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I have been out of all things magic things for the last 2 months due to bad stuff going on. Just before things got turned upside down, I was starting to practice for 2 to 3 hours a day but found that I wasn't quite sure what I should focus on specifically and how I should break up my time. I found that there wasn't enough time to go over all my favoured effects in detail and now I am getting back into practising, I also wondered what else I should be doing to improve my skills (e.g. practising method consistency, learning new effects, running order, scripting/running order).

Are there any useful resources available for realistic effective practice advice, time management and maximising the results?

Do any of you have any useful tips?

Hi Dave,

Good to see you back.

Have you ever thought of action planning your time. look at what you want to achieve, what you need to do to achieve it and put a time scale on it. Documenting it means you can measure your progress and make any alterations as necessary. This is simplifying it a lkot but I am sure you will get the idea.

Nic

Hi Dave,

First, you need to differentiate between practice and rehersal, then you need a structure to hang them off.

Practice is when you are first learning a routine. It mainly consists of comitting the routine to memory, and includes any technical requirements (sleights, etc).

Once the routine is comitted to memory, you can move on to the next phase, rehersal.

Rehersal is a full performance of the routine, complete with patter. In this, you are visualising the audience and their reactions. It involves a bit of imagination and visualisation.

Rehersal Structure and Routining: I'm primarily a card man, so most of my examples will stem from that field.

Start to develop and act (where an 'act' is defined as a series of routines, with a steadily rising dramatic curve). Keep it small at first, just an opener and a closer. As you becomer more proficient, you can add routines into your act. Using this approach can sometimes pay dividends as you discover routines that set-up other routines (e.g. one routine may finish with a card reversed in the deck, another routine may require starting with a card reversed in the deck).

A good source for all of the above is Strong Magic (Darwin Ortiz), currently available from all good magic booksellers.

Nic Castle wrote:Hi Dave,

Good to see you back.

Have you ever thought of action planning your time. look at what you want to achieve, what you need to do to achieve it and put a time scale on it. Documenting it means you can measure your progress and make any alterations as necessary. This is simplifying it a lkot but I am sure you will get the idea.

Nic

Cheers, Nic! I haven't stopped reading in that time though a lot less frequently.

Based on a desire for continual improvement and gaining experience, my on-going aims are:
- Put together a few 10 minutes sets for table hopping
- Increase my impromptu repertoire and polish it
- To learn new effects to replace weaker ones in my sets
- To ensure I'm improving my knowledge and handling

I wrote up a basic day to day plan which varied to ensure everything I wanted was included but it didn't feel structured enough. I think I'm looking for something to be the equivalent of circuit training for magic, rather than it being a little chaotic and uncertain. While that idea might not sound fun to some, I like knowing I'm not wasting time and I get the sense of satisfaction from knowing I'm working hard to get better at something I love.

While action planning is a good idea, I just find it hard to visualise a clear route. Perhaps, I need to do it in order to refine one...

SpareJoker wrote:Hi Dave,

First, you need to differentiate between practice and rehersal, then you need a structure to hang them off.

Practice is when you are first learning a routine. It mainly consists of comitting the routine to memory, and includes any technical requirements (sleights, etc).

Once the routine is comitted to memory, you can move on to the next phase, rehersal.

Rehersal is a full performance of the routine, complete with patter. In this, you are visualising the audience and their reactions. It involves a bit of imagination and visualisation.

Rehersal Structure and Routining: I'm primarily a card man, so most of my examples will stem from that field.

Start to develop and act (where an 'act' is defined as a series of routines, with a steadily rising dramatic curve). Keep it small at first, just an opener and a closer. As you becomer more proficient, you can add routines into your act. Using this approach can sometimes pay dividends as you discover routines that set-up other routines (e.g. one routine may finish with a card reversed in the deck, another routine may require starting with a card reversed in the deck).

A good source for all of the above is Strong Magic (Darwin Ortiz), currently available from all good magic booksellers.

Considering practice to be separate from rehearsal is a fantastic tip. It makes a lot of sense and instantly made things a lot less muddled in my mind.

If practice is committing effects to memory rather than polishing them, then, as you point out, the polishing happens at the same time as planning their context and that makes it very effective and a better use of time in my mind.

I'm looking "Strong Magic" up as soon as I press Submit!

Cheers both!