There is a term for a magician who buys flashy props (the latest marketed ones, usually), strings them together and calls it a show:

A prop magician.

While not a deragatory word, it signifies someone who does not care enough about the craft to understand props are only a means to share the magic with the audience.

The props are not the show.

They’re flashy and they might wow an audience a few times, but there is no lasting impact. The magician will forever be buying new props, never taking the time to master something fundamental.

The common vernacular for this type of behaviour is “flash in the pan.”

The top magicians in the world will spend years putting together parts of their act. It’s not uncommon for one to spend two years to put together a new four minute segment.

Of course, the audience doesn’t see two years of effort, but they do see a polished product, which undoubtedly amazes them more than any prop magician could.

And that’s just it—the best in the world spent a lot of time grinding out slow, iterative improvements to their work.

There was no overnight success or flash-in-the-pan stories that had a lasting impact.

But, we don’t praise the slow grind. We love the overnight success and the quick turn-around. Yet, we forget they get abandoned just as fast as they came as we look for the next flashy story.

This isn’t just for celebrities either because it happens in different fields and I see it first-hand in education.

Instead of using methods that work, but require slow, concerted and focused effort, we opt for flashy pedagogies that make for good optics. We look to the end of the term, or year, as our baseline for student improvement.

This is the equivalent of a business looking to their next quarter for their strategy of growth and only results in short-term planning with a focus on profit at the risk of everything else.

Perhaps the habits built by a teacher in grade nine slowly work themselves over time and by the time the student is in grade twelve, they are making astounding progress.

Or maybe, it was the grade six teacher who told a student they should be a writer, but he didn’t believe it and commit to it until his mid-twenties (thank you Mr. O’Donnell!). The seed was planted, but the process was slow.

There are an infinite number of scams and MLM promises to get you rich, but none are as full-proof as carefully monitoring your cash-flow and slowly building a nest-egg for the future.

A twenty to thirty year millionaire journey doesn’t make for great prime-time news stories.

As for finding happiness, or contentment, with your life?

That’s the slowest, most invisible grind of them all.