A lot of guys say they’re putting in effort in their dating lives and are still not getting the desired results.

In this post I will show you why you aren’t improving your dating life even if it feels like you are putting effort into this, and what to actually do about it.

Different levels of trying

So let me give you a few different levels of what effort might look like.

Level 0: Doing Nothing

This is where most guys start. They’re interested in improving but never take the first step. No time, no energy invested

Level 1: Reading Posts or Watching Videos

You’ve taken some time to read or watch content on dating, but haven’t yet put any of it into practice. This level feels like effort, but it’s just passive consumption. This is where I find about half of the guys I talk to.

Level 2: Trying a Few Approaches (and Failing)

At this level, you go out, try a few approaches, but when they don’t work, you stop. There’s minimal investment of time and energy, and a lot of frustration. This is where the other half of the guys tend to be.

Level 3: Actually Trying a Lot and Failing

Here’s where you invest more time, go out consistently, but you keep hitting walls. The frustration sets in, but you’re slowly getting better. 

These are just the first levels, and in order to actually improve your dating life, you need to be above these levels and commit enough resources to this.

Resource - time

Let’s start with the most important resource - time. Without allocating time to this, there is 0% chance you improve. However, there are different ways you need to allocate time.

Time bucket #1: Setting time aside to go out and practise approaching regularly. Without this, nothing changes.

Time bucket  #2: Learning strategies that you will apply in the field. This can’t be skipped; without a proper gameplan, you’re just guessing and throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Time bucket #3: Evaluating your progress. You need to set time for reflection and analysis (i.e. listening back to you conversations) to know what’s working and what’s not.

Time bucket #4: Learning new concepts to improve (from good sources). You can’t stay static—constant learning is necessary to get better.

Resource - energy

Apart from time, you also need to delegate your mental energy and focus into this. This is the resource #2.

If you’re mentally checked out while practising (e.g., approaching without having mental focus), the effort is wasted. You need to be in the right mindset, and this requires you investing your mental energy.

If you show up zoned out just going through the motions, you are investing your time, but not your focus. And you won’t get results.

You cannot skip steps

As you see - there are a lot of resources you need to invest to get better at this. And most men underestimate how much resources they really need to invest to be successful in this area.

For example, for actually approaching you need to spend minimum 3 days per week, 1-2 hours each session of productive approaching (10+ approaches). Minimum!

Then min 1 hour per week analysing your convos and 1-2 hours of learning.

If you do less than that then your progress will be very slow or almost non-existent. And when that happens, guys tend to lose motivation, put in even less effort (which further decreases the results) and eventually quit.

So if you currently have a dating life you’re not happy about - my first question would be how much resources and effort have you put into fixing it? Most likely not enough.

Bad news is that you cannot change the total amount of resources you invest.

Good news is that you can trade them.

One example is money - you can use your money to trade someone else's time and knowledge to get some time back.

For example, with a good mentor, you can cut bulk of time #2, time #3 and time #4 and then you are mostly left with time #1 which is just going out and executing on what they are telling you to do.

That probably will cut down significantly the time you need to spend on this if you truly want to be successful in this area.

Also if you are not able to get the proper mental energy by yourself, you can borrow it - finding wings or again - a good mentor that can push you and motivate you. Most importantly, you can borrow their belief that it’s possible to improve at this (which most guys lack)

But the bottom line is you cannot decrease the total amount of resources you need to invest.

For example, a lot of guys think they can just skip time step #2 all together and avoid learning any strategies that will help them get results.

This just leads you to spending time infield without getting actual results (i.e. wasting your time). So by trying to skip the steps and cheating the system, you are just cheating yourself.

Because ultimately when you try to skip investing resources, what you are really doing is prolonging the time until you get the desired result.

Because that's the ultimate time investment - for how much longer do you want to live a life without being able to make connections with amazing women and go on adventures with them?

And what will be the ripple effects of a poor dating life (in terms of your mental energy, work productivity and overall life happiness)?

There are always trade offs.

So choose yours wisely.