A lot of guys that get into pickup tend to put a lot of focus on exactly what they do and say in the moment. The exact lines they say, exactly how funny they are, exact timing for everything, if the girl is “invested” enough, if she’s giving enough indicators of interest, if their hands are in their pockets or not, etc. But I’m telling you that the large majority of that stuff means next to nothing when it comes to the actual result it produces. It can help to a small degree, but really almost everything about an approach (and a date) is already decided before it even starts. Even most things you think you are actively controlling in the moment are heavily affected by factors that are already set in stone at that particular time. Here’s a list of some of the factors that you can’t really change in the moment.

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  1. How attracted she is to you. You either meet her minimum attractiveness threshold or you don’t.

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2) Her relationship status. She either is or isn’t involved with some other guy at the moment.

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3) Her emotional/mental state. She will be in whatever mood she’s in.

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4) Your emotional state. You can do small things to get into a more positive/confident state, but you can’t really change it too much from moment to moment.

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5) How confident you are. It doesn’t matter what lines you say or how much you actively try to control your body language, you underlying level of confidence will display itself fairly quickly.

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6) Your conversational skills. You might think you are coming up with things on the fly and its a dynamic conversation, but really you are probably just pulling from a set of questions/responses that you have grown accustomed to saying and you’re probably not gonna come up with something amazing/clever/awesome right on the spot. And even if you did, it probably won’t change the outcome that much.

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7) A whole bunch of small indicators of your overall personality/confidence like how you speak (volume, power, speech impediments, stutters, high or low pitch), how you move (quick jerky movements, hunched shoulders or bad posture, feminine/weak movement), eye contact (can’t hold eye contact, looking around a lot, looking down). Etc.

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These are all things that you really can’t change in the moment on a micro level. In the long-term, you can change them slowly, but in the moment, what’s going to happen is going to happen. Now this is good, because it means you don’t really have to micro-manage all this stuff when you are actually doing an approach/are on a date. You can just kind of have a general idea of what you want do and wing it to a certain degree and it probably won’t change the outcome too much.

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But it also means that you will most likely suck in the beginning and it usually takes a loooooooooong time to get better, just like with anything. It takes a long time to go to the gym and build a better body. It takes a long time to get rid of anxiety so you truly feel comfortable enough to have a normal conversation without coming off nervous/weird/whatever. It takes a long time to get rid of all those nervous ticks. It takes a long time to be able to improvise conversations with completely new people and come off as attractive and confident. It takes a long time to be able to physically escalate with a girl quickly.

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What will happen is over the course of several hundred approaches, you will slowly get better at all these things. You will naturally get better through a combination of actively changing certain things and unconsciously picking up certain habits, mindsets, and calibrations. So actually in the moment, you won’t be able to change the overall result too much. But over the course of hundreds (or thousands) of approaches, you will be able to change the AVERAGE result you get.

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So you can’t just go into an interaction and say “I’m going to be confident!”. You can say “ok, over the course of the next 50/60/100/etc approaches, I’m going to actively do x thing” and then once you have that ONE THING handled, move onto the next thing. Only choose one thing at a time to focus on. One of the biggest mistakes I see guys make is they try to fix everything all at once. They go into an interaction and say “ok, I’m going to say this opener and I’m going to have my hands out of my pockets and I’m going to have a downward inflection in my voice and I’m going to make sure to ask three questions and I’m going to hold eye contact and I’m going to talk louder and I’m going to talk slower and I’m going to ask for the number in this way and I have to remember to do a joke at some point…” blah blah blah until they become overwhelmed and in the process of trying to fix everything, they end up fixing nothing.

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You need to have a gameplan. You need to have a long-term improvement strategy. So lets say there’s 5 main things you need to work on. Holding eye contact, not fidgeting with our hands, getting rid of the upward inflection in your voice, asking for the number, and speaking louder. You want to have a chunk of approaches where you are ONLY WORKING ON THAT ONE THING! So here’s how it would look.

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Approaches 1-50 – Hold eye contact as much as you can for the entire interaction.

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Approaches 51-100 – Hold your hands/fingers as still as possible

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Approaches 101-150 – Do not inflect your voice upwards at all

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Approaches 151-200 – Ask for the number at the end of the interaction NO MATTER WHAT, even if the girl is walking away or she gives you a bad reaction.

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Approaches 201-250 – Speak louder the entire interaction

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And it doesn’t have to be 50 approaches each, it can be more or less, but the point is to have a plan and stick to it. And one thing to note is that most likely while you are focusing on each of the individual things, the rest of the interaction might suffer slightly. Like maybe since you are so focused on not fidgeting your hands that you blank in the conversation. That’s fine. You won’t be able to actively work on something and have it not affect anything else at all. But what will happen is eventually the thing you’re trying to work on will become second nature and you will be able to incorporate it into everything else.

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The actual amount of approaches for each exercise doesn’t matter, the milestone you want to get to is that the thing you’re working on is BORING. Like it’s so insanely easy to do now that its literally boring to you to have to keep focusing on it, or you are doing it now without even focusing on it. Boring is the best indication that something is second nature to you now.

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So that’s it. Recap time motherfucker, even though this is a pretty short article. Most of the outcome is already decided. You can’t change much in the moment. Improvement comes from changing things on a macro level and slowly getting better over time. You get better by picking ONE thing and working on that until its boring. Do that with everything you need to work on. That’s it.