Momentum

The problem with momentum is that you can’t go out looking for it, you have to wait for it to come to you. This post is as much a reminder to me that I should stick to what I do best, and not be tempted by the ‘dark side of Daygame.’

Last year, for a month or so, my mantra was that ‘30 sets a week is the golden number for momentum,’ and where did that get me? Nowhere special, or at least, not where I wanted to be. I laid a couple of sixes and felt severely short changed. I got over that phase but it reared its ugly head again a couple of months ago when I got back from Prague: I’d had a lay at the end of my trip then closed a lead near immediately when I got back. I told myself ‘now’s the time to build momentum’ so I set out doing 70 sets over the course of the next two weeks thinking that my stats were scalable. And what did that get me? Literally nothing. No solid leads and, I think, one idate which I over-escalated.

What about when I slowed down again and went back to the introverted Daygame style I’d always followed? The results began to flow again. But more importantly, as Krauser would describe it in Infinite, a load of bricks had been lifted from the invisible rucksack I’d been carrying with me everywhere. My vibe had increased significantly and all I had done was tell myself ‘I’m only going to open the sets I really want to.’ It was like everything was moving in slow motion and I had all the time in the world to work with it.

Trying to build momentum actively is looking too far forward. You treat each girl like a stone which you manically flip to see whether she’s a Yes, No or Maybe. The problem is that the girl can see what you’re doing and so you whittle those Maybes down and 99% of them drop off the hook. Your statistics degrade and you begin to think ‘I suck.’ It’s too harsh a filter. As with most things that involve the subjective human perspective trying to get something moves you further away from it. And even when you do succeed and find that Yes girl who you pull over the finishing line: you’re back on the streets looking for the next one. I’m not trying to poo-poo guys trying to rack up the notches (I am myself with some caveats), I’m saying that medium term happiness is an important factor in how we should decide our actions and so picking the correct style of Daygame for you is very important.

So we come back to the start: you have to wait for momentum to come to you. You have to look after your vibe: eat well and go to the gym (but not too much otherwise you’ll exhaust yourself; I’ve done this before); keep the metronome ticking over and do your sessions as you normally would (credit to Roy Walker for the metronome metaphor); give yourself some treats now and then to grease the wheels of life. Keep up those little wins throughout your life and eventually they will translate into the odd big win. It’s easier said than done, so you need to tap into the conscientious side of yourself and understand what gets that schema going for you.

Then when some solid leads do start to filter through, don’t jump them on the dates. Don’t over-escalate in an attempt to push them towards the finishing line. Let the interest build up so that you’ve got girls at every level of the funnel: some you’re just about to meet that week and a couple who you’ve already seen once and now you’re positioning them for the lay. I’m not saying you should ease off on girls who clearly want it, or not to push for a first date lay with a girl who’ll soon be leaving your city, I’m saying use your brain! Making the right decisions is another step to improving medium term happiness if only for the reason that you know you did your best.

A lot of what I’m talking about is abundance, but too much abundance can even be a bad thing because you become lax and those actions which got you there in the first place start to drop away. That’s why I always think that you should keep yourself ticking over at 80% capacity. You have a little left in the tank but it’s not because you plan on using it. It’s because if you did use it then you would spoil all your hard work. Pushing closer to 100% leads to burnout. For someone who’s best suited for the introverted style going to their 100% mark will kill their abundance for all the reasons I mentioned earlier: it filters too hard and when you get the occasional success you’re back out there looking for more; nothing feels earned.

One warning I’ll give is to beware the temptation to switch styles and try to follow an extroverted style; it’s like giving in to the dark side of the force. In a weird way it will make you feel slightly dirty; you’ll go home and think to yourself why did I do that?

Switching styles will near instantaneously kill your momentum because your introverted stats are not scalable when you switch to the extroverted style. It is so easy to think of yourself as the ‘1:50 guy’ but if you go out there and do 50 sets a week for four weeks straight, you’re probably going to get less than four lays. That’s because the approach to lay ratio misses a vital component: time. When you take a longer amount of time to do your sets you use more of your pre-approach calibration. The extroverted approach uses less time and filters harder, which works against the introvert, thus making him less effective. What’s better, for the introverted style, is little and often rather than simply more intensive and longer sessions. Go out a couple of times after work and on the weekends and keep everything ticking over nicely. Then you’ll start to see your funnel filling up and feel real, healthy abundance.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown