10 Ways Guys Waste Time In-Venue (and Don’t Meet Girls)

Do you go out to meet girls, but just waste time? Here are the 10 most common ways guys twiddle thumbs instead of collect digits.

Think about the last time you went out to meet girls: did you waste any time?

Did you waste a lot of time?

Of that last outing of yours, how much time did you actually spend meeting women, versus... Not meeting women?

This isn’t to say you need to be an approach machine. And it’s perfectly fine, healthy, and normal to go out with friends just to go out with friends, or even to go to the bar just to have a drink and be around people. But if your objective is to meet women, there are a lot of ways you can waste time... And a lot of ways you can turn a promising night into a big, fat zero.

This article’s primarily aimed at picking up girls in bars and clubs, but much of the advice in here is applicable to day game as well (and I’ll use day game examples along with night game ones).

So, if you want to be more aware of things you do to procrastinate and delay, instead of meet your future naked bedmate, here are 10 of the most egregious ones guys are guilty of.

#1: Nurse Their Drinks

“As soon as I finish this drink, I’m going to talk to every girl here.”

The first thing a lot of guys do when they get into a bar (or a café) is head straight to the counter and order something. That’s fine, I do this much of the time too (especially if the venue is kind of dead, or if I’m there more to hang out with friends than meet girls). Sometimes it’s good not to order something immediately, and to instead just immediately start talking to people, no drink in-hand; but sometimes you want to dip your toe in the water rather than plunge in the deep end.

Where you get in trouble is if you buy that drink, then stand around and stare at the ceiling for 40 minutes.

Thus, it’s very important to be aware of why you’re buying a drink: are you buying it because you like cocktails or coffee? Or are you buying it because you feel socially conspicuous without a drink in-hand... Or because you’re trying to put off approaching anyone in the venue?

If you realize you’re doing it to procrastinate, try this: when you go up to order a drink, also talk to two people around you, right away.

Or, if you realize you’re doing it to procrastinate, you may also choose not to get a drink until you’ve chatted up at least three new people in the venue.

Also be aware – with this and the other nine items to follow – that you may be doing something to procrastinate and not be aware you are. That’s when you look at your behavior, ask yourself, “Am I buying this drink to procrastinate?”, answer yourself, “Nope – I just like drinks. Totally not buying this to procrastinate,” and then you proceed to buy that drink and stare at the ceiling for 40 minutes not talking to anyone anyway.

Social momentum is key – be wary of anything you do that retards or prevents it... drink-nursing chief among these.

#2: Circle Around a Dozen Times

tfw it’s the fourth time you’ve walked by in an hour and the shopkeepers are starting to recognize you.

I often call this ‘prowling’. As in, “Oh Goddamnit, I’m prowling the venue again.” This is where you circle around a place, scoping the scene and the women out... And then you circle around again... And then you circle around again...

It may be you haven’t seen a good spot to head to or a girl you want to meet. Although much of the time it may be you saw a few girls you wanted to approach, but they were in sticky approach situations, or you otherwise had some approach anxiety well up.

Guys do this during day game, too. You have a few city blocks you’re circling around, looking for girls to meet, and you cover them... Then cover them again... Then cover them again. You keep lapping around them, like a plainclothes cop walking his beat. It might be you didn’t see any girls you wanted to approach, but if you’ve got a good set of blocks to walk, more often it’s that you had some approach anxiety or otherwise didn’t approach the girls you did see... And instead told yourself something like, “I’ll circle around one more time, then I’ll approach.”

If you catch yourself doing this, immediately go approach a girl and break this pattern.

If there are absolutely nogirls to approach, then pick a spot and hang there a while before you start to make people nervous. But always aim for the approach over picking a spot, because after you’ve put in all that energy of prowling about (and people notice when you are), it looks too high effort if you don’t then meet somebody. Go meet a girl and people can say, “Oh, I guess she was the friend he was looking for,” or else just notice that you’re no longer prowling and now socializing, and they can take the eye they had on you back off you again.

#3: “She’s Not Cute Enough”

It’s possible you are slightly too picky.

You’re standing in a place for 10 minutes, nursing your drink (just like I told you not to!), and then suddenly you see a girl, wide open, just waiting to meet someone.

She’s pretty cute, but... Eh. She’s not perfect. I mean, her face is okay. And her body’s pretty good. But you’d really like to meet someone cuter than her. I mean, she’s not ugly or anything... Definitely doable. But you think you could do better.

So, you don’t approach, and that ends up being the last opportunity you get the whole night, and you go home alone.

Whoops.

Lower your standards and date hotter girls. If you went up there and you hit it off with her, I guarantee she would’ve gone from, “Eh, she’s cute, but not striking,” to, “Wow, this girl’s actually kinda hot. So glad I met her,” as soon as she started responding well and you started picturing the conquest.

Even if she never gets super into you (or you never get super into her), you build social momentum by going up to meet her, and you build preselection, which you can then use to meet other (cuter) girls in the area.

When you get openings like this to meet a girl, unless she’s heinously ugly or looks like a tub of marshmallows, go say “hi” and build a little momentum and preselection. You may even find she’s much cuter up close... Or once she starts to rub you the right way.

#4: “I’ll Say Hi When I’m Warmed Up”

I’m sure she’ll still be there later.

This is one that’s perfectly valid if you know what you’re doing... Which is what makes it so insidious.

When you’re saying this, do you actually have a plan to go meet this girl relatively soon, or are you just pushing it off to some indefinite future point in time?

Most men when they say this are picturing some imagined future where they are just ‘on’ socially and tearing it up in the venue. Then, in that imagined future, at some point, they will run into this girl again, sweep her off her feet, and all will be magic.

What actually ends up happening is the guy never gets ‘on’, and the chance to meet the girl disappears. Or he does switch on, an hour later, but she’s already left the venue by then.

The only time this one’s ever appropriate to use is if you are actively warming up right now, and you know you can get her within 5 to 10 minutes. If you’re pretty sure she’s not going anywhere, but she looks super hot, yet also kind of closed, and there’s another girl or two in closer proximity you can warm up with, then pivot to this other girl – then sure, yeah, go for it.

But if there’s nowhere else for you to warm up, or you’re not really going go to warm up right now?

Then this is just an excuse, and you’re better off going up to use this girl as the warm-up.

It’ll get you approaching. It’ll warm you up. And there’s always that chance the warm-up itself turns into something more, too.

#5: Change Venues Too Often

Maybe the next bar has more.

There is little that drives me nuts more than being out with a guy who wants to constantly change venues because he’s trying to avoid approaching.

I went out with a couple of guys one time, where we arrived at a venue and immediately I noticed several groups of girls by their lonesomes throwing out approach invitations. “Oh, this place is great,” I said to myself.

Immediately, the guy who knew the area said, “It’s no good here, I’ve got a better place we can go to.”

And I said, “Wait – better than this? Because there are a lot of receptive women here.” It was late at night already and leaving a solid venue for anything else at this hour seemed pretty iffy.

But the guy said, “Yeah, no, this next place is awesome. We’ve totally got to go there.” And then he sold it really well. So I said okay, and the group headed over there.

We had to walk for about 20 minutes (and the whole time I’m going this place’d better be good), and when we got there it was... Deserted. The party had ended. The place was pretty cool – it was this old abandoned cathedral kitted out for parties inside. And we were able to get in and walk around and check the scene out. But there was not a soul still in the building except for us. It was a bust.

So then the guy who led us there started going on and on about another place. And we started walking that way. And I asked him, “Is this place definitely open? And is it definitely good? Because that first place we went to was good – there were cute girls there who wanted to meet someone.”

And he gave a non-committal response of well, I don’t know, I think it’s open, but it might not be, but let’s go and check it out, at which point the group rebelled and we all went back to the first place. Some of the girls at that place we left who’d been open previously had guys with them now when we got back (guys I’d seen standing off by themselves the first time through), but a few of them were still open, and I pointed them out to the guys in my group and these guys went up to meet them and they were friendly. Still, the hottest girls who’d been open previously had already been snapped up, because we’d left a good venue without even chatting up the girls in it first in search of some mythical better venue.

This is something I see guys do repeatedly. I used to see it with students I’d take out:

Student: There’s no one here, let’s go to another venue.

Me: What about that girl... She’s pretty cute, and she’s been checking you out.

Student: I think she’s with someone or something.

Me: Go approach her and find out.

Then the guy approaches and about a third of the time he’s right and a boyfriend shows up two minutes later. The other two thirds of the time he and the girl hit it off.

I also see it when I go out with friends. You arrive at a place replete with girls to meet, and after five minutes the guy is ready to leave. And you’ll be like, “You sure? Because there are lots of open girls here. This place is pretty good.” And he’ll say yeah yeah, no worries, this next place is better, and the next place turns out to be a bust.

Be wary of changing venues too quickly. Make sure you’ve checked for approach invitations and otherwise open women before you write a venue off. Sometimes small venues can be great – less competition, the women are more bored. Much of the time when I see guys want to change venues, they are wanting to ditch good small venues for big loud mega clubs with larger populations of women who are, nevertheless, much more guarded because the place is so big and so loud and so dark, and because the men there are so much more drunk, rude, and aggressive.

Good rule of thumb: do at least one approach in any venue you walk into before you ditch the place. This can help you avoid ditching otherwise-solid venues and wasting time on the venue-change merry-go-round.

#6: Long Chats with Friends

But you got to tell your car sex story for the fifth time.

So you’re there to meet girls, and you brought a wingman or two along. And instead of approach, you... Have an hour-long conversation with your wingmen. About approaching women. And then after that hour-long conversation, none of you feels like approaching anymore.

I have a friend who coached for Real Social Dynamics, a date coaching company, and he used to call this being in a ‘chode circle’. The RSD guys love using the word ‘chode’ to dismiss any guy who isn’t an approach machine; I think it’s a crude, ugly term (the word ‘chode’, in case you’re unfamiliar, is slang for what you’d otherwise call the taint, or the perineum), but I always get a picture of this friend in my head, laughing and saying ‘chode circle’ any time I see guys allegedly there to meet women formed up in a circle talking to each other instead.

Be careful about getting too involved talking with friends or wingmen when the purpose of your outing is to meet girls. Whether you’re having a confab with a wing on a park bench during day game or you’re standing around in a closed-off circle chatting and nursing your drinks at the bar, too much time in this position is deadly for social momentum and makes it much harder for you to split off and suddenly start approaching later.

Talk to your friends once the night is over (if neither of you left with a girl), or another time when you meet up just to hang. If the point of the outing is women, though – well, go talk to women.

#7: Room Scans

He’s been doing this for three minutes now.

Nothing wrong with taking a moment to take in the scene, of course. It’s good to scan the room and get the lay of the land.

What some men will get wrong though is posting up somewhere (or even standing right out in the open) and scanning the room back and forth like they work security there.

As a tactic, you can use this sometimes to elicit approach invitations. It’s very noticeable, and you clearly signal your desire to meet someone. However, if you stand there and keep scanning, and looking around, and checking, and scanning... It makes you look undesirable.

An effective predator does not stand in the open and keep looking around. He looks once, for a moment, then fixes on his prey. Standing there and continually scanning will continually call attention to yourself (because people pay attention to others who are clearly ‘on alert’), and show you to be an ineffective predator.

Either no girls signaled their openness to you, or you didn’t catch them when they did. Either way, you look like some guy who’s just going to stand there and keep looking around the room.

Worse is this technique actually does get less effective the longer you use it. Girls will throw you invitations when they first notice you doing it, but if you keep doing it they assume you aren’t interested or aren’t observant or are just too scared to come talk to them.

It becomes an easy way to waste time while feeling like you’re doing something... Without actually doing something.

If you’re scanning the room for more than 10 seconds every 10 or 20 minutes or so, you’re probably scanning much too much. Use this sparingly, not in large portions.

#8: Social Butterfly

Right when the girls start to get comfortable, it’s time for these guys to go meet someone else.

On its surface, social butterflying looks like exactly what you should do to get girls in a social venue (like a bar or a party). Flit about, meet people here, meet people there. Hop from girl to girl. Turn a cold venue (where no one knows you) into a warm venue (where everyone knows you – or wants to get to know you).

There’s a difference, however, between being sociable and being a social butterfly. The difference is this:

• The sociable man meets new people, socializes, says hello, makes small talk and chitchat, and builds up his social momentum this way. He uses this to meet a girl he likes... And as soon as he does meet her, he locks in on her, sheds his socializing, and focuses on creating a connection and moving things forward with her.

• The social butterfly does all this up until the point where he locks in. The difference is that his goal is not “Leverage socializing to meet a great girl, then switch girls and zero in on her”, but rather “Socialize till you can socialize no more.” Thus, when he does meet a girl, he’s unable to commit to talking to her, and instead bounces off her and continues to flit about socially. She says to herself he just must not have been interested, and leaves or meets someone else.
  

The difference is subtle here, but it’s the guy’s object. Is your object to use socializing to meet a girl, or has socializing become the object itself?

Be very careful not to let socializing become the object when you are out to meet girls. This can derail you fast – and waste a whole lot of time.

#9: Eject Too Soon

“Maybe he likes guys?”

Cousin to #8 is ejecting too soon – which you do in the case of social butterflying, and do in any number of other occasions, too. Any time you’re meeting girls, hitting it off with them, and then ejecting before you get too far into the courtship, you’re guilty of this.

This is okay, I suppose, and can get you some reference points if you’re brand new. Or doing something really novel for yourself (e.g., if you’ve never run into a store to approach a girl you saw through the window before – if it goes well but you eject too early, well, sometimes the first few approaches in a novel scenario can be like that until you get more comfortable, and that’s fine).

But otherwise, this is time wasting to the nth degree. What’s the point of going out to meet girls if you’re going to bail before you can get anything going on with them?

I won’t talk too in-depth about this one since I’ve already got an article up on it. If you’re at all guilty of this one, make sure you’ve read it:

• Tactics Tuesdays: Do You Eject from Dates or Pickups Too Soon?
  

#10: Ignore Interested Girls

She thought the legs, smile, and hair toss would be enough to catch his interest. Silly girl.

Remember the examples we used back with “She’s not cute enough” and “I’ll talk to her later”? Those’re only two of the reasons a guy may do this. Here are some others:

• He’s talking to someone else. He doesn’t want to be rude and excuse himself to go meet her.

• She’s talking to someone else. She keeps glancing toward him and pointing her body at him, but she’s in a conversation or looking at something. He doesn’t want to intrude.

• She seemed interested, then got distracted. Something caught her eye after she gave him that approach invitation. Oh well, I guess she isn’t interested after all, he says.

• She’s with friends. Too hard to meet her when there are other people around, he figures. So he doesn’t talk to her.

• Someone else approached her first. She was putting approach invitations out there, but another guy swooped in before he could. I guess she’s his now, he says.

• It’s early / late / the middle of the night. Wouldn’t want to approach her at the wrong time, you know.

• He’s waiting for his friends. They might not be able to find him if he goes and talks to her.

• He hasn’t ordered anything yet. Don’t want to be rude to the venue and not pay for a drink or a coffee before you start hitting on patrons, that is.

• He isn’t 100% positive she wants to meet him. Only thing worse than missing out on a girl who’s interested is going up to meet a girl and not having it be 100% on. Right? Oh...
  

These sound like silly reasons when you write them down. And they are all silly reasons. Yet, they will pop into your head when you’re looking for rationalizations not to approach, and they’ll usually feel pretty credible at the time.

The real reason is almost always either approach anxiety or apathy... One or the other.

However, if you notice any of these ‘reasons’ pop into your head, realize that they’re not reasons – they’re excuses. And while you waste time waiting for the reasons to clear, she’ll have moved on... Or the day or night itself will have ticked on by.

Don’t Waste Time

Again, totally fine to just go out to hang out, shoot the breeze with buddies, or relax. Nothing wrong with that.

Yet if you’re going out specifically to meet women, and you’re wasting time like this – well, you’re not doing yourself any favors.

Be aware of these 10 time wasters men use:

1. Nurse their drinks
2. Circle around a dozen times
3. “She’s not cute enough”
4. “I’ll say hi when I’m warmed up”
5. Change venues too often
6. Long chats with friends
7. Room scans
8. Social butterfly
9. Eject too soon
10. Ignore interested girls
    

When you notice yourself doing these, do everything in your power to cut them out.

You’ll have a much more productive dating life for the trouble. And a lot fewer days and nights where you go out aiming to meet cute girls yet end up with zip to show for it.

Always,
Chase