell their friends about you. That’s called reputation. Don’t build a bad reputation first, then work to fix it…

You set your audience’s expectations for future close-up magicians. Don’t be the embarrassing guy that just turns up and does some fumbled, unpolished magic.. Be the magician and really impress them with THE BEST YOU CAN DO.

I would no more recommend that at musician pick up a guitar in a bar, and play songs badly all night, than I would suggest that a close-up magician practice new material to the public without the work they should put in PREPARING their material and performance. Think about the impression you are giving and how you represent the magic community.

How can you know when you are ready to become a magician for hire?

Dominic Reyes – Magiens Verden Magazine Interview – Magic Practice

Magic Tricks Gone Wrong – Mistakes in Magic

Magic Trick Skill Levels Vs. Effort Levels

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

I’m often asked about the skill level of different magic tricks the MoM sell. I usually give a brief summery of the technical moves, and try to label it as Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. That satisfies the questioner, but it secretly annoys me for this reason:

You already know this, but anyway… As with all magic tricks that use sleight of hand, it’s going to need a commitment from you to put in regular practice over a long period of time. It’s a ‘project’ for you rather than a quick fix trick to play with.

Sometimes, when people ask ‘How difficult is it?’ they really mean ‘Will this require any effort from me?’

It involves holding a coin or some playing cards and slowly repeating a series of moves, over and over again until it becomes smooth and second nature. The movements are easy as long as you can hold a coin or some cards in your hand. No trick or technique is difficult to do, IF you do it over and over again until it’s second nature. It’s all about deciding you are prepared to give it consistent, regular attention to drill the methods.

I’ve found the key for building up speed is to slow it right down during the practice drill phase. Slower the better. Allow speed to develop all by itself. Slow means that you will hardwire the best technique right from the start.

As far as giving up… The enemy of practice is ‘choice’. Most practice effort ends before it gets results because people jump to something else instead.

The answer may be tocommit to just ONE item for a period of time as you drill it. Just pick one thing you REALLY want to learn and set that as a goal. Then drill it (perhaps 20 times, twice a day, every day for 20 days, then assess and repeat)

There’s no getting around the fact that stuff like this is skill development. It takes effort and time, but the rewards and feeling of excitment as you develop, makes it totally worth it.

If you would like to learn more about this, there’s a free ebook on magic practice here

Image source : Joshua Podek

I highly recommend you read this post on motivation and effort