Edit: ThrowAway PUA says its the 3 second rule, not 5 second rule, since 5 seconds is too big a window of time to talk yourself out of approaching. So I'm replacing all the 5s with 3s in the body but I can't change the title.

Ok, so I developed this idea a 4 months ago when I was having difficulty getting over my approach anxiety. I had heard about the 3 second rule but wasn't having any success applying it myself. For those of you who don't know, the 3 second rule is that within 3 seconds of seeing a girl you find attractive you approach so you don't have the opportunity to talk yourself out of it. In theory it seems like a great idea, but for many who were like me, with really debilitating AA, we still weren't able to force ourselves to approach.

Now you don't need to be a psychology major to know that we are creatures of habit, when we do something often enough over a long enough period of time it becomes integrated into our brain, it becomes natural. So my idea was to use this to my advantage.

I had the idea while I was showering. We all know what its like when you're showering and its nice and warm but you know as soon as you turn the water off you're gonna get cold fast. Well once I had actually cleaned myself I would countdown from 3 to turn off the shower, otherwise I'd probably delay getting out and on with my day for another 20 minutes. So then I decided why not try to make that a habit in every part of my life. If there was something I had to do but wasn't looking forward to normally I'd procrastinate it. Instead I decided I was going to make the 3 second count down a habit. Every time I found myself in this situation I would use the countdown.

Over the course of the next few months I kept at this. At first I wasn't always successful in doing whatever needed doing at the end of the countdown but over time it got better. It became a mental trigger. Approaching girls was the most difficult thing I could imagine and so I had to hardwire this trigger into my brain as much as possible since if I tried to use it unsuccessfully I'd be undermining all the work I'd put in up until this point. I needed to become so confident in this trigger than I knew no matter what the obstacle was, I had absolute confidence that as soon as I counted down to 0 I was not going to freeze.

And the amazing thing was that it actually worked. I still feel nervous when approaching a HB but its nothing I can't deal with anymore. Whats even more beautiful is that this is universally applicable to my entire life. A few years back I made some bad decisions and had to temporarily leave my university for half a year. Before this, I had already committed to living in a house with 4 other guys next year and I had to tell them I wasn't going to be living with them and they'd need to find a replacement. It destroyed one of my friendships and I haven't spoken to the guy since. I'm now back at my Uni and the situation was still unresolved. The other day I saw him walking and my first instinct was to avoid him. Instead I took a deep breath, did my countdown and went to talk to him.

Was it awkward? Yes. Was it uncomfortable? fuck yes. Did it need to be done? Yes, and delaying it wasn't doing anybody any good.

So to everybody reading this who wants the ability to take action any time any place, its really quite easy. Start small, use the countdown for getting out of bed when you don't want to, for turning off the shower, for getting yourself off the computer when you should be studying, and all the other mildly unappealing things that we delay as long as possible everyday. Remember that the countdown is a Unbreakable Law. If you don't treat it as such you are setting yourself up to fail. Now do this for two weeks. After two weeks start using it for harder stuff. Don't jump the gun, gradually build yourself up. I promise you, after 2 months of doing this you will be able to take action whenever you want. It may seem like a long time but nothing in this world worth having comes without work. Its an investment in your future.