Today I want to talk about a crucial mistake many men make when evaluating their progress in dating and social skills. Most guys tend to judge their success by focusing solely on their outputs - whether they got a number, secured a date etc. While this might seem like the logical thing to do, it’s actually one of the worst ways to track your progress in the short term.

The Problem with Judging Outputs Too Quickly

Let’s say you go out today, have a few conversations, but don’t get any numbers or dates. If you’re judging your progress based on outputs, you might immediately think, “What I’m doing is wrong. My conversations are off. Maybe this whole process isn’t for me.” This doubt creeps in, leading you to change your approach prematurely or, worse, give up entirely.

But what if everything you did was actually correct? Maybe you brought the right energy, used a solid conversational model, and flirted in a good way, but for reasons completely outside your control - like the women you approached being in a bad mood or the randomness of the day - you didn’t see results. By judging your success on such a narrow time frame, you risk sabotaging a winning strategy simply because of randomness.

On the flip side, you could be doing all the wrong things - poor energy, ineffective flirting, or an awkward conversation style - but got “success” because the women you spoke to were in a particularly good mood and you just happened to be her type. If you rely on this “luck factor,” your results will always be inconsistent, and you’ll never build a solid foundation for lasting improvement.

The reason for this is simple statistics - I will not go too much in it for the sake of this article but just think of rolling a dice. You cannot predict what number you will roll a dice on your next exact try but if you roll it 600 times, about 100 times you will have rolled a number 1 (because the probability is 1/6). And by improving your social skills, you improve your probability of positive outcome, but you still need to evaluate it in a longer time period since the outcome of every single approach is still random. If you're interested in this, you can research "law of large numbers" in statistics

The Solution: Focus on Inputs, Not Outputs

The real way to measure your progress in the short term is to focus on your inputs. Ask yourself:

  • Am I bringing good energy to my interactions?
  • Am I using a conversational model that works?
  • Am I executing the conversational model to the best of my ability, or just going through the motions?
  • Am I getting feedback and refining my approach, or just winging it every time?

Inputs are the things you can control, and they’re what ultimately lead to consistent results. In the short term, randomness and luck will influence your outputs, so judging yourself based on them will only create unnecessary doubt or false security which will quickly fade away.

When to Evaluate Outputs

Now, this doesn’t mean outputs are irrelevant. If you’ve been consistent with your inputs for a month or two and still aren’t seeing results, that’s when you should start questioning your strategy. Maybe your inputs aren’t as effective as they need to be, and it’s time to tweak or adjust.

However, judging outputs based on one day, or even a week, is a recipe for disaster. You might abandon a solid approach prematurely or double down on poor habits simply because of short-term randomness. To truly understand your progress, give yourself enough time to collect meaningful data.