But first I wanted to address a question I received via email today that I’m guessing a LOT of you are wondering about:

Hey man, love the blog. I have a question about routines. When I got started I used a bunch of routines for the attraction phase and got decent results out of it. By the end I could get phone numbers on a pretty consistent basis, and some were flaky but some were solid. I wanted to check my skill level without routines so I started using a social opener, and then following it up with relying on my conversation skills off the bat. What I find is that most conversations went well, but some girls would just stand around and give one word input indefinitely. I imagine this is sometimes because they aren’t interested, and sometimes because they are just boring, so in either case I usually just walk away after a minute. Is there something I am missing here? Am I being too quick to judge? If so, what’s the best way to deal with this contingency? -J

There’s actually several variables at work here, J.

The first is that in a cold approach scenario (especially nightclubs), you have to take social value into account. Generall speaking, the bigger the difference in social value (e.g. contextual social status) between you and the girl, the more resistance you’ll face opening the set. Let’s imagine you’re an “8″ on the guy-looks scale (Note: Looks obviously aren’t the end-all-be-all of social value/status but it serves as a good example). Now imagine a girl who would be a “2″ on that same scale. 400 lbs, acne, ugly, maybe disfigured. Even knowing that we are doing cold approach a lot and are therefore more social/open to meeting people, don’t you think there would be some resistance we’d put up towards that girl? Now take that level of resistance you might feel and multiple it by 10. That’s what many girls in nightclubs feel in terms of social pressure when a lower-social-value guy approaches them. That doesn’t mean they always blow the guy off, or even that they won’t “give him a shot,” but it doesn’t change the fact that the social pressure is there.

Now I have no idea what social value you’re coming in with, but it’s important to realize that having the perfect thing to say isn’t going to guarantee a good reaction when you’re dressed poorly, are out of shape, aren’t smiling, smell bad, etc.

In your specific situation, I’m going to assume that since you’re getting decent reactions through routines that you’re a fairly normal/average/well-adjusted guy. That being the case, having some girls give you one-word answers is normal. Like you said, it could be because they’re boring, but it’s more likely because they’re uninterested. Unless girls are physically attracted to you right off the bat, you’re always going to start off an interaction with some level of internal resistance. We all do it — we are resistant to opening up to new people unless there’s a reason.

The key then, is to give her a reason to open up. She may be giving you 1 word answers because of a disparity in social value. She may be stereotyping you or she may not be into you physically. She might even just be having a bad day.

The solution is the same: Change her MOOD (Credit: Tyler Durden).

When you get 1-word answers, your objective is to immediately get more investment because otherwise you’re on a downward-spiraling path to blow out. In order to get more investment we must give her a reason to invest. Logical reasons don’t work for the same reason that the aforementioned 400lbs girl could tell us she’s nice and rich and a really sweet girl and it wouldn’t make us want to invest more in her. We must give her an emotional reason to invest.

In short, you must make her feel “attraction” for you on some level. That doesn’t mean she has to want to take you home with her that moment, but you do need her to associate positive emotions with you.

By far the easiest way to do this is humor.

A lot of gurus in the community like to downplay social skills and humor because they would have you believe that sexuality is all you need. “Just escalate and have intent and everything will be right in the world.” If only it were that easy. That’s like saying you don’t have to have skills to beat Michael Jordan in a 1-on-1 game, you just have to believe you can. Riiiiight.

Humor is one of your most powerful tools in the game because it’s so versatile. It disguises escalation. It changes emotions. It creates attraction. It nullifies tension. It gets you out of damage control/bad situations. It creates rapport and comfort. It exudes confidence.

It took me SO long to figure this out. I literally went the first 2 years in pickup without having a developed sense of humor and it was a painful process. I remember when I started integrating humor into my game because my results doubled almost overnight. I credit a big part of that breakthrough to my wings who are all naturals and really funny guys. Kamouflage especially has such good damage control because he can make a girl laugh at a moment’s notice. It’s hard to be mad at someone when they can make you laugh hysterically on command.

So coming back to your question, the key to working with 1-word answers (e.g., a neutral or negative response) is to provide value, which in most cases is through humor. It doesn’t matter if she gives you a 1-word answer if you can make her laugh off of that answer. You do this by being able to generate humor from very little investment.

One of the key things I teach on boot camps is how to do this. Because then you don’t have to rely on routines anymore. They’re icing on the cake and not the cake itself.

Here’s one drill I teach that will help you develop this ability. I call it the Investment-Value Cycling (IVC) drill.

Step 1: Ask a generic open-ended question that will get a 1-word answer. Ex: “Where are you from?”

Step 2: She will answer predictably with a location/state/country/city/etc. Usually in 1-word form. Ex: Canada. If you are doing this by yourself, then come up with the answer or location yourself. You can probably predict some of the common answers you might get if you ask this question.

Step 3: Your job is to tease her or poke fun of her based on that 1-word answer using stereotypes, sarcasm, satire, etc.

Ex: “oh my god I LOVE Canada. They’re like our little ‘special’ brothers and sisters up north that we have to defend when bullies come around! That’s soo cute. <pinch her cheeks>”

Ex2: “You know, I’ve always wanted to live in an igloo. It just seems so cool. Haha but wait, does your house fall apart when you turn on the heater? That must suck.”

See how this works? Don’t panic if you can’t come up with something right away. When I first started doing these drills, it took me like an hour to come up with a single answer. But you know what? The more I did the drill, the faster I got with it. An hour turned into 30 minutes, which turned into 15, which turned into 5, and then 1, and then 30 seconds, and pretty soon I had an answer in under a second. That’s where you eventually want to get to. I did this exact drill for 15+ hours per week for almost a year. That eventually brought me to the point where I’ve got about a 90% chance that I’ll have something pretty funny to say within 1 second of her answer. That’s not natural talent, that’s synthetically-developed humor through drills and technique.

The last thing to address is stop false-ejecting in night-time environments. Stay in your sets until the girls excuse themselves or ask you to leave. It’s harder, and you’ll blow out of more sets, but you’ll learn WAY more than you will by quitting early every time. Take your lumps like a man and stay in until it’s over. And it ain’t over til the fat lady sings. There have been plenty of times when I ended up taking a girl home whom I almost walked away from at first because it seemed like it was going nowhere the first few minutes. You gain nothing from false ejecting aside for not hurting your ego. But you lose a LOT.

I hope this answers your questions, J.

P.S. I’m actually thinking about compiling a giant PUA FAQ on the site which will break down about 100 of the most common scenarios (like this one) and what to do when you get into them. I’ve never seen anything like this on the internet and I think it’ll be a great resource. If you guys think this might be useful, or if you have your own ideas, please let me know in the comments.

Merry Christmas

Now in the spirit of Christmas (which, ironically, shouldn’t mean anything to me as I’m agnostic), I’ve got some presents for you guys.

From now until Jan 1 (exactly 1 week), not only will my long term training prices stay at their lower rates (they will be going up significantly in 2011), but I will be offering an exclusive deal I’ve never offered before. For 1 week only, sign up for 3 months of Long Term Coaching and get the 4th month for FREE. Now that wouldn’t be a big deal if every month you just got a CD in the mail and got to listen to a few conference calls. Because a 4th month would be EASY to give away. But I bust my ass every month doing personal, 1-on-1 coaching calls with you so a 4th month isn’t easy for me. That’s also why I’m limiting this deal to the first 10 people who sign up. I simply can’t handle doing 1-on-1 work if I get 200 people trying to cash in on this deal. I wish that were only a marketing tactic, but it’s not. My programs aren’t scalable because my first priority is results for students. If you’re wondering what kind of results you can expect from the program, a few of my guys have posted unsolicited reviews on other sites that I happened to find. They’re not testimonials, they’re honest reviews, so you get a pretty balanced look at the good and the bad.

But even if you can’t afford to pay for a full 3-months in the program right now, I would suggest starting with month-to-month as tuition for Long Term Coaching programs is going up in 2011. If you’ve been waiting around on taking that next step towards getting good, yesterday now would be the time to act. Last time around my coaching prices doubled overnight and there were a lot of guys emailing saying they wish they had signed up because now they can’t afford it. Don’t be that guy. My inbox is too full as it is.

I'm so tempted to troll this caption with pickup company names

Hey guys,

Another (relatively) quick tip of the week here. Last week Dan from WordOfDan commented on the dancing monkey syndrome:

I’m curious how you’d suggest guys using routines adopt this mindset. After all, if you’re learning a line someone else gave you, that THEY found funny and had success with, it seems like it would come off at best, dancing monkey. Your physical jokes seem to be able to bypass that a little bit, but what about other people’s stories, teases, etc.?

Really, really good question that I probably should have thought about in the original article. I’ll expand upon this more in a future segment of my Routines Series Articles, but the short answer is to follow the same self-amusement paradigm. That is, when using scripts or routines that aren’t your own, use ones that *you* like or find interest/funny. Remember that with routines, delivery is 90% of the battle. The routines aren’t magic. They’re training wheels. So even though you’re going to use someone else’s material, you’re going to pick and choose based on if it is interesting or funny to you. It’s very, very difficult to self-amuse or get a good reaction from a routine you don’t find funny. It doesn’t necessarily mean the routine is bad, it just means that it didn’t particularly resonate with you. And if you don’t vibe with it, your audience won’t either.

On that note, I also want to briefly talk about the power of humor. It’s ironic that in the seduction community, humor is one of those tools that we all know is effective, but is still severely overlooked and underappreciated. Humor isn’t the end-all-be-all to pickup, but it *is* a very effective tool. If you’re like me and you’re not a naturally funny guy, learn it. Take stand up classes, improv comedy, read books, watch live stand up, hang out with funny naturals, and do whatever it takes to develop it. Humor will allow you to disguise escalation, strategically relieve tension, pump buying temperature, handle AMOGs and C/Bs, hold and set frames, and operate within damage control. It had one of the biggest impacts once I incorporated it into my game. No other tool in pickup is as versatile or will get you out of a jam as effectively as humor. It’s partly why I teach improvisational humor and wit in my training and boot camps. It’s that important.

Learn it. Master it. Internalize it.

See you guys next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.

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