Aricle
3 Secrets of
Magicians
Dipak Soni
MBA 2007
He can be reached at
dipaksoni3@gmail.com
Magicians have their secrets but they won’t tell. It’s a sworn oath for magicians not to reveal to the audience how a trick is performed. There are 3 secrets though that they have shared all throughout the years.
Here are their 3 secrets.
The first is that some tricks are done through sleight of hand. These are ways with which they skillfully hide an object and make it re-appear. New magicians hide things up their sleeves. These are old tricks and very few use them now.
Sleight of hand requires a lot of practice to master. Beginners of magic use specially created gimmicks to create the illusion. Professional magicians make use of their impressive sleight of hand. It requires a lot of time, patience and hand coordination to fully understand and execute.
The second secret is the art of misdirection. See this blank paper? And as audience looks at the blank paper, he is carefully getting another piece with his other hand. This is misdirection. Another type of misdirection is the kind that doesn’t let the audience see what’s really causing the tricks. You might have seen that a magician has a lot of assistants who also do incredible stuff, but what you didn’t know is that they are helping the magician perform the magic just with their presence.
Another kind of misdirection is the appropriate use of words. For example, a magician will tell you to look at the ‘Empty Box’. We tend to look at the box as empty just because he said it. This causes our mind to wonder when the magician will take a rabbit out of it.
Misdirection takes a lot of practice and lots of time in planning. It requires body coordination (one part of the body doing something, while another is doing something else) and quick thinking. Misdirection is an art and magicians are proud of it.
The third secret is their patter or a magician’s constant talk. Misdirection is achieved mostly because of the patter. The magician will ask you to look at his right hand and as you are looking, you won’t notice what his left hand is doing. This is a really clever way to achieve the illusion that what happens next becomes so magical with the wink of an eye.
Patter usually takes the form of a story, where a magician will tell you of something that happened to him someday. Sometimes it’s so funny that we actually forget to look at what their hands are doing or what their assistants are giving them.
How to Manage Our Time
Jaswinder Singh
MBA 2007
He can be reached at
jaswinder.1947@gmail.co
Managing time means to
organize and prioritize our
time in such a way that we can achieve maximum benefit out of the short time available at our disposal.
“The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words; “I did not have time.” – Franklin Field.
All of us often say “I want to do that, but I don’t have time.”
Learning to manage time is a universal problem faced by employers, employees, students and home managers alike. Everyone complains that there are not enough hours in a day to complete the work.
When we complain about the shortage of time, we often forget that all the great personalities in the world had/have exactly the same number of hours in a day, a month, and a year which we have. Then, why are we not so successful in managing our time as they did?
The essence of time management is to make constructive use of time in the most beneficial way to achieve personal, as well as professional, goals. The results of one’s efforts are directly attributed to the time management skills they develop and employ.
Time management is one of those skills, which no one teaches you in the school, but you have to learn on your own.
Time management is not a device to make you work harder or longer. Rather, it is a means to help you “work smarter” to accomplish your work more efficiently and effectively. Time management should be such that it gives you room for work, rest, leisure and social activities as well.
Given below are a few points that I would like to highlight for managing one’s time effectively.
1. Know your prime time, i.e., it should be the time when you can give your hundred percent. Some people like to work early in the morning and some at night. Always start any important work at this time.
2. Be organized, in whatever you are doing, whether you are at office or at home. You can use calendars; prepare a list of ‘things-to-do’ for long term / each day or week.
3. Plan ahead; find out the time that a particular task is going to take. Consider any activities that can be combined or any big tasks that can be broken into smaller tasks to save time.
4. Have a vision of the broader picture as to why you are doing this, what are your personal and professional goals and whether these are conflicting. Have a positive attitude to take the decision.
5. Set up smart goals which are achievable. Don’t set impossible goals.
6. Avoid procrastination. One simple way to avoid this is, do one thing which you don’t want to do each day. It is a natural human tendency to postpone things for the next day. Know your weak points and overcome them first.
7. 80 / 20 rule; This rule is very important in effective time management. It suggests that, 80% of the work which is not done without focus can give only 20% results, whereas 80% of results can be achieved with 20% of focused work done by managing the time properly.
8. Learn to say ‘no’. Interruptions and demands from an external environment can be obstacle in achieving your goals. You can manage this by diplomatically handling the situation with your friends or relatives, and telling them that you are busy in something without spoiling your relationship with them.
9. Ease your work plan, a little bit and, remember that good time management is not only managing your time in relation to work but it also relates to managing personal time as well. Strike a right balance between the two.
10. The golden rule which should be remembered by everyone is, “Do it right, the first time.” Try to complete the job in the first attempt itself as it will save time for doing another job.