Tactics Tuesdays

A simple tactic that makes gobs of difference: just be friendly. Opening’s easier, hooking’s easier, and social proof becomes well-nigh automatic.

Here's a deceptively simple tactic:

Be friendly to every person you encounter.

Just yesterday we talked about conflict escalation and the dog-eat-dog world inside the prison system.

The good news is, you're a free man, and you're not in that kind of world. In this world, unless you venture into a bad part of town, you can and should be friendly to everybody.

Any time I've felt some rust or a renewed sense of approach anxiety, "be friendly to people" is the primary tactic I use to shake that off. Alek followed this same advice recently when he sought to warm up his social momentum after over a year of almost uninterrupted citywide lockdowns. It's simple, basic advice but it really works.

"Be friendly" has a ton of upsides for getting yourself approaching more easily with a lot less fear.

If you've only been doing targeted approaching -- where the only people you approach are sufficiently good-looking girls -- you may well find this alternate tactic a breath of fresh air.

Self-monitoring allows you to adapt yourself to the people around you. It’s a good thing… but too much of it can really cramp your style (and the naturalness of your interactions).

If you've gone through my charisma course, Charisma In A Bottle (which, incidentally, I'll be re-releasing soon), you're familiar with the concept of 'self-monitoring'.

A self-monitor is someone who keeps a mental eye on himself, observing his own actions, making sure he is acting in 'correct' ways and not screwing things up.

Charismatic people are high self-monitors. While they might seem to be the most casual, relaxed folks out there, they are in fact carefully monitoring and adjusting their social presentation.

Dating is another area that turns men into high self-monitors. You go out to approach girls and you focus relentlessly on:

• How nervous vs. confident you seem
• Whether you approach from the right angle
• If you're delivering an opener she'll respond to
• If you're getting enough compliance from her fast enough
• Whether you've moved her soon enough
• Whether you're dominant enough
• Whether you're bantering enough
• What your value is relative to hers
• What your attainability is relative to hers

... plus a whole bunch of other things you are doing or that are about you.

And while this is useful for spotting your weak points and improving on what you want to improve at, it hobbles your ability to truly be in-the-moment with a girl and interact with her in a truly smooth, natural way.

Thus, some of the time, you are going to want to do things the opposite way, and turn your self-monitoring way down.

Women notice men singing/talking to themselves. You can use this as an effective ‘attention grab’ (i.e., way to get women signaling you) to make approaching a little easier.

Quick tactical tip today.

Sometimes I like to sing or talk quietly to myself as I walk down the sidewalk.

Or as I'm sitting somewhere in a café or bar or park or wherever else I might be.

When women break rapport, it can be either a minor problem… or a major one. But how should you deal with it? Sometimes, more of the same. Sometimes, though, you must do the opposite.

"Come sit with me," you tell a girl. You've talked with her now for about 15 minutes and it seems like it should be that time.

"Are you always this demanding?" she tells you. She doesn't budge. "The benches here are sooo uncomfortable." She still won't budge.

It dawns on you that this girl is breaking rapport.

You thought you had a good vibe going with her. But now she's refusing you, not directly answering your request, and driving the conversation in a different direction.

What should you do?

You meet a girl… but she mentions having a boyfriend. How do you sidestep her boyfriend mention and keep yourself seeming an eligible option for her too?

Sometimes you'll approach a girl, hit it off, things go great, and then she brings up her boyfriend.

Now, if you don't like dealing at all with attached women, you can just hit the exit at that point. If you're more of the "it doesn't really matter to me if she says she has a boyfriend" camp, however, you're going to need a response.

79% of unmarried women are in relationships at any given time. Therefore, unless you're meeting women in venues that select for unattached women (nightlife, dating apps, etc.), you're fairly likely to run into lots of these girls who are already attached.

Assuming you run any day game, transit game, or another style of approaching where you're bound to run into boyfriend-mentions, if you want to seduce these girls, you'll have to address their boyfriends.

Girls in your close social circle can be difficult to get with. You become a “fixture” to them and they won’t hook up (even if they like you!). How can you undo this? With a “showoff” date…

Most guys run social circles of some sort.

Often there are a few girls in your social circle who are good-looking but not super into you. Or they might be interested in you but they're not compliant enough you're able to get them out onto dates.

If you're also meeting women from places outside your social circle, there's a tactic you can leverage to use the power of preselection to get women in that circle chasing after you.

We'll just call this 'social circle date showoffs'.

It's both simple to do, and deviously effective.

If you meet a girl or have a date, but you use a tactic too long or too many times, the tactic “inflates” – i.e., turns stale. How can you avoid stale tactics? By using a tactics timer.

This is a little technique I developed for myself to guard against inflation.

As a refresher: any time you use a certain tactic too long, it becomes 'inflated'. That is to say, you get predictable and things turn stale.

You can use this with any basic example. Imagine a guy talking to a girl who uses a good "That's what she said!" joke at an opportune time. The girl laughs. It's kind of cheesy, but also a little bit funny.

Three minutes later, he uses the exact same joke. Then another five minutes and he uses it again. Ten minutes after that, he tells her, "That's what she said!" yet again.

By this point, the joke is tired, stale, and inflated, and using it actually hurts the interaction because it feels like this guy has nothing else. He only has the few tricks he's been using, and while they might've felt fresh at first, that freshness is now long gone.

What are this guy's odds to hook up with the girl he's talking to? Not great, and getting lower by the minute. The more time he spends in inflation, the lower his odds become.

When you're learning, or you're rusty, you will tend to find yourself trapped in inflationary spirals at times. You'll realize you're getting boring, stale, and predictable... and then you can feel stuck.

You might start to panic a bit.

What can you do to escape, and salvage things with this girl?

The solution is to use tactics timers as a way to consciously avoid slipping into inflated interactions.