Is Pickup a Waste of Time?

As a man, you want to be able to hit on random women that arouse you. As a man, you want to be able to get laid if you want to. But is it worth the investment of time and attention?

Unless you grew up in a culture or among a group of friends where you naturally learned how to approach girls, you most likely have approach anxiety. You don’t know how to approach, talk to, and seduce attractive female strangers in public. That’s great, for it gives you the opportunity to turn your quest for pussy into a rite of passage—a journey where you face your fears to become a man. This journey is definitely worth the time investment!

Beating approach anxiety will be a transformative experience. It has been for me as I was doing the Approach Anxiety Program by GLL Chris where I learned to give sexual compliments as well as touch, spin, and hug random girls at daytime in public within the first few seconds of the interaction. Once I had beaten my approach anxiety through fun, sometimes silly exercises, the first results came after about a month. Then, slowly, I found out what’s possible.

After some more training experience, I could, within 20 minutes of introducing myself to a cute blonde sitting in a park, have her bent over my couch, banging her from behind (of course, there was luck involved, too), and I could go out alone to a club and come home for a threesome with two Polish cuties (of course, there was luck and alcohol involved, too). Soon, however, I had reached all of my game-related goals, so I never really became a player. I never lived the full-time player lifestyle of going out every night, night after night, and getting new lays every week, week after week.

Why? Because I realized that, for me, picking up girls had never actually been about getting laid, but about self-improvement: developing skills, overcoming fears, dealing with insecurities, fighting my demons, and becoming a man.

Once I had done that and gotten what I wanted out of game, I had little more motivation to invest that much time in increasing my notch count by fucking more and more sexy chicks I couldn’t give less fucks about emotionally. I decided that putting devoted effort into working, weight lifting, training MMA, meditating, and writing books was more important to me than getting my dick wet (= submitting all my attention to the power of the pussy). Also, I found that spending my spare time in mindful solitude or gangs of men feels more natural to me than being subjected to feminine energy all the time. And I heard Zarathustra speaking in my mind:

Just look at these men: their eye saith it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.

I learned that as an edgy, muscular guy with a dominant sexual vibe, you can get a lot of the pussy you want—if you put in the time to go out and hit on girls. Everybody with a rich sex life based on approaching strangers in malls, streets, bars, and night clubs know this: A player lifestyle based on cold approach pickup is a huge time investment.

Playing nightgame, you invest entire nights and completely fuck up your sleep cycle, especially when you take a girl home with you. Playing daygame, you have to hit on a hundred chicks to get maybe a handful of lays, and some of those lays even require you to go on dates…

Time management forces you to set priorities. Life is too awesome. You can’t always do all the cool things it has to offer without making sacrifices. Sometimes, sadly, you have to choose to forgo a good habit, a rewarding activity, a fun lifestyle. In case you don’t know what your priorities are, ask yourself: What are your goals and why do you have these goals? For example: Why do you want to get so much more pussy action? Why would you be willing to sacrifice your success, maybe even your great life vision, for a purely hedonistic lifestyle?

I’ve found that many successful players are still largely motivated by their insecurities:

“In reality, all I want is a good, hot, loyal girlfriend, but as long as I haven’t fucked 200 random skanks, I’m not worthy of her / don’t have enough game to make her stick around / don’t have enough sexual experience to keep her satisfied.”
“In reality, all I want is respect from other men, but as long as I haven’t fucked more girls than all of my friends combined and have dozens of sleazy stories to entertain them with them, I don’t feel respectable enough.”

Others are just completely ego-identified with their player identity and getting tons of pussy, just like most bodybuilders are ego-identified with their physique, powerlifters with their strength, or fighters with their ability to kick ass.

This is not a moral judgment. I still lift weights like a madman, train MMA whenever possible, and I know that I’m somewhat driven by anticipated insecurities (protective instincts) toward the future mother of my children, although my motivational drives typically are feelings of power, developing mental toughness, masculine nourishment, and love of movement.

Whatever goals and ambitions you have, decide on your priorities wisely. Discover—in your heart of hearts—your True Will and manage your time, manage your attention, accordingly.

If all you truly want is a good, beautiful woman with good, beautiful values, then consider what women want when they’re not currently in party, adventure, or revenge-on-husband/ex-boyfriend mode. They want to feel emotionally, physically, socially, and financially secure. They want a confident, loving man with money, high social status, and a purpose. Sure, you might acquire high social status among your peers when you have sex with plenty of random hotties, but that’s not actual power, and it doesn’t generate money, and it probably doesn’t give you a purpose in life.

That’s, by the way, why some professional pickup artists are so insanely good with girls. Sure, they have mad experience, but just as critical as their skills and experience are their attitude and social status when they’re in a club. They aren’t in the club primarily to get laid, but to master their craft that expresses their passion and makes them money. They’re there to lead other men, to work and hustle, and to fulfill a deeper purpose. They’re actively doing their True Will, and that’s what makes them so attractive. Consider, however, that one man’s greatest hustle can be another man’s greatest distraction.

Professional pickup artists have found a way to integrate getting laid into a greater mission, their business and purpose, which I deem ingenious. You find the same brilliancy in horny Yoga teachers, fitness coaches, rappers, rock stars, porn actors, YouTube ‘pranksters’, photographers, and so forth. They all get laid around their work. This might be the best of all possible worlds: to find a way of acquiring wealth and social status that immediately promotes your sex life.

But if you don’t want to turn your pickup journey into a career, you have to decide:

Do you want to live a full-time player lifestyle and neglect your other ambitions until you’ve gotten it all out of your system? Consider that you may be using junk sex to avoid dealing with deeper issues, and you may regret having wasted much of your precious time and attention on fucking strangers—with fucking condoms. (Caution: I haven’t ever fully committed to this option myself, so I’m talking out of my ass here. Don’t listen to me, do what you want.)
Do you want to do without a rich sex live based on cold approach pickup and transform your sexual energy into entrepreneurial or artistic energy, work hard, and do your True Will? Consider that your priorities may be skewed by fear, low testosterone, or overconsumption of porn.

Yet even if you choose option 2, you can still learn to build some attentional flexibility and hit on chicks as you go about your day. In that case, you probably won’t be playing the numbers game hard enough for having a dense succession of lays (unless you already have a good rotation of casual sex partners to fill in the gaps), but don’t forget that picking up girls is a skill and, as with every skill, you use it or lose it.

Further Reading