As I’ve been writing my new book I’ll commonly say: in this situation do this. And the way I’ve known to do that is my calibration. In a way it bugs me because I want to explain exactly how I did something as if I were putting instructions into a robot. That’s where a textbook can actually be helpful: it gives you the starting blocks so that you can actually go and run that particular race and get your own experiences (build your own calibration). Then once you have calibration you can act with conviction because you’re not acting from a place of instruction by others and instead it’s coming from yourself.
The question is, then, how does someone build calibration so that when I say “use your calibration” you actually have it? Well to cut a long story short calibration isn’t built, per se, it’s more grown, or it just happens. One day you just have it. Let’s dive in.
First I want to define what calibration is to me: the ability to change your decisions on the fly based on instincts. Whenever I’ve made a decision that seems to cut against the flow-chart logic which most Daygamers claim they follow I’m using my calibration. I say “claim” because most guys seem to always have the same problem: they make the same mistake over and over again. You’ll meet them one day and fast forward a year later and they’re all like “yeah I just really need to focus on [X]” where [X0=X1=X2=…=Xn].
The problem with using flow-chart decision making is that it has to be built infinitely and constantly updated for new situations. In fact this is a sure-sign that a Daygamer is in the beginner stage of their journey because they ask questions like “if [X] then what?” Then [Y] happens instead and now they need a patch.
Let’s go a step further. If calibration means using your instincts, what drives instinct? I think it all comes down to dopamine (at this point, if you haven’t read it already, go back and read my post about Daygame Dopamine from last November). This is where I’ve made a logical jump so you can agree or disagree with me here. The way I see it is that the sensation that we call an instinct must be a chemical within the body somewhere, and the descriptions I’ve read of dopamine match most closely with what I find those sensations to be. Dopamine is a hormone which fires when something in our environment has salience i.e. it contains some importance towards our reproductive and sexual (R&S) chances. Your brain, over time, will learn what is good for those chances and will attach salience to new items.
For example, when your eyes are drawn to a hot girl your dopamine fires and you get a small dose of good feeling. We’re all probably born with that as containing some salience. How about if you Daygame for a year? Two years? Four Years? More and more things will become salient as your brain works out that they will help your R&S chances. As another example: I’m very active as I Daygame in terms of watching girls’ eyes in order to spot IOIs. This is in and of itself a dopaminergic activity. Then when I spot a girl who returns my eye contact in a pro-R&S way I’ll get an extra dose of dopamine. Or perhaps I’m on a date and I can just “sense” that a girl wants to be moved along quicker: that’s dopamine too. Calibration could easily be defined as developing this sixth sense.
Something interesting to me is that some people produce more dopamine than others and that this is genetic. Those that do tend to show more obsessive and “unfeeling” traits, especially if they exhibit more of the control dopamine which allows them overrule feelings of discomfort in the present in return for future promised gain, and unsurprisingly these are also people who can do better in Game. This is part of your genetic potential when it comes to Game in the same way that you have a genetic potential for building muscle. People with high dopamine production are better able to think in the abstract and move towards a future imagined goal. In fact, maybe I was harsh earlier when I was talking about the guys who make the same mistakes over and over again. Perhaps they simply don’t have the dopamine production levels to solve their problems and will be stuck at the flow-chart decision making tree forever. Maybe it’s just not in their potential. I think that if you’re part of either camp you’ll know it already.
So the answer is that to build calibration you have to actually go out there and experience life and hope that your brain is designed in a way that it will be able to work out what to do in future. Try and fail and your brain might work it out for you.
Yours unfaithfully,
Thomas Crown
Thomas Crown PUA 