7 Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About tinder badoo

1. I looked at her and then looked at the dinner bill. She looked me directly in the eyes and smiled. Again, I looked at her and then looked at the bill. Still, no reply. It definitely wasn't my best moment, but it was not hers either. Apparently, as I found out afterwards, I had fallen into a trap known as"the meal plan." The meal program, if you're not familiar with it, is when girls go on dates with men merely to get a free meal. It was obviously quite popular with attractive college girls, a classification she definitely fell into. When I first heard about the"meal plan," I did a mental rewind as I scrolled back through all the dates I had gone on until that point: all 37 dates to be exact. Of course at first I was outraged. How could women take advantage of me like this? As I matured in my internet dating, however, I realized that this was really a response for what men do to women. There are three major levers in our lives that, if we pull them correctly, can change everything. Our career, our health, and our relationships can be the difference between depression and elation. I discovered this firsthand because in the past five years I went through the excruciatingly painful and draining process of pulling all three levers at once. I stopped the career I had been building for more than 7 years and I left my 10-year relationship with my girlfriend that I believed I was going to marry. All of a sudden I was a career and dating novice. After 9 months of misery and frustration I was about to give up on online dating all together. One day, I was sitting in the shower feeling sorry for myself for over an hour. And then, for some unknown reason, my ambitious gene triggered and a small voice in my head said,"you're going to give up? No, no you're not. You are going to kick on online dating's ass!" I started to channel my misery into anger, and my anger into determination. I began to approach online dating just like one big experiment. I started creating what I predicted,"The Process." In this blog post I'll take you through the whole process I took to master online dating. By optimizing your profile, A/B testing your descriptions, beginning meaningful conversations, as well as crafting interesting dates. We'll discuss how to streamline the online dating process so that you can not just get dates, but possibly find the love of your life (with minimal stress). Now, before I get into it, I must preface that depending on your context, your culture, and your comfort, your process might need to be different than the below. But, the important takeaway here is to pull back the feelings

2. that come from dating and treat it like an experiment. If you approach it with the mindset of,"I'm going to go meet interesting people and do interesting things," you will be more inclined to enjoy the process. And, if you're diligent, you might end up finding that special person. UPDATE: As of 2019 I have been with my new girlfriend, who I met on OkCupid, for 4 decades and we have moved in together. So maybe these strategies are not all that mad, but perhaps they are, I will leave it for you to judge. Listen to the Modern Dating Show Podcast for more tips, tricks, and embarrassingly real stories. Note: You can also listen to the Modern Dating Show podcast, where my friend Trevor and I cover a whole lot of these strategies as we browse the present struggles and embarrassments of his own dating trip (and answer listener questions). STEP 1 -- Decide what you're looking for The complete most common error I see both guys and gals making when it comes to online dating is they don't define their target obviously. Deep down inside, most of us know whether we are searching for a serious relationship or just to have fun. The more common scenario that I've discovered is that both men and women who are looking for a meaningful relationship are optimizing their dating for fun instead. I remember how one day when my coworker, Maddy, heard about my success with online dating, she asked me to assist her with her OKCupid profile. She is a remarkably smart and capable woman and she's' quite beautiful, a real 10 out of 10, so I was confused why she'd need my help. In less than 5 seconds I saw the problem. The photos I saw in her profile looked like they belonged more on thechive.com rather than on any dating site. Basically, so as to optimize for getting dates, Maddy had chosen to just include her most provocative photos. Now I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with girls having"promiscuous" pictures online. The problem, in the event of dating, is the format of a dating profile and what you lead with. Our brains have evolved over centuries to intuitively pick up on visual cues much faster than written hints. In fact, they've found that men that are even walking with their girlfriend, will reflexively look if an attractive woman walks by without even activating their conscious brain. Because dating profiles hide most information other than the profile photo until a user clicks, resulting in provocative photos sets a bad first impression. So, while it is totally fine to have hot photos up on your instagram, leading together on your online dating profile is sending signals that could be attracting the wrong type of guy. There are also lots of classy ways to have interesting pictures that speak to more than just the subconscious mind. Online dating pictures can be both classy and intriguing So, although Maddy was trying to locate a relationship, her photos were only sending signals that she is searching for"fun." Understandably, she had a line of douchebag guys filling up her inbox.

3. Listen to The Modern Dating Show Episode 4 For men, we tend to have the opposite issue. Every man who has done online dating will testify to the battle of getting a woman to swipe directly on their profile, let alone to get them to participate in a conversation. Guys, this is entirely your own fault. I have seen men spend hours talking about the statistics of their favourite sports team, which player has what stats, who's health is suffering, and even how financial reports will effect the team's chances. However, when it comes to online dating, guys have a tendency to slap a few pictures in their profile and then start swiping like orangutans until their palms develop calluses. Men, stop. Before you begin creating or re-creating your dating profile, stop and think about what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to date a great deal of people? Or are you trying to find a meaningful relationship? And"both" isn't an answer. "If you try to appeal to everyone, you will appeal to no one." The techniques I will outline below work for desired result, but the choices you make will significantly affect your"conversion" rate. By way of example, the first time I mastered everything in this process, I started going on a great deal of dates (3-- 4 per week, weekly ), but I still felt incredibly unfulfilled. I only realized months after that, while it's great to go on a lot of dates and get practice relationship (remember I had been off the dating scene for 10 years), it was even more important to be sure I had been dating the perfect folks. Fortunately I realized this before I was the victim of some more"meal programs ." STEP 2 -- A/B Test your online dating profile pictures and descriptions First impressions matter. According to a study from Princeton, it is projected that in any relationship, whether its work or social, we make up our mind about if we like the person in less than one second. The single biggest flaw in online dating is that the first impression you make is based solely on your profile picture. They don't get to hear you speak. They don't get to shake your hand. They don't get to smell you (it is a thing).

4. All you get is 1 picture and there's a 99% chance it's the wrong one. If one is coming online dating as an experiment, naturally the first thing to check is your profile picture. I started this process in a very unscientific way... I went to every female friend I knew and asked her what she thought of my photos. One hundred, and I mean 100% of these said that my first image was not my best. It was interesting feedback, but I was not sure how I could test numerous pictures considering that I could only put one as the default option. The answer: testing across programs. I created profiles on Hinge, OKCupid, CoffeeMeetsBagel, and the dreaded Tindr. I retained my profile description the exact same on every profile, but I set up a different profile image on each. I rotated the pictures across profiles before I could get a large enough sample size and be certain that the platform was not effecting results. Four of my real dating profile pictures Sure enough, the profile picture that I thought was my best was always the one with the least games. Interestingly enough, a picture I did not read into, pic B, was actually a huge turn off for pretty much 100% of women. When I asked them why, without skipping a beat they replied,"it makes you look like a player." I was shocked when I found this out, because the two women in that photo are really good friends of mine, so I never would have made this connection. Sometimes your photographs can be your greatest blind spot. To completely test this idea out, I really enrolled a couple of friends (both men and women) to the experiment and had them change out their profile pictures. They got varied results, but one thing was consistent: the picture they thought was their best, never performed the best. This is a super easy optimization that can look to be a pain today, but it will save you from dozens, if not hundreds, of missed matches. This is the 20% of work that will get you that 80% improvement in results, so please rotate your photos and rotate them often. Top Tip: If you want to speed this process up, you can actually ask your matches exactly what they think of your own pictures. If a conversation with a match was not going well, I decided to at least get some"user feedback" by asking her why she swiped right and which of my photographs she thought was best. (I also used this technique to ask recruiters why I wasn't getting jobs.) Descriptions are negotiable

5. In highschool I had a history teacher, Mr. Hernandez, who gave me the worst piece of advice I've ever received:"just be yourself." Now, a part of this error might be my fault, because I took his advice very literally. I began to speak my mind, dress how I wanted to dress, and act how I wanted to act. This turned out to be a horrible idea. Without any filter or thought behind my actions, I rubbed more than a few people the wrong way. Now that I've matured a bit, I have come to realize that there is a difference between being your total self and being yourself. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are never our total selves except when we are by ourselves. Seth Godin has a great podcast on"signals," that you can listen to here. In the podcast, he explains that we actively choose which signs to give to other men and women. A guy wearing a button up shirt, for instance, isn't necessarily wealthy, but the button up top is putting out the signal that he is wealthy. Much like a person who wears all black and an anarchy necklace is indicating she does not want to follow society's rules, the guy in the button up shirt is indicating that he's okay with subsequent convention. In college I met a woman at a party who immediately caught my attention. I approached her and we immediately hit off. We spent the whole party dancing and flirting. We made plans to have a lunch date at the college cafeteria later that week. I got to the cafeteria early and chose to save us a booth seat. As I was waiting, a woman walked up to me and smiled. I looked up and saw a cute girl dressed all in black, wearing black eyeshadow and an anarchy necklace round her neck. Initially I didn't even recognize her, but after a few baffled blinks with my eyes I realized it was my date. She sat down and we began talking. After some awkward conversation, she explained that her friends were sick of her being single so they'd dressed her up to be"cuter" for the party to attract a guy. I was that guy. I didn't really care what she dressed like, but as we picked up our conversation we soon realized we had practically nothing in common. The outfit she had used as a signal at the party didn't match her personality at all. We finished the date cordially and moved on. Signals matter. Choosing your signs is great, but picking false signals not so much. You don't need to lie, but you also don't want to be your total self. You want to tell them about how you collect vintage records, you don't want to let them know about the way you cry every time a U2 tune comes on. You need to tell them about how you volunteer at the animal shelter, you don't need to tell them about how you ran over your cat.

6. First impressions matter. Crafting a fantastic description is perhaps the toughest and personal piece of enhancing your online dating profile. There's no right answer, but there are some incorrect answers. The first step to having a great dating profile description is having a very clear structure. I break down a dating profile description into 3 parts: Headline: A brief sentence somebody can read quickly. Intro Paragraph: A little longer description that gives some colour to your interests and personality. Call to Action: A desirable action you want them to take. Internet dating is inherently awkward, so help the other person by letting them know something that you can talk about. Ladies this is particularly true for you. If you don't want guys messaging you"hello" or"wanna f*ck?" Then give them some fuel to start the conversation with. Unfortunately, people tend to surf online dating apps the way they surf social networking sites: quickly and without much thought. It could be, in fact, that mobile devices have trained us to surf everything in a similar way. Because of this, I think the headline is possibly the most crucial bit of your description and you need to try different variations until you find one that works for you. After a lot of testing I discovered that this one worked best for me: The objective of the headline is to give a fast snapshot of what's unique about you. Having a headline that is authentic, interesting, and brief functions like a stop sign for the individual who's scrolling through the dozens of profiles on their phone. Chances are they'll laugh at the question. As any good content marketer knows, great content is all about respecting the medium that you're producing the content for. By way of instance, if I went into a woman in a bar and said,"Outdoorsy, curious, ambitious, energetic," she will definitely get up and leave. The reverse is true for online dating, however. You want your headline to be fluff free. Keep it to a 3--6 words, or one sentence, and be sure it is quintessentially you. After that initial curiosity is peaked, you should start paving a path towards them getting to know you a little bit more. This is not the time to compose a novel about yourself. After all, this is only your 3rd touch point with this individual, your headline and picture being the first two. The intro paragraph provides a little bit of colour and perhaps some talking points that you two can discuss in conversation (again, ladies, this is extremely important to include if you would like to have more meaningful conversations). The intro paragraph that worked best for me was: "I love being outside as much as you can! Some of my favorite items are surfing, climbing, and playing volleyball. I'm a creative at heart but I really like learning about new and businesses ideas. I am into photography, layout, and

7. Tim Ferriss. My ideal Saturday is playing volleyball at the beach with friends. My perfect Sunday is reading a fantastic book at Promenade cafe." This paragraph outlines a few basic activities and hobbies I like as well as some non-standard items tinder poradnik like business, design, and Tim Ferriss that might peak curiosity. The main thing to remember about this section is to avoid the generic actions that could apply to pretty much anybody. "I enjoy hanging out with friends, watching movies, binging on Netflix, and going on hikes." While I am positive that there are people on earth who don't like watching movies or hanging out with friends, probably 95 percent or more of the people in your area enjoy both those things too. Rather than trying to fit in, attempt to stand out. Try to balance your description between things most people like, so you can find common ground, but also things which are uniquely you. For example in my description above: -- Most people like being outside and photography. -- Some people like surfing, climbing, and volleyball. -- But very few people like learning about businesses or Tim Ferriss. The Call To Action This is optional, even though it certainly helps. In advertising, a call to action (CTA) is the action that you want the user to take after they've viewed your content. In relationship, you essentially need the individual to message you. This sounds like a no brainer, but I've found that a lot of people, both guys and girls, have been rejected so many times that they finally become discouraged from making first contact. I have heard countless stories of girls who have matched with a guy who they really enjoy, but the guy never messages them. When I ask them why they do not message first, they say that they don't know what to say or they don't want to seem desperate. The call to action helps alleviate this problem by making it clear that you want them to message you. Butobviously you do not want everyone to message you, so make your call to action specific. On OkCupid they have a single section that states: "You should message me if..." ← This is OkCupid's sub-heading but you can just manually add it on other internet dating programs too.

8. Again, as with all this information, when in doubt just check it out. Try having a call to action and see if your conversations improve. If they don't, just delete it. The attractiveness of dating apps is that instead of having 1--5 chances to make a connection, as you would if you went to a bar for example, you have tens of thousands of chances and"do-overs" to play with. STEP 3 -- Making initial talking and contact The place where online dating falls flat on its face compared to"in real life" relationship is when it has to do with the conversation. Having to chat online as your initial conversation is a huge limitation when you're trying to begin a new relationship. For one thing, it's a very unnatural way of communicating, since it's been proven that we receive 55% of our communication from non-verbal (or in this case non-typed) communicating. It makes sense then that if you take countless people and set them in a supernatural communication environment you get some pretty unnatural conversations. While it may be fun to play around with bizarre conversation openers, if you are serious about finding a fantastic relationship through online dating, then it is a good idea to study your results a little bit. As I got better at optimizing my profile, I started matching with more and more people. This gave me the chance to start testing different conversation openers and see patterns that I just would not have been able to determine if I did not have a high match rate. Listen to The Modern Dating Show Episode 6 I'll spare you some of the terrible ideas I had, but in the spirit of good fun, let us test how well you can judge a good opener from a bad one. For bonus points, try to purchase them from most effective to least effective. A) "Hey! What is it going?" How was your weekend?" C) "Question: Batman or Superman?" (or any other variation of the type of question). D) "Hey! How did you like X book?" (based on a book they listed in their profile)

9. I'll let you think about it for a second. (I'll add some space before the answer below. Scroll as soon as you're ready.) Scroll for the response Scroll for the response Scroll for the response Scroll for the response Scroll for the response Scroll for the response And the answer is... If you guessed D, then you picked the best answer! (If you guessed C, you picked the worst answer.) In order of best to worst, the answers are B, D, A, C (D being best). There are pluses and minuses to any conversation starter. While I found that the absolute best conversations resulting from"Hey! How did you like X novel," that obviously depends if they have put a book in their profile. You can modify this to ask about some other part of the profile, such as a movie or a place in their own pictures. The reason I suspect that the book one works best though is because a) it shows you really read their profile and b) it shows that you read. If I may use the book opener to initiate a conversation I usually also extend it to,"Hey! How did you like x book? I am currently reading'Losing my Virginity' by Richard Branson and highly recommend it!" (This is how I opened the conversation with my now-long-term girlfriend). Pretty much every conversation I began with this opener felt a lot more natural and moved beyond a few messages. The next best choice,"Hey! Works nearly as well, but it is obviously confined to Sundays, Mondays, or Tuesdays. (It would be strange if you used this on a Friday). This worked pretty well, but not nearly as well. I suspect it's because it sounds too much like I am about to ask her on a date or it puts her on the spot to think of something interesting. The Do's & Don'ts of Online Conversation

10. Now that you have made contact and the other person has responded, it is time to have a conversation. Every conversation varies, but there are a few guidelines that I'll put in here as hints. First, some online dating tips for men: DON'T try to be interesting by being obnoxiously weird. I can not tell you the number of messages my female friends have shown me that sound objectively psychotic. The sad thing is I know that the guy is just nervous and trying to think of something interesting to say. Just have a normal conversation just like you would with a friend. DO try to talk about things she is interested in but also add your own thoughts. Among the most common complaints I've heard from female friends is that they feel like they're being interviewed. Make certain that you ask questions, but that you also share things about yourself in equal measure. DON'T make comments about her body or appearance. Irrespective of how well intentioned you are, it'll be perceived in the wrong way. Saying things like,"you're so beautiful! You've got a cute smile! You're..." will only result in a polite"thank you" and won't create meaningful conversation. Now, a few online dating suggestions for girls: DO be nice and help guide the conversation. Even when I've tried to be friendly and nice, I've still received very curt or standoff-ish answers. No matter how much guys pretend they don't care about the conversation, they do. And they normally don't have any clue what they are doing, so offer them some help and guide the conversation in a positive direction. DON'T answer questions without asking some of your own. If you're tired of conversations feeling such as interviews, then be certain that you ask the man about things he's interested in also. DON'T make judgments too soon. In my experience women tend to put a good deal more thought in their text messages than guys do. If a guy says something that looks weird or strange, give him the benefit of the doubt and do not read too much into it, chances are he didn't either. Now a suggestion for the two parties: Attempt to move the dialogue from online to in real life relatively quickly. Online dating is a excellent tool to fulfill someone, but it is just that. It's a tool, it is not actual dating. My overall recommendation for moving from online to in real life is one long conversation or two short conversations. It should never take more than a week to establish a date. Thus, if you match with one another on a Monday, you should definitely have started talking about using a date by Wednesday. So yes, use the programs, but also get them off quickly. In real life is a lot more fun too in case you know how to set up good dates... Step 4 -- Making a date sequence that will cause you to smile more and sweat less After I had mastered the online part of relationship, I soon realized that securing the date is just half the battle. The second half of this battle, how well goes, is largely determined before you have even set out from your house. As they say in real estate: location, location, location. Where you have your date decides about 50--70 percent of the outcome of the date.

11. But a question... Where's the worst place to have a date? As it turns out, it's actually at the most commonly selected dating place: A sit-down restaurant. Initially I was taking all of my dates to restaurants for dinner. Boring, I know. But bear in mind, I was completely new to dating so I was just following what I had seen in movies. Many of them didn't go well, but I wasn't sure why. After a dozen or so embarrassing (and pricey ) dates, I determined that I should experiment with several other locations. What happened next was totally mind blowing. It wasn't that I was doing anything differently or that I was choosing better girls to go on dates with, it was merely a matter of context. Here's why I think dinner dates do not work, it goes something like this: You meet a complete stranger outside a restaurant. You sit down at a table. You begin speaking, then the waiter interrupts asking about drinks. You continue to speaking. The waiter interrupts again for your food order. You are not ready to order because you've been talking. The waiter provides you"another moment." You examine the menu making remarks about the choices. The server comes back ten minutes later. You talk and talk. You then run out of things to discuss. What do you do next? You have to keep talking. Talk... Talk... Talk! A dinner date provides no choices. It is a singular task that depends on you linking with a complete stranger almost immediately. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that many of us are getting worse at getting in-person conversations. Spending so much time online has enhanced our written communication skills, but it has also atrophied our in- person communication skills. So, if we're getting worse at getting in-person discussions, why would you bet your entire love life on the fact that you'll be able to have an remarkable in-person conversation with a complete stranger? I was holding on to a small ledge, about the size of a golf-ball, while the rest of my body dangled 30-feet above the ground like a giant cat toy. "O well," I thought,"this is going to be a good bonding experience." As I let my fingers slip off the ledge I anticipated the sharp shock of the rope in my climbing harness. But there was no jolt. I started falling for what felt like eternity. As it happens, my climbing partner had let go of the rope just as I had slipped off the ledge. She panicked and did not grab the rope until I had dropped 15 feet to what I was certain was my forthcoming death. Finally the rope eventually stopped and I felt a huge jolt, both emotionally and physically. My entire dating career made a 180-degree turn once I began taking my dates on fun activities rather than dinners. Some of these activities worked better than others. However, I found out that the most crucial elements to a wonderful date place could be distilled into three categories:

12. Walkability -- Do we need to sit together or can we walk around? When you are walking, your landscape is shifting so you can pick up new conversation topics as you go. "O look at that naked guy on rollerblades!" (It is San Francisco after all). Action -- Can we do the activity reasonably well? I've seen guys get this one pretty wrong. It's fun to teach someone something that you are passionate about, but be sure it's not too hard. Taking a woman rock climbing? Make sure she isn't afraid of heights first. Scalability -- Would the date increase or shrink in scale as needed? Having a terrific time? Great! Let's go get dessert! No chemistry? No issue, how can we end the date sooner? With these three criteria, I crafted a 3 date sequence which nearly doubled the number of successful dates I went on. Now I know what you're thinking,"This guy took women out to the same places like it was some sort of regimented assembly line?" This was my go-to order, but, based on interests, I'd substitute different activities to keep the dates intriguing. This was simply a template that simplified my decisions and decreased the cognitive load I was putting in my brain. Happy brain = Happy dates. So here is my perfect dating arrangement: Date #1 -- Off the Grid: Off the Grid is a gathering of food trucks each Friday by the San Francisco bay. Why I like it: One of the problems of inviting someone out to dinner is that everybody has different food preferences. Then (if you're a man ) you've got to account for cost of meals. Off the grid accomplishes this because there are over 20 different kinds of (affordable) cuisine. Additionally, it allows you to walk around, people watch, and get drinks. Feel like going all out? Queue the awkward white-boy dance moves. Date #2 -- Variable: This date could change based on interests but I had a couple of go-tos, namely: Little Italy, rock climbing, tennis, picnic on the beach. Why I like it: These actions had in common were the 3 factors: walkability, action, scalability. We could walk around Little Italy, catch cannolis, stay for drinks at Jack Karouac's favorite bar, or abort early. With both rock climbing and tennis we can alternate between talking and activity. If we did a picnic on the beach, we can go for romantic walks or huddle around a fire pit on Ocean Beach. Date #3 -- Cal Academy Adult Night: An adult-only night in the Cal Academy of Sciences where you can grab drinks and look at exhibits.

13. Why I like it: This date was especially important because if a woman had made it #3, it meant I really liked her. It also meant we might take the relationship to the bedroom. The Cal Academy night fulfilled all requirements, also it was a semi-formal occasion so we could both dress nicely for that special night. This was also my secret test because if a woman did not like science and facts it likely wouldn't work out between us anyway. Listen to all the episodes of The Modern Dating Show These are merely three examples of how to take online dating offline and create a reasonably successful dating sequence. Here are a few tips on what to look for on every date as you try to make your own dating sequence: Date #1: Search for a casual environment that is not intimidating. Dark bars or loud places don't make for great conversation. Be certain that you can reliably go to this place, so avoid places with long waits or where you need to make reservations. Make sure you can schedule the date for a weeknight (try to not book someone's weekend for a first date). Date #2: You have broken the ice and you've both agreed to a second date, so have fun with this one! Select an activity you will both like that is not too tricky. Ideally choose an activity that has a cadence where you alternate between doing something and speaking. Going on a 10 mile run is fantastic for exercise, but it doesn't allow for conversation. Seeing a movie at a movie theater has similar limits. Date #3: You both confirmed you like each other, it's time to bring it to the next level. Try to make this date a little more special than the first two. It needs to be romantic, it should test how compatible you really are, and it should confirm whether or not you want to keep on seeing each other long term. After the excitement of dates and two, there may be a lull in date 3, so be sure whatever you choose provides new intimacy to the connection. For example, if I didn't go to the Cal Academy I'd go dancing instead. STEP 5 -- Obtaining your Timing Right Perhaps one of the most important pieces of the internet dating puzzle that I see men screw up again and again is timing. Assuming the guy is the one forcing the relationship sequence (which is not necessarily the case) there are a few questions you will need to ask: When should you ask her to go on a date? How long should you wait between date 1 and date 2? When should you sleep together? Here I will share my answers to these questions that I've found most useful. But again, depending upon your context, your culture, and your own comfort your answers may vary. The important thing is to actually consider timing, rather than leaving it up to"feeling" Going from Online to Offline It's very easy to let a great online dialog die out. You message , she messages youback and forth, back and forth. To be able to make certain that I don't waste all my time with internet conversations I found it was best to ask a woman to go on a date after about 2 days of messaging or roughly 20 minutes of continuous conversation. Again, try not to linger at the safe-space of this virtual world too long. It may feel like it's necessary, but it's quite easy to waste plenty of time and momentum in the chat room. Going from Date 1 to Date 2 When I was 25, working as"the new man" in a tech startup, my desk was placed right behind the sales staff. Every day I overheard their sales calls where they would utilize their jedi mind tricks to close deals with multi-million dollar balances.

14. One thing I noticed is that each and every time they were ending a call they would ask,"okay so what does your calendar look like for next week? Busy? Okay how about the week after that? O that's no good also. Okay how about the week after that?" No matter what the prospect said, the salesperson would insist on at least"penciling" another meeting into the calendar with the option of cancelling if desired. Once I took this technique and applied it to dating, it led to a pretty incredible results. This rule is a bit contrarian, but it has worked really well: Always request the second date on the first date. One of the worst things about dating is that you're putting yourself out there. You are opening yourself up to strangers and in return you're getting a lot of uncertainty. No one likes uncertainty. No one likes to check their phone every hour to see if you've texted them or not. No one likes to wonder if you like them or not. Surprisingly, most people don't mind if you don't like them, they just want to know. So my suggestion is to quit playing games, both with another person and on your own. If you like them, tell them you like them. If you don't, have the respect to let them know you do not. (A gentle means to do this is by telling them you aren't ready to date right now. I had a woman tell me this and it was the simplest let down I have ever experienced and used it later myself too). I should pause here for one caveat: Yes, you should tell them you like them, but not always. I see this a lot with both guys and girls who get really excited by the person they have just met and they then proceed to text them, call them, and see them day after day after day. He told me,"Girls are like shadows, the more you chase them, the more they run away. The more you run away, the longer they pursue you." If you find someone who you want to be with really badly, don't scare them away by being fanatical. If they like you too, there's no need to chase them. Yes, you should consciously attempt to set up a date, but there is no reason to go on dates each and every night of the week. Permit the relationship to have some breathing room. A fantastic way to judge if a relationship is going well is if you end up missing the other person and vice versa. There is a great deal of truth in the saying,"absence makes the heart grow fonder," and now there's even scientific evidence for it as well. In several studies, anthropologists have found that lots of primates invest more effort into a relationships if the individuals in that connection have been forced apart. What is interesting is that researchers in the Aalto University in Finland have recently confirmed that the same is true in humans. By data mining cell phone records and comparing telephone patterns and length, the researchers at the university found that humans may also invest more effort into relationships if there is a risk of that relationship weakening. I tried applying this research to relationship in a relatively simple way and, to my surprise, it worked nicely. It turns

15. out that by simply allowing for some time to elapse between dates, ironically, makes the relationship strengthen rather than weaken. My cadence for dating that I found worked fairly well was the following: Date 1 -- Day 0 Date 2 -- 7 days after Date 1 Date 3 -- 14 days after Date 2 Date 4 -- variable This arrangement meant that I'd spread out the first 3 dates across a one month period. This allowed for enough time for the connection to mature and helped me make sure I did not suffocate my dates, which was particularly helpful when I was really into them. Takeaways and Next Steps As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, these dating strategies helped me tremendously, but depending upon your context, your culture, and your own comfort, your procedure may need to be different than the one above. In actuality, because relationship is such an emotional activity (like job hunting), it's imperative to have a system set up that will assist you navigate the ups and downs. By engaging in online dating you are getting on a rollercoaster of emotions and, like on an actual rollercoaster, it would be foolish to just hop on and hold on. Making certain you have that lap belt secured and that you've been on a few less extreme rides can help you enjoy the ride a whole lot more. As we often discuss about the podcast, when you let go of expectations and only make your target just having fun with other human beings, online dating becomes something to look forward to rather than something to dread. Like the advice of world-class investors, you want to diversify your portfolio and decrease your chance of catastrophic failure. A way of doing this is by going on dates which aren't just sit-down dinners, so that regardless of how your dating partner behaves, at least you'll have a good time doing something fun. And, to minimize the risk, you need to build both an outreach and relationship sequence so you decrease the cognitive load of having to think of new dates constantly. Find a few activities you like doing and then match the dates into those activities. This is also a wonderful way to filter out people who aren't compatible with you in the first place, which will save you time and money in the long term. Of course, irrespective of how well I did all the above things, I still had my share of terrible dates. The girl who used me as a meal program being just one of several. Dating is a rollercoaster that will scare you, challenge you, and sometimes make you wish you had never gotten on. But bear in mind, once you're feeling down and like giving up on love altogether: "You're not as bad as they say you are, you're also not as good as you think you are." Take every date as an opportunity to improve yourself. If you constantly work on yourself, improving your discussions, your dates, and your relationship with others, that investment will pay off far beyond online dating. If you enjoyed this post, I would super appreciate if you hit the green hand clap button below so that more folks

16. can discover it. And, if you have any more questions about dating, listen to our podcast where you can submit your own dating questions and we'll answer them on the display.