Time Management When Dating – Part 2
This article is a follow-up to the popular Time Management When Dating article I wrote last year. Please take a look at that if you have not yet, because that one leads right into this one. (I will also ignore any comments with questions already answered in that prior article.)
I have been a time management consultant for many years. Running three companies, I almost need to be. That last article listed the specific time management techniques you should employ to fit your woman life into your already busy life. This assumes you have a busy life and you’re not one of those guys who sit around all day smoking weed, playing video games, or jerking off to porn. (If you’re one of those, you have an entirely different set of much more serious problems.)
Today, I’m talking to guys who are already legitimately busy with other life areas. I’ve spoken with hundreds of you (as well as hundreds of my clients in the corporate world) and these are the common examples with men:
- You’re really into fitness and are in the gym for hours a day, most days of the week.
- You travel all the time because you need to for work.
- You travel all the time because you’re a digital nomad or other type of location-independent guy.
- You’re married (OLTR marriage or, god forbid, monogamous). (Common addition to this: your wife runs your life and/or you’re in the middle of temporary New Marriage NRE and/or you’re too comfortable so you don’t feel the need to go out to perform dating activities.)
- You’re a single dad with kids you see regularly, or who live with you.
- You’re really into a sport (baseball, MMA, whatever) and are involved in it several times a week.
- You have a horribly long weekly work schedule (50+ hours a week or more).
- You have a serious health problem that requires daily or weekly time to manage.
- You have oneitis for a particular woman who is Not Like The Rest™ whom you allow to consume most of your free time. (i.e. you’re a pussy)
- You’re one of these high-action, low-analysis extroverts who say yes to everything and thus have a constantly full and chaotic schedule because of it.
- You’ve just started a new business (hopefully an Alpha 2.0 one) and are totally focused on that.
- You’re like me, in that you have tons of things in multiple life areas constantly going all the time (business, women, family, travel, fitness, etc) all of which are pretty important to you so your life is already “full.”
All of these factors, plus many more, come into play when you are developing a time management plan to ensure your woman life runs smoothly, with all the sex you need, and with all the women you need to make you happy but no more.
Here are the things the busy man needs to do to ensure long-term consistent happiness with the woman side of his life.
1. Determine your minimums.
This is critical and you must do this first. The number of men who have not done this in the manosphere / red pill / PUA world is shocking, and it’s causing a lot of problems.
You must sit down with your computer (or a piece of paper if you’re old-school) and write out exactly what your sexual and relationship minimums are.
Not what you want. Not what your eventual goal is. Not what would be ideal. Those things are important too, but you’ll get to those later. Right now we’re trying to build a time management plan that will get the job done now.
Write down the minimum sexual and/or relationship activities you require for your baseline of happiness. In The Unchained Man, I talk about the Alpha Male 2.0 sexual baseline minimums, which are:
1. The ability to have sex with at least two new women within 30 days whom you consider at least cute.
2. Having sex on a regular, ideally weekly basis.
These are good, and these are indeed minimum long-term baselines, but I’m talking here about your minimums right now.
To use myself as an example, as I’ve said many times, my absolute minimum is to have sex at least three times a week (on average) without having to promise any one woman monogamy. That’s my minimum. Not my ideal, but my minimum. (My ideal is what I have now; a smokin’ hot OLTR wife in my age range and several hot, young FBs on the side whenever I want, but it took me several years to put all of that together.)
So my minimum is just about sex, which means if I had two FBs providing that sex three times a week, that would be fine.
Your minimum might be different. Maybe you have a lower sex drive than me (most men do). Maybe your minimum is sex once a week. That’s fine. If you’re sure that’s what it really is and you’re not bullshitting yourself or rationalizing your laziness, then great, put that down.
Maybe you’re a more emotional or connected guy than me. Maybe you need sex at least twice a week but you want at least one of these women to be in an emotional, connected relationship with you. In that case, you’d state “sex twice a week from at least two women but at least one of this is an MLTR). Not ideal in my opinion because of this, but again, we’re not talking about ideal here, just minimums right now.
Now that you’ve defined your minimums, all you need to do is to put in the minimum time required to hit those minimums, and no more. This is often a revelation to a lot of guys. You may realize that your minimums are much lower than you thought. With all this crazy shit in the manosphere and on Instagram and so forth, you might be thinking you need to have a harem of five or six supermodels in order to be “successful.” And if that’s your eventual goal, that’s fine, but I’m sure that isn’t your baseline minimum. One or two cute girls are probably all you need at the moment (though I could be wrong; every man is different).
2. Maybe this isn’t the time to focus on your woman life.
Now that you’ve defined your minimums, you may find that you already have them in place(!). Remember, if you’re really busy, the minimums are all you need right now. You may determine that, for right now, you need to focus on some other goals. Maybe you need to get your new location independent consulting business started. Maybe you need to focus on losing 40 pounds. Maybe you need to spend the next three months studying hard for that certification you really need to hit your business or career goals. Maybe a loved one just came down with cancer and you need to focus on them for a few weeks.
As I’ve talked about before, there have been many times throughout my life where I put my woman life on the back burner so I could focus on other critical areas of my life that needed my time, usually my business/financial life. This is perfectly fine as long as you’ve met your minimums.
I do not recommend this “monk mode” bullshit where you just don’t have sex for a year while you build your business or whatever. Jesus fuck. I did that shit way back in my early twenties and it was a serious mistake. No, you need to have sex at least occasionally, as I talked about here. Get one or two distant FBs, get laid at least a few times a month, then forget about any woman life improvements for now and get to work.
3. You MUST give something up temporarily.
I mentioned this in part one of this article but I need to be more specific here. If you haven’t yet met your minimums or you’ve decided to focus on the woman side of your life right now and get really good at it, then if you’re a busy guy, you MUST temporarily back off on one or more areas. You MUST do this. You can’t do it all.
If you spend two hours a day in the gym six days a week, temporarily back it down to one hour three days a week so you can maintain. And before you say it, no, you won’t lose any muscle mass by doing this, so spare me the bullshit excuses.
If you have a woman who you’re seeing more than once a week (which is a direct violation of the Cardinal Rules so you shouldn’t be doing this anyway unless she’s an OLTR), knock it down to once a week so you can focus on getting some more women (or better women) and/or improve your dating skills. If she really bitches about it, you know what to do: instant soft next! Once you’ve mastered all the woman skills you want, then you can settle down (literally or figuratively) with an OLTR if you want, but now is not the time!
You get the idea. Remember, this is temporary only! In six or twelve months or whatever, you can shift back to this activity if you wish.
4. Focus on one game style.
I’ve said this many times before so I’ll just summarize it. Pick ONE style of game to focus and get good at. Night game, daygame, online dating, social circle game, I don’t care which one it is, just pick ONE and focus on ONE. Don’t try to do two or three of these unless you’re already a master of at least one of them.
Mastery is about focus. It’s not about spreading your energies all over the place.
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Hey man, Monk Mode is awesome! You know how much discipline you develop if you go into monk mode and take time off chicks for a while? Victor Pride’s book about it is really good or at least it appears to be. Dude may be a raging Alpha 1 but who cares I think its good content. I’m just partially joking here, since I also think Monk Mode is a little crazy. Taking a month or so off chicks is fine but an entire year? Yeah I’m good lol
inb4 we get weak dudes saying that “there’s no point in succeeding because (insert thing that they think affects them but really doesn’t). haha
In all seriousness, how much time per week do you think should be dedicated to chicks if you are in the hunt and are willing to do this stuff? I’m about to move off of my buddy’s couch and into an apartment soon since I am now making decent money with my business.
I can understand people who are into martial arts, staying good at those is time consuming (which means that’s what you should sacrifice in that case, unless it’s for some reason absolutely vital), but yeah, having to be in the gym hours per day for six days a week in order to keep one’s “gains” is complete BS. I’d be extatic if I could consistently spend 5 hours per week in the gym. I’ve defined my minima in physique and strength in order to focus on other stuff these few years, and I’ve stayed above them.
Yep, guys have used this excuse. But to be fair, I don’t think any of them seriously think they really need this time to maintain their muscle. They either want to gain muscle (which is fine, but then make that your priority instead of chicks) or they just really like being in the gym, as a hobby or social experience, and they don’t want to give it up.
4. Focus on a Game Style
The tricky part is that if your a Day Game or Night Game type a guy.. That in it of itself takes time as well.
I’m a Mode One type a guy so overall my time allotted goes to that itself. That approach itself has more responses of Fuck No and Fuck Yes (although I don’t get X rated like Alan).
Like with a lot of these things it depends heavily on what is your motivation and how you do it exactly.
It has occured to me that I had been tricked into this a few times without realizing in the past. I have a thing for wanting to lecture women and explain stuff to them and often that turns out to be a bad idea and either causes drama or they run away. However there is some woman once in a while who seems to enjoy it from me and when she wants attention she just asks a question or makes a provocative statement and then it results with me giving her loads of attention without realizing. Ah man, I gotta be more self disciplined. Maybe I should just schedule days with the phone off since I anyway also have issue with family members who demand way too much of my attention – not really actual amount of time but too high frequency.
For Most guys over 30, if they have their shit together, this shouldnt be an issue. If you’re an adult your life has already been ordered. Get up, go to work, drive home, cook and or grocery and or cleaning, work out, pass out to book news internet.. repeat. Throw in kids sports and other shit through out the season. You learn to fit getting laid into that. Instead of cooking you eat out and rearrange working out to a different day. If you have a kid you meet or fuck on the court order days without them. Instead of night or day game you do online mostly. Unless your younger and you have some social game still available. I have my kid full time now but when I had him 6 days I was still able to fit everything above in while fucking and meeting new women on the regular. Its tough but if follow your quick date rules, or in my case you only have one night so you throw everything at them to get that 1st date lay, its easily doable. Things maybe get lowered in priority but nothing should get sacrificed that’s important.
Unless you’re competing in bodybuilding and/or you’re a professional athlete or sports person, you’re managing your time poorly, if you spend 2 hours in the gym whenever you work out. If you’re not fucking around, you only need 1 hour and can leave.
Going to the gym is time consuming. You have to factor in travel time there and back, changing if you come directly from work, and the silly conversations you get trapped into once you’ve become a regular. Working out at home is much more efficient. Unless you’re into power lifting, basketball, serious bodybuilding, swimming, and etc. Of course I have that at home other than the basketball court.. Along with a commercial level treadmill and elliptical. Took 15 years to build it but in the end I still spent a lot less over that time than a membership.
Agreed. People who are ‘cutting’ also need more frequency to prevent muscle loss from occurring while on a caloric deficit.
I think I would make very decent progress if I could be in the gym 3x per week, 2 hours each (probably 2 workouts for big compound lifts and 1 for isolation exercises). The rest is like you said, they just like being in the gym – which I do, but you can’t have everything.
All this crap would be solved by having a good home gym. It’s one of my long term goals: either living literally one street away from a good gym, or having a bench, squat rack and 500lbs of plates at my place (this overlaps with the rent-or-buy problem…). It all becomes so much more doable from a time management POV if you can just jump out of bed and crank out a few sets.
Also people who don’t mind being just “slim fit” don’t really need gym equipment, except maybe a pullup bar. I’m a bit more demanding because I want to retain some bulk, and calisthenics IMO are not enough for that, you need weight on the barbell. I’m only 5’8.5 and I consider extra muscle (not fat) as a potential way to compensate for lack of height; tall men can be attractive by simply being lean, they don’t need to be stocky.
Awesome. That’s how it’s done.
And I agree that overall life management / time management tends to be easier for older guys.
That’s another way of pointing out the exception to the rule… and you know what my stance is on that.
Are you implying that being motivated is the exception? : )
Interesting i kind of fell into something like this in the last few years. Reading mgtow stuff actually helped me see women as meant for meeting one need only. There is no soul mate who will embody my life’s work or passion. There are just females for filling temporary needs which occasionally intersect. I severed all of my female friendships and saved some serious drama and time. Now i have so many more fulfilling events in my day.
I also stopped doing friends without benefits (safe for some unusual exceptions to the rule) and it’s been great – once you make that switch it can feel lonely for a while but then you get the right women, instead of wasting time on platonics I am friends with a woman / women who literally beg me for sex and we can have the same friends discussions I had with the other women before, so literally no reason for friends without benefits.
It does literally determine the outcomes and what you get out of it, but I can see why you would think its the exception because the number of people who would do it “correctly” would be small.
It was not about being motivated or not it was about what the motivation is exactly. It may be an exception to have the correct motivation for certain thing because only a small number of people who do that thing are going to get good results out of it – as opposed to some other thing where its less sensitive to what your motivation is.
Hi BD,
This is a completely off-topic question. In daygame I find myself meeting girls, then taking them out to coffee, bouncing them to venue 2, then to venue 3. The whole “adventure” lasts like 3 hours. In this case, would you consider this whole 3 hour block as the first date, or would this be considered 2-3 dates (for the sake of following first date rules)?
Thanks
Well, you’re either going for date 1 sex or for date 2 sex. If your goal is a same-day lay, then you’re doing the venue bouncing thing, you expect to spend several hours on the process, at the end of which you escalate and attempt to have sex.
Or you’re aiming for date 2 sex like BD advocates, in which case you have your first date at one venue, and date 2 at another or at your place (preferably), where sex ensues (hopefully).
Neither approach includes an “adventure” that does not end in escalation. The purpose of an adventure is to build comfort right there right now, doing it and then sending the girl home is counterproductive.
I have a high sex drive and I want women in my life and as much sex as I can schedule in.
But sometimes I have to go into “Monk Mode” for a while. Not that I want to because I don’t. It’s just that for me, women can become a major distraction sometimes, along with other people (family etc) wanting some of my time on a regular basis as well.
I own a business where I don’t have to work all day (everyday).. some days I don’t work hardly at all because I have to catch up on other things that didn’t get done while I spent time with women or family. I usually work from 9-4ish.
I workout, train in mma, I’m learning Spanish, see my teenage kids every other Sat morning/afternoon, have an aging parent that I see a couple times a week.
I realize I have it better than a lot of other folks but if I don’t go into monk mode (no women) every few months or so, I don’t think I could move my company forward or make any new improvements on myself..
I realize my time management could use improvement but I’m not sure I could do without “monk mode” sometimes. At the very least I think I would get exhausted.. Well, I do actually. Then I go Monk Mode and rest for a few days then focus on myself and work for 3 weeks or so then after 3 weeks I start getting super horny, then back to seeing women again for 3-6 months and repeat.
I’m a huge proponent of this.. As I have posted many times..
It’s really 2-3 dates the way you are doing it. Cost and timewise. I do this because I don’t usually have a day free for a second date. I have one night a week, all night, that’s it. So I have to make it count. I learned the venue switch from buddies and then researched in online to see if other guys where doing it. It’s pretty popular I found out. I modified it. I take them to a place where I can instantly begin to escalate (escalate from touching to kissing within first 30 mins) and then use the venue switch to get them in the same car with me (her’s preferably for her comfort and sense of control) and then escalate further before we leave. The whole time should be one whole escalation from beginning to end. Ideally the venue switch turns into a search for a private location. Skip the coffee, btw if you want to shorten the adventure. Go straight to a little bar and start escalating. You do that you can shorten the “adventure” to bar -> car -> sex in car, hotel, yours or her place. Now it’s more like one date. If you can day game (requires balls) you can escalate very quickly. Both take gigantic man sized balls.
I don’t do this every time. I read which ones will and which ones won’t. About 50% of the time.
@Capitalist:
I find I can’t do that satisfactorily. Even though I now have my my sex/women life in pretty good order, I do nevertheless spend some time (and mental energy) on it. But if I do go without women and sex (as, for example, when I’m very busy), I find it’s not long before that’s all I’m thinking about – specifically my next lay – so the purpose is rather defeated and I become less efficient, not more. It might get easier as I get older (in my late 20s now), but no sign of that yet. So I envy you in a way.