Don’t shoot us yet.
Here’s how you can morally and ethically ‘steal’ magic methods…
Now, this approach doesn’t work every time—but it’s so powerful, it’s worth it.
First of all, let’s suppose you have a desired effect. That’s your ‘problem’—figuring out a method to achieve that effect.
You could sit there and bang your head against the wall, trying to come up with the method on the spot.
Or, you could do this…
- Consume all the potentially relevant ‘raw info dump’ of techniques
Review all the techniques, sleights and methodologies you already have ‘on deck.’ Then, consume NEW techniques, sleights and methodologies. Dump all the raw data into your mind.
- Let it stew
Work on something else. Forget about the problem. Do something else that’s useful but not related.
- Let it stew some more
Don’t force it.
- Eventually, a solution or idea will ‘pop’ into the front of your head
In essence, your subconscious mind has been slowly absorbing all the information you fed it, working on the solution—and you can simply ‘steal’ the solution straight from your subconscious without ever needing to worry about the morality of it.
Now, you might be thinking ‘there’s no way that actually works!’
But it does.
When I went on my creative binge in the Summer of 2020, this kicked in like crazy.
I was reading so many magic books, consuming so much data, and just letting my mind do the real heavy lifting while I sat back and relaxed.
Nearly every day, I would be doing something other than magic—and an idea would pop into the front of my mind. When I would look close at it, I’d realise that it wasn’t a completely alien idea—but rather, it was based on some kind of input or stimulus I had consumed previously.
There’s a copywriter who also took this approach in creating ads. His name was Gary Halbert.
His clients would pay him outrageous fees to write ad copy for them—and they’d expect the very best from him.
What did he do when he got paid to do the work?
He’d sit down, research the client’s needs and do all the ‘prep’ work. Then, he’d…
…do NOTHING!
He would go out and relax on his boat, run little errands, and generally do everything EXCEPT work on the promotion.
The team he worked with would start to get kinda antsy, feeling bad about the fact the client had paid them so much money and they’d created nothing to show for it.
Then, one day, Gary would sit down, grab a writing pad and pen…
…and write non-stop for hours—until he’d crafted the perfect promotion!
His team eventually realised a very important distinction:
The time Gary spent ‘on the boat’ and ‘off the job’ weren’t his way of taking a break from the creative process…
…they were PART of the creative process!
Of course, your mileage may vary.
And I don’t believe you should be taking every day off just to let your mind do its thing.
I subscribe more closely to the attitude Steven Pressfield describes in The War of Art—just showing up every day like a professional, trusting that the subconscious ‘muse’ will feed you inspiration for the current problem you’re trying to solve at some point, but working in the meantime on what you can work on.
Anyway.
Maybe there’s a better way to phrase all this, but it’s getting to be a long email, so I’ll end it here.
Your friend,
Benji