How to evaluate "What to work on next"

[metalbird]

Hi guys and girls,

In the endless quest for self-improvement, have you ever reached a point where you weren't sure what to work on next? Not because you think you're perfect or even maxed-out -- hardly. Just because you want to know what aspects of yourself will result in the highest "return on investment" so to speak from attention and development.

When someone is a beginner, the first challenge is to learn the fundamentals, and for a long time, it's very obvious where the weaknesses are. If you start strength training or body building for the first time in your life, you first have to learn the basics of diet, form, mechanics, etc, and for the first year or two it's very obvious what the weakest areas are, and they usually respond to training the best. Or when you learn a new instrument, once you get the basic fundamentals down, it takes a while to be able to play a wide range of basic sounds/techniques proficiently.

But eventually you reach a point where it's not so obvious. One day you look at yourself in the mirror or listen to yourself play and you know you have plenty of room for improvement, but you're not exactly sure what to train or practice.

Today I want to get your suggestions for ways to address this question in regards to overall attractiveness/appeal to women, including male fundamentals, personality/mindsets, game, lifestyle/logistics, etc. In my mind, the question has three components:

• Understanding what the short term + long term goals are with women and what women want (or what is most likely to achieve those goals)
• Objectively evaluating one's own position, strengths, and weaknesses, and identifying where the bottlenecks / weak links are in relation to the goals
• Taking those bottlenecks / weak links and figuring out which are most likely to respond to training / development

I'm not so much looking for specific strategies for self-improvement, I'm more interested in hearing your thoughts on how you have or would approach this problem from a general point of view. What are the strategies and mindsets you'd employ? What do you think the best sources of feedback are? Do you ever reach a point where you've gotten "as good as it'll get" and if so, how do you determine that, and do you acknowledge it or not? How do you compensate for the likelihood of goals changing over time, when working on one aspect or another might be better for short term goals but worse for long term goals?

Let me know what you all think.

 

[West_Indian_Archie]

On a practical level

• There isn't a checkbox of pick up skills or goals anywhere.
• One must truly know what one wants out of pickup, in order to devise a plan, with goals.

In my experience, most guys

• Get initial success with girls 5-7 range
• Get a lot of repeatable success with 5-7's but struggle with 8's and above
• Wife up the first 8 they deal with
• Break up with said 8, and retool
• Bachelorhood that includes 8's-10's (the hedonism and resulting ennui (what does it all mean?) just goes in cycles)
• Get bored/sick of dealing with girls, and start looking for something mono.
• This part of their life, love, is now handled.

In terms of skill sets

1. Initial success - the short game (technical things like - approach, attraction, trust, logistics, arousal, close, gambits). These can be learned and internalized. They can be deepened/made stronger by going to the more basic levels of action - like taking a comedy or acting class. Learning to tell a story properly. Weightlifting to improve posture and anterior tilt. Manufacturing honest signals, etc.
2. Relationship with a hot girl - the reality of dealing with a hot girl, developing boundaries, being okay with correcting her when she makes mistakes, etc (relationship and frame stuff)
3. Short term relationships with hotter girls than before - No mystery with the hot girl, and no mystery about life with a hot girl. (inner game stuff)

Maybe there is some social skill spillover into business or "politics", but usually that's it.

Any of these elements can worked on and developed.

So the problem of the guy that hits a plateau is usually that he isn't aware of the possibilities, he doesn't know what he wants, or he lacks imagination.

WIA

 

[Zoro]

Unfortunately I'm not really sure I can currently give you more advice here on how to innovate. . . apart from keep hitting the field. . . without it sounding like abstract mysticism.

makes me want to hear what you have to say about it even more.

One must truly know what one wants out of pickup, in order to devise a plan, with goals.

totally agree with you here

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For me, I think just getting a lot of experience can lead to you to moments where you see holes in your game or realize you actually don't want to develop a skill in a certain area.

Lately I've been accepting that I just don't care about night game in the US. I'll still go out with friends once in awhile and try things out, but I'll invest less energy into it.

Also with my last few outings, I've noticed more IOI's than before and much better interactions when approaching those girls, and I realized how important fundamentals are, and even though I thought I had them down, I can tell now that I have a lot more room for improvement there, and thus that is very worth my investment of time and energy.

Also, I thought I had touch and escalation down, but I make surprising mistakes there, like assuming NOT escalating a little would better, only for that to probably be the downfall of the whole pick up lol.

Just working on things and getting experience can lead to discoveries about yourself and game in general, like an explorer charting new territory.

Also another thing that has helped me figure out where to focus, has been when working with coaches or guys with solid game, or picking the brains of guys here on the boards. Sometimes they'll be able to spot things in you that you couldn't see since they've been at that point themselves.

Just had a free hour session with Tony D that he offers and holy shit, talking with him made me see how I have some serious inner game issues to sort out, and that my technique is probably good enough and not actually the main issue I have.

 

[Tr1cky]

Why are you investing less time into night game?