Planning Ahead & Thinking Aloud
Image from http://www.sxc.hu
I’m not one for New Years resolutions but I do believe in planning ahead. It also seems that change is taking place in the magic business whether I plan for it or not. So I really have been thinking long and hard about what the next 12 months will mean to me. Starting with the big one – my job. Well I certainly feel that it’s time to make a change and move away from performing magic in the way that I do now. I want to shift away from close-up magic performed to 600 faceless people and start to add a bit more clarity and definition to the work I do. The aim is to increase the number of people who book “ME” and not me as one of 3 x close up magicians. If I can, I will happily remove close up mix & mingle entirely from what I do. It’s a huge ask because like most professional magicians that’s about 80% of my current workload! So what will I focus on? Well cabaret for one. I need to build and act that works well for the corporate crowd and so current items will need to be dropped or dramatically changed. Also being the self punishing git that I am I have set myself a few boundaries that I will try not to cross. These boundaries eliminate a lot of the standard effects that many professional cabaret performers do and it makes finding material tough. Also I have a a kind of internal gauge that prevents me from doing stuff that just doesn’t fit me – although most material can be tailored to fit. I have already started working on new routines, much of it on the streets during the summer of 2009 and the task is now to carve that into something that is tight enough for the corporate stage.
With the blog I’m finding it hard to write about magic as much as I thought I wanted to – mainly because my focus is less on the tricks and more on the people who do the tricks and how they do them. So I intend to expand the blog into a more general one that covers personal development and productivity. I’m going to be as open as I can about the resources I use and how I use them, with the focus of course being on the business of Magic. I’m also toying with the idea of making all my magic, routines etc, “open source”, so that anyone can use my material in any way they like. I have a number of reasons for this and if I decide to go with it I will outline all those reasons. In addition to the online aspects of what I do I have been thinking about running a short, (2 days), residential course in the summer that will cover facets of being a professional magician that aren’t normally covered. I have a rental property that is normally vacant during August so that would be when I would be thinking about doing this. Again I will add some meat to the bones in the next few months – any comments would be appreciated.
I also want to focus on some other key projects in 2010 including speaking and I have a project lined up that I hope will “go live ” in Late January that will compliment both the speaking and this blog. This isn’t a “magicians only” project but does have links to magic and will hopefully be of interest to everyone.
The backbone of all the things I have lined up for 2010 is writing. This is a hell of a lot tougher than I thought it would be so a primary goal of mine is to increase the volume, (and quality), of the writing that I do. This is going to come down to personal discipline and the blog is a great way to make me do it. The initial target is a post of 350+ words every week for this blog. By this I mean posts that are information and advice, not posts about me, me me. The new project will also require me to write quite a bit of material so the aim there is about 400+ words a week online and additional writing which will hopefully culminate in a book by December 2010 (!). Like I say it will compliment this blog and there will be quite a bit of cross-pollination from one project to the other.
I have a number of personal targets that I’m constantly working on. Health is a big thing for me. I was a professional fitness instructor for a long time and so I feel I have a duty to myself and a creep of mid-life crisis as well. To be honest fitness is as important to me being a magician as all of the more obvious aspects of the business, rarely however do you hear magicians talking about the importance being fit and healthy, so again this will cross over into the blog when I feel it is appropriate. For me it means that I have established a running program that will hopefully result in me completing a marathon in 2010, ( or at least a half marathon). I also have to work on streamlining my life and boosting my finances, both things are linked to my professional life and so I will no doubt be referring to them in the blog over the coming months. You can probably see why the productivity side of things is also so crucial to me and along with early mornings I use a number of techniques to squeeze as much out of my day as a father of 2 who works from home can.
Another key goal of mine for 2010 is to respond and have conversations with those of you who are good enough to get involved. Over the last year I have been pretty crap at getting back to people but the intention is to turn that around.
So why am I telling you all this? Well now it’s out there and I can be held accountable. Ghandi said “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”, and my world is changing and so is yours.
So what are your intentions and how will you make 2010 a meaningful and productive year?
To find out more about planning take a look at Chris Guillebeau’s post. I also used Mind Node to help me picture the various strands of my life as a mind map which is a really powerful tool for any creative project.
Have a spectacular 2010!
