Back in 2019 I wrote this post on Momentum and today I want to revisit the topic. Most of what’s here was part of a discussion I had with another Daygamer last week and it’s the conclusion of a long train of thought I’ve had recently.
Situation
You’ve got an SMV which can be improved (roughly, looks + status + charisma) but the largest source of day on day fluctuation comes from your vibe; essentially, did you get up on the right side of the bed this morning? It’s like dieting where the trend is slowly downwards, but each day you’ll jump around based on mostly water weight changes. You have to improve your SMV over time to get better results, or to get the same results with less effort; it’s a gradual process. You can also improve your baseline vibe through all the usual channels: eliminating negative sources, eating/living a healthy lifestyle, having control of your schedule, having fun, being social, etc.
But what about those daily fluctuations – the short term vibe changes – what’s going on there?
Vicious and Virtuous Spirals
You can be in a vicious spiral (negative momentum) or a virtuous spiral (positive momentum). Good reactions tend to compound until you feel almost certain that you’ll get the number in every set. Bad reactions tend to compound until you feel half-hearted going into every set and have a defeatist attitude. This can happen in the short term – over the course of one session, where you might be in state, or feel as if you’ve sprayed on pussy-repellant – and the medium term – you might be getting a lot of leads, dates and lays and so you feel confident, or you’re in a relative dry patch and feel as if nothing is going your way.
Ruts
There can be many factors that lead someone into a vicious spiral but one typical reason is that the guy is aiming too high. Let’s say they are a six (all told long-term average SMV) and they mainly approach sevens. That means that to do well with those girls they will need to make the difference up with their short term, on the day, vibe. But not only on the day they meet them, but while they’re texting them and dating them. That’s a lot of luck, and a lot of days waking up on the right side of the bed! What usually happens, however, is that luck isn’t on their side enough and so they get rejected a lot. That puts them into a rut.
What’s To Be Done?
First, you’ve simply got to stop the rot. You have to accept that the fuck ladder is real and that at its heart this game is a value proposition. If you’re not getting the girls you want to get then you’re simply not good enough, and if you want to get those girls you’re going to have to make a conscious effort to become more attractive, and not just hope that it happens. And given that you’re in a vicious spiral, continuing on your current path will probably only make you more miserable. Accepting this is particularly tough for guys anchored to a higher quality, perhaps because they spent a long time Daygaming elsewhere or had some extremely lucky early experiences.
Next, you probably need to reduce your approach volume because you want to stop compounding the negative reactions you’re getting. Let’s say, as a rule of thumb, to start by halving your volume. That’s also tough for a lot of guys to accept because a lot of them equate more sets with more results, whereas in reality their vicious spiral is equating more sets with worse results.
Now, I say, “probably” reduce your volume, because there are some guys who are so far down their own hole that their volume has dwindled to near zero. For those guys, I’d encourage them to do some more sets because they aren’t actually giving themselves enough opportunities to be lucky. Instead they are doing one set, if any, per session, and then walking away to complain that Daygame in their area sucks.
Lastly, and most importantly, a guy in a vicious spiral needs to start approaching at a more reasonable level compared to his own SMV. You can go ahead and ask your wings how he would rate you, and I would encourage you to be harsh on yourself and take the lowest of a few sources. The girls who you can consistently lay are going to be at and around your long term average SMV, and if you don’t have positive momentum on your side, then these are exactly the kind of girls you should be aiming for (more on that here).
Note that you will have your own subjective rating of what a girl is e.g. one man’s seven is another man’s six, but you will also need to consider where she sits given all other girls and other guy’s estimation of her too. If you yourself are a six, and you consider her to be one too, but most other guys consider her a seven, then when you approach her, unless she likes you for you, she will probably consider you to be below her league. Long story short, a girl doesn’t care about your subjective rating of her.
If you follow the above advice and string together a couple of months of good results then your outlook is going to change and you can work your way into some positive momentum. At that point you’ll be back in the groove and things will feel that they are on the up. From there you can start tilting your approaches towards hotter girls and allow your volume to creep back up.
“Aren’t you overthinking this? I just approach the girls I think are hot!”
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but why are you still in a rut? If what you’re doing now isn’t getting you where you want to go, then you are going to have to change your approach, rather than flailing and merely hoping that things will change.
Another Example of Momentum
This advice isn’t just for guys in ruts either. Typically a Daygamer goes through cycles where first he has no leads, and so is out doing more sets to generate them. Then he starts to get some dates, and so his volume decreases slightly as his time tilts towards them. Lastly he hits the critical point – the equilibrium – where his rate of lead generation matches his flake/close rate. If he’s lucky, he’ll stay there for a while, but almost inevitably his leads dry up; you only need a short spell of bad luck for the rate of lead generation to lag way behind the close/flake rate.
What I’ve described there is a typical arc of positive momentum being used to its full extent and it ends with the Daygamer being back at square one: the lead generation stage, where he’ll be subject to a new round of either positive or negative momentum.
My 2019 Post
I read back my post from 2019 and I can see that in that case I was trying to force positive momentum rather than trying to get into the groove. I set myself an approach target without having the foundation to do so, and instead should have started off low and then built it up over time. You need to have some good positive momentum to carry you through those sets where you’re approaching off of less signal, because you’re flipping the stone and are hoping that the girl likes you for you, which will be more likely if you have a good vibe. Also, if you’re approaching off of less signal, you’re more likely to be rejected – in one way or another – and so the good vibe acts as kind of psychological buffer to rejection.
Yours unfaithfully,
Thomas Crown
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