I recently attended a clinic on using magic in presentations and training presented by Ken Jones an army officer, PhD candidate and dang good magician. He opened the class with a presentation of a magic effect performed 4 different ways. It was the classic effect of picking a card and then it is identified by the magician.
All 4 of his presentations interesting. Each of the first 3 had about the same impact interested but expected. They were impressive but not amazing. After all you expect a magician to be able to identify your selected card. But the last presentation blew you away. This time he had someone just think of a card. He was able to draw a picture of it. Before he drew the card, he did not ask the volunteer any questions. Or do anything that could have indicated what the card was. Believe me I not all of them and I was watching. He got it right and the crowd gave and audible gasp. It was amazing. He then explained how he was able to did each one. The techniques went from requiring a lot of technical skill to a simple trick deck you could buy in any magic store. But the last one, the amazing one, required no technical skill. It did not even require him to go to the magic store an buy a trick deck. The technique used was simple. Before the class began he recruited someone to think of a specific card. All he had to do was draw the agreed upon card on a blank piece of paper. It was the easiest, the cheapest. It was the quickest to learn of all of the four methods. And it was the most amazing.
This got me While there are multiple ways to accomplish the same result, we tend to work with some of the most complicated ones. If we want to be amazing we need to trim away all the extraneous things and take the straightest path to the result desired. Simple is usually faster, better and cheaper. If you think like a magician simply is also the most amazing.
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