RSS 2.0The Truth About Routines: Part 1
Posted in Pickup on 03/22/2010 03:03 am by DJ FujiNote: This is the first part in a running series of articles about the use of routines in learning game. For more information on routines, see all articles on routines.
Routines, scripts, lines, things to say. Some love ‘em, some hate ‘em, nearly everyone misunderstands them.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a routine is simply a memorized script of varying length. So in essence, both our kneejerk “fine” response to “how are you?” and a memorized, pre-scripted story are routines. One is simply longer and more complex than the other. Obviously, all of us use routines in one way or another.
Routines (whether yours or someone else’s) can also take the form of being canned, meaning that you’ve practiced them over and over again until you can deliver them well, or Stock, which means they’re generic, off-the-shelf scripts, usually created by others. Both can be very useful tools, especially if you don’t have a lot of natural talent.
Now before we move on, let’s take a quick quiz.
Question: What do you think is the main purpose for routines? What is the main purpose for openers? Now what is the main purpose for attraction routines? Stories?
Think about it for a minute.
…
Ready for the answer? If you said “to open,” “to get attraction,” or “to DHV,” you’re in agreement with most of the community. Unfortunately, you’re still incorrect. That’s short term thinking, and it’s an extremely common mistake.
The correct answer to all of these questions is the same: To teach you a skill.
That’s it.
Not to hook sets, or to open a set, or to get attraction, or to get you laid.
A routine is simply a training wheel to teach you a specific skill—in the same way that training wheels on a bike are designed to teach you to RIDE. In the same way that “floaties” are designed to teach you to become comfortable in the water and to swim. Like training wheels, routines are NOT primarily designed to keep you upright or afloat. The word for that is crutch.
I didn’t understand this concept for a long time. No one ever explained it to me. I was a hard-core Mystery Method guy in the 2005-2006 timeframe and I thought canned routines were the best thing since sliced bread. I thought routines were there to get you laid. Even Mystery still used routines. They had to be the holy grail of pickup, right?
The problem was that I was trying to use the WHAT without understanding the WHY. I was trying to use them for short term gain instead of their more useful long term development.
Routines are MOST useful when used for skill development. Stories, for example, are not primarily designed to create comfort, or attraction, or even to get a result in a set. They are designed to teach you storytelling. Any result you get from their use is secondary. Likewise, banter is designed to teach you humor and playfulness. Push-pull is designed to teach you to be a challenge and to not be predictable and boring. Openers are designed to teach you to engage people and hold court in groups. Oftentimes these routines can get us better results infield, but sometimes they do not. Sometimes they can intentionally blow us out (like the infamous “Shocker” routines from BradP).
And that’s ok.
Because we aren’t using them directly to get better results. We’re using them to teach us the skills that will make us more attractive, and ultimately, more successful.
The main problem a lot of guys have using routines is that they use them for the wrong reasons. Don’t use routines as crutches so you don’t have to learn to think on your feet. Use them as training wheels to teach you the fundamentals.
And conversely, if you’re not naturally talented socially, don’t shy away from routines because you think they’re inauthentic or disingenuous. They’re no more inauthentic than when you tell a story that you’ve told before, or when someone says hello and you response with, “hi.” Not using routines when you lack natural talent is like not practicing free throws when you lack natural basketball ability – namely, stupid. Even Shaq finally started practicing free throws.
Stand up comedians, politicians, public speakers, and basically anyone on a stage learn to speak using routines (unless you’re a former president who just tries to improvise). Only they call them speeches. Sometimes they write their own speeches, and other times they have someone else write them. But the end result is the same – they learn to speak by practicing their speeches. If you want to become good at pick up, you must do the same.
Eventually, you’ll lose the need to use routines. If you’ve been using routines correctly for more than a year and they’re starting to get you diminishing returns, you’re probably at that point. You probably need to start dropping them and teaching yourself how to improvise. That doesn’t mean you’ll always improvise everything 100%, but you want to progress to where you no longer need routines. You’ll no longer have to rely on them. You’ll be able to tell stories on the fly. You’ll be able to banter because you understand the concepts and underlying mechanisms. You’ll be able to open with whatever’s on your mind.
You will become a natural.
And that, gents, is really the goal of all of this. Unconscious competence. To internalize your skill set so much that you no longer think about it. To have such social mastery that at times, you take your own skills for granted because they are executed so effortlessly. That’s what you should be working towards.
Don’t gaze at the trees so long that you lose sight of the forest.
Coming soon: Part 2 in “The Truth About Routines” — Getting Started
03/24/2010 at 21:09
This article kicks ass! I like your teaching style a lot man, looking forward to Part 2. ( =
03/28/2010 at 20:28
I love you DJ Fuji! There I said it.
04/01/2010 at 21:46
Hey Fuji,
Awesome article, can’t wait to read (and apply of course) what’s written in others.
By the way, remember when you talked about weirdness of some Mehow’s material? Looks like Mehow himself has finally realized that LOL. Check this audio that got today http://www.acceleratedattractionsystem.com/content/sale-audio.php – about 1:45. He even has a new fancy name for this phenomenon: “Weirdness Overload” haha.
FF
04/04/2010 at 20:28
Awesome post DJ, great stuff as always. This is a must-read for newbies and a great context for guys who may be struggling with the should or shouldn’t I use routines conundrum.
04/05/2010 at 00:26
@Frozen Flame: Yeah my entire 10SSA Live speech was about not being weird. Glad people are finally realizing that.
04/07/2010 at 19:31
By the way, what’s the best way to get good at telling stories?
04/15/2010 at 15:01
@Jeff: Do it a lot.
Follow 3 main steps —
1.) Practice delivering stock (pre-scripted) stories until you get good results from them
2.) Learn storytelling structure and start writing your own stories out
3.) Rehearse and practice until you can start doing storytelling on the fly (without having to write them out first)
05/31/2010 at 23:05
Never looked at it that way before but it makes a ton of sense! As you can tell, I am a newbie and I am eager to learn from whichever masters who have substance. You seem to have a good deal of it
Looking forward to more of your posts sir
Game On!
06/21/2010 at 03:04
This article explained really clearly what’s the purpose behind routines. I was very scared to use routines because I fear the girls will find out I am bad at talking and had to use Internet to help myself.
Now I can think more logically and use it for the right way to benefit myself.I was doing a lot of boring interview questions which is what I thought is natural/authentic but it’s so boring and repetitive.Routines are like interesting story that had been told many times to friends or family or co-workers. I observed naturals talkative person in their 40s 50s they always have some little stories to add to the conversation from the PAST, which means it was a routine used again and again but in different setting and time. They said it because it was interesting and relevant.
10/21/2010 at 13:39
Great nuts and bolts explanation of the importance of routines and what we learn from them. By taking a bigger picture view, we see all of speech is a routine since we’re using combinations of phrases learned and understood together. We’re not assembling everything from the ground up like when we learn a new language. Look, even improv comedians use surprisingly similar devices again and again. However, as you pointed out, it seems that most of the community argues about this because we’re looking skewed at what the purpose is. Did it get you laid? No, it didn’t? Then it must suck. Self development is valuable in its own right, but it’s hard to sell. Kudos to you for telling it how it is.
09/05/2011 at 07:10
I just wonder this: There are PUGs who go straight to natural game without teaching routines, at least Eric Disco, Hypnotica, Juggler, Vin diCarlo and Cory Skyy. Then there are PUGs that use routines as training wheels, that will be thrown away, at least Neil Strauss and Gambler. My question is this: Is there any PUGs who teach nothing but routines and never encourage to moving to natural game?
09/05/2011 at 07:15
Yeah there are some routine-monkey teachers but I can’t think of any who are actually good, either at pickup or teaching.
I don’t think either extreme approach is ideal — some students need routines, others don’t. To give every student the same curriculum regardless of his situation is like pounding a square peg into a round hole — ineffective.
09/21/2011 at 12:44
Can you give some names of thoe routine-monkey teachers? let me guess: Mystery.
09/27/2011 at 10:32
DJ Fuji.
i will get a chance to meet you soon when you visit Chicago next week. One question i have is that a former mentor (not known in the community) was the best I have ever seen both in field and with overall lifestyle (health, wealth and with women) consistently used routines even 4-5 years after he started.
He could also improvise particularly in social circle situations. He wrote me a routine and assisted me with many aspects of my life including changing my appearance, my beliefs, understanding value at a deeper level as well with basic pick up skills.
He stressed that you need routines to build the skill sets you mention and is clearly a master at all facets of game but he continues to use routines in field even today.
He won’t even take a woman’s number without it because he believes she probably has an ulterior motive or it will be a flake whereas if he runs his routines, its 80% or better likely he will end up in bed with her within a couple of weeks.
He stated that based on his looks, most of the time the woman will not be very attracted if he does not get through his routine. I have watched him open hundreds of sets and can vouch for that. If he gets through it she seems entranced, otherwise she just acts like he is another dude in the bar making regular conversation. It’s weird at times.
I asked him once about this idea of eventually dropping them and his reply was that if you want to have consistent results, you need to stick with them similar to a great sales person who can improvise if needed but prefers to stick with his fixed sales presentation that works almost 100% of the time.
So I guess he is a “routine monkey” but even when a community guru person saw him they said he should be coaching so he must be pretty good. Is the only one out there? Everyone including you seems to be knocking routines, I have yet to hear anyone outside of MM who still supports using them 100% of the time and even Lovedrop talks about dropping the routines at some point and just being more natural.
Mark B
P.S it’s good to see someone teaching who is not also a naturally good looking person. If one more great looking guy tells me he can just teach me how to be completely natural, I am going to puke.
10/24/2011 at 21:22
Hey man, I’m not knocking routines at all. I’m simply clarifying them. Most guys don’t use them correctly and that’s why most guys end up screwing themselves up with them.
We all use routines to some extent but in my experience combining material with improvisation (or contextual improvisation of routines) is far more effective than simply stacking lines. You should get to the point where you don’t need to rely on routines to be effective. I don’t use openers, for example, in about 90% of my interactions. It’s either always improvised or it’s “hi” followed by an improvised follow up.
If your friend can’t get attraction or a solid number without the routines, then his improv abilities aren’t as strong as they should be. Most of what I do infield is based on non verbals, so the actual words aren’t THAT important. You should be able to get consistent attraction without using a single routine if necessary. It’d be a little bit like having an NBA player who couldn’t make a shot unless he hit the backboard. Like if he was shooting from the corner, he’d miss every time. Even if every other aspect of his game was impressive, the fact that he absolutely NEEDS the backboard is a pretty severe issue.
11/11/2011 at 13:06
”Routine-monkey”? I decided to submit that word to pualingo.com .