Progressive Overload

I recently saw this tweet from Mr. B and thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about progressive overload in Daygame. The thing is, reaching the optimal point / your potential / achieving anything is actually very simple. You just have to start at the lowest point possible and then slowly become better: apply progressive overload. According to the Myers Briggs test I’m an ENTJ and this method makes the most sense to me: put your ideas out into the world and see how they fare (extroverted thinker) and then adjust accordingly.

One of the hidden benefits of this method is that it encourages you to start taking action, no matter how small. Quite often the pressure of thinking “what should I do?” outweighs the actual pressure of doing the thing itself. It’s better to get out there and do something badly, and then work out how to fix it, rather than sit at home and do nothing at all.

Applying progressive overload makes a lot of sense. You wouldn’t walk into the gym on day one and expect to lift a lot of weight. Similarly in Daygame you are not going to get the best girls to begin with, and neither is every girl going to stop and/or give you her number. All you need to do is make a genuine and determined effort to get better and that’s why, in my opinion, the most important concepts are, as well as progressive overload, consistency and analysis.

I’ve had a few Skype coaching calls recently where I was stressing this method: make each step ridiculously easy to achieve and in ten weeks time you can look back and see that all of those tiny steps have added up to a big change. I encourage them to write down three things they did well, and one thing that they will make the sole focus for their next session. This is, in essence, the “be 1% better each day” approach. And I take my own advice. Though this post is about the Daygame side of things, I’ve been keeping notes of lessons learned during my own experiences which I review each month. I then write down what I’m going to fix in the next month and review the previous month’s lessons; if I fix them, I get a tick, and if not, they go into the next month’s lessons.

Using this checklist, originally from Tom Torero, is one way to track your progress and know the steps to getting better. Here’s the full list:

And here is how I would amend and add to the list myself:

Open:

• Add: did you make eye contact as soon as possible and maintain it through to hook point?
• Add: did you tease?
• Amend: the first point about stopping properly to add in all the points about getting a good stop
• Add: throughout, I would also want the guy to touch her once or twice. At least once, by offering his hand when he gives his name, and again later on while commenting on something.

Stack:

• Comment: in terms of asking questions I don’t think you need to completely eliminate questions while stacking as it would be very odd to talk only in statements. That’s why I agree with the wording “avoid” but want to point out that they don’t need to be eliminated.

Vibe:

• Amend: how many times did you tease/challenge to “did you tease/challenge?” Having it as “how many times” implies that more is always better.
• Remove: “was she playing along” and “did you reach hook point” only because it is better to have goals within your control. By following the checklist for what came before this point, you will hopefully achieve them anyway.

Invest:

• Remove: “did she invest properly” as this is out of your control. Plus, there are many ways a girl can invest without using her words.
• Amend: “how many open questions” to “were your questions open?”
• Remove: “did you ground the interaction?” as I believe that grounding is a bit of a myth. I think that as long as the set wasn’t too short, she will come up with something in her mind to associate you with, even if that is just “the guy who approached me in the street.”

Close:

• Remove “did you go for the i-date.” I see this as a bit pointless. You might as well save your time now, and when you have dating experience in the future then you will know what to do on i-dates anyway.
• Amend: “how long was the interaction” to “was the interaction five to ten minutes long?”

There’s an example of progressive overload in action. Simply score yourself using the above checklist and try to get that score higher over time. Once you see the score plateauing for a while – let’s say a couple of weeks – then have a wing watch you in-set and think about what girls you are approaching (i.e. look to start improving your pre-approach).

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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