5 Places You Always Find Great Magic Methods

Methods have compounding interest.

You can maybe think of this like investing in the stock market.

Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it… he who doesn’t… pays it.

I left school ten years ago at 16. Every year I try to put 10% more effort into pursuing the things I love. I do this because it feels doable, and it feels calming. Oh, and there’s lovely compounding interest in pursuing the things you love.

To simplify this, imagine you’re going to put 10% more effort into doing things you love every year, and in the first year, you do ten things you love. In year two, you’ll do 11. By year ten, you’ll do 26 things you love—that’s a total of 136 things, compared to 100 if you’d simply stuck to 10 things each year.

That 10% extra yearly effort resulted in a 36% higher outcome after ten years.

It’s strangely reassuring and mindblowing how such little extra effort each year can lead to such incredible rewards down the line. I think of my friend who’s a Chief Officer on the Celebrity Apex Cruise Ship at 26, and how she always put that extra 10% in every year at school.

And it’ll keep compounding, in ten more years, she’ll have done 150% total more things she loves than if she had never put that 10% in.

I say this as a way to calmly reassure you to not put pressure on yourself, and remind you that small efforts pay off big long term. And I’m also not talking about working harder, I’m only talking about adjusting your efforts away from things you don’t love, towards the things you do.

Pursuing things you love has a compounding interest because every year that you pursue the things you love, the easier they become. More doors open, you meet more people, your talent improves, and you learn how to get the things you want for less. Plus, you get better at recognizing the things you enjoy.

Anyways, back to the magic.

When you talk to a consultant like David Britland, Doug McKenzie, Enrico de la Vega, Paul Kieve and Daniel Garcia… you quickly realise these guys are walking encyclopedias of magic methods.

You listen to them talk and cannot believe the number of methods they can seemingly throw up at any point in time. I think back to when I first got interested in magic and how frustrating it was when everyone around me seemed to know everything. Now it excites me.

What can I learn from these people? Well, here’s the thing. I don’t want to learn methods from these guys. I want to learn how they find methods, how they hold on to them and how they know when to call upon them.

Because that’s the secret to their compounding interest, that’s how they know an impossible amount of methods. It’s because they have spent years getting better at spotting great methods, storing them, finding them, and playing with them.

I bet you already invest time into learning new methods, but do you invest time into methods for finding methods?

I started consulting when I was eighteen and quickly realized I needed to find some shortcuts and invest in methods for finding methods. I needed a cheat sheet, and I needed ways to fake the incredible wealth of knowledge these wiser consultants could throw up daily.

Fridge Magnets

This was one of the first shortcuts I found. A surprising 7/10 times, the object you’re about to spend the day embedding a magnet inside already exists as a purchasable fridge magnet.

Available fridge magnets include M&M’s, Chewed Chewing Gum, Cadbury’s Chocolate, Biscuits and Cookies, Jaffa Cakes, Jammie Dodgers, Dollar Bills, Shrimps, Chunks of Wood, Sushi, KitKat, Toblerone & Bullets.

Movie Magic

You’d be surprised how often we use movie magic techniques on our TV shows, especially on a series like Magic For Humans, which is shot in the back yard of all of the best movie magic studios.

My pro-tip here is to search for videos on special effects and creature effects. Don’t spend too much time on visual effects when the computer is used to generate the effect. However, the line between visual and special effects is closing by the day.

Science Tricks

This channel is a goddam goal mine, and the cost of only ideas is now totally worthwhile purely for this recommendation. Magicians often employ science with zero change in presentation.

The same experiment performed by a magician instead of a scientist is suddenly a miracle. Think about Crush by Eric Ross, which is literally a high school science experiment I actually did, and now it fools everyone.

Magic Shops

SEO magic is the best magic shop on earth for doom scrolling magic tricks. If in doubt, on a job, I will head to SEO. It amazes me how many times great magicians and consultant will bond with me over our secret love of this magic shop no one knows about.

The fact that I knew about SEO magic was quite literally what got me a job with a Vegas magician once who invited me out for a few days consulting when I was 20.

Second Glances

I like to find accounts on Instagram that repost amazing and magical videos. You’ll notice that 50 of my friends follow this account. Names like Troy, Elliot Gerrard, Alexander Hansford, James Galea, Doug McKenzie, Brett Loudermilk, Vinny DePonto, Larry Fong and Franco Pascali.

I define these accounts as second glances. This means while most people will watch and scroll, magic consultants will take a second or third glance. Perhaps the weird optical trick in the video could be used as a method.

Wanna follow the accounts your favourite magicians and consultants follow? Great, go to the accounts they follow and take a look.

The Best Method Is The One That Works.

When you find a solid method, stick with it. Make the goddam trick already.