Especially when learning game, keeping a journal will help you recall and better process your experiences.

When I first started out, I didn't keep a journal. I would just go out and randomly try things, usually after spending some amount of time psyching myself up.

At some point, I started keeping a journal. This helped immensely.

Keeping a journal helps in a number of ways

  • You are forced to step back from the situation and take a slightly more objective view. Therefor, you are better able to spot any problems you might have.

  • You're able to better identify your weaknesses. That way, instead of just going out to "sarge," you can go out and practice a specific skill or style of game.

  • Over the course of time, you're better able to recognize patterns which frequently occur. That's essentially what learning game is.

  • Over the course of time, you're able to see just how inconsequential one girl or one date is.

  • It's awesome to look back over the memories.

  • You'll give yourself more of an incentive to go out and approach. You'll want to fill some pages in your journal, so you'll need to go out and collect stories and experiences. Going out becomes less of an important event, and simply collecting data to later analyze.

  • You can write down the questions you have, then return to them later. Our unconscious often solves problems for us when we aren't thinking about them. Keeping questions written down in a journal - and then forgetting about them - helps us find the answer intuitively.

  • Since you regularly take a distant look at your interactions, and since you know you're just collecting data, you'll be more level headed and less nervous during sets and dates.

So there you have it. Sometimes the best dating tips aren't about the interactions themselves. Instead, they're about how you spend time when you're not gaming.