Just a quick post on why high volume approaching is important AND why you should focus more on volume than any other metric. Obviously there’s other things to work on and take into consideration, but pure volume should be the first priority.

1) High volume is not “spam approaching”. Just like jogging isn’t “spam stepping” and working out isn’t “spam repping”. It’s about time spent ACTUALLY DOING the thing you want to get good at. It’s reps. It’s sets. It’s getting your workout in. You can’t get better at something if you don’t actually give yourself enough chances to get better.

It’s better to do 10-12 “shitty” approaches (which will get better with each subsequent approach anyway because of social momentum and exposure) than put all this pressure on yourself to do only three approaches that have to be absolutely perfect. This is true with EVERY skill. A guy who shoots 1000 free throws with no research about techniques or best practices will get better quicker than the guy who researches for 10 hours then only shoots 100. Am I saying do zero research/studying? No. But the ratio should be about 10 to 1. You only need enough information to take the next step. AFTER you implement that step and get some data, then you can research the next thing. Researching too far past the current stage you're at has greatly diminishing returns because you won't have enough data to properly contextualize that info anyway.

2) A shitty approach is better than no approach at all. You will always get a little better and get some amount of experience and data from doing an approach, no matter what the context is or how well it goes. Just like how you’ll always get a little bit of benefit only doing a 15 minute workout than nothing at all. It all adds to your experience and it all adds to you getting better. What holds guys back, as I always say, is the fear of rejection. They'll die 100 times to a boss in Elden Ring and be totally fine, but then can't accept doing even one not-great approach or getting one rejection. It's because with the game you can fail in privacy, with approaching you fail in front of someone. If you can just be fine with the "failure" part (which is never really a big deal anyway) happening in front of another person, getting better at approaching should be just as easy as getting better at anything else.

3) Abundance and non-neediness comes from options. Options come from approaching. By putting all these restrictions on who you approach (she’s wearing headphones, she’s with 2 other people, she “looks” unapproachable, other random dumbass excuse) and putting rigid unnatural milestones on each interaction (I HAVE to talk for 5-10 minutes, my opener HAS to be original and funny and situational), you are reducing the amount of options you can cultivate.

Until you have a lot of experience, you won’t even know what the “perfect” approach is anyway, no matter how many videos you watch or how much theory you absorb. So really when you’re just starting out and trying to be perfect and avoid rejection, you’re not only doing less approaches, but your “perfectly calibrated approaches” are nowhere near as good as you think. Your best approaches and your worst approaches will look very similar to each other in the beginning. Really you just need to stop being a baby and get out there. You WILL suck at first (read my very first post), you will be confused sometimes, you'll get conflicting data, but that’s something everyone has to deal with, in this and in everything else in life.

Ok that’s it. I’m uploading another uncut real-time approach session tomorrow. This time I’m putting timestamps in there so you can just listen to the approaches if you want to.