How to start taking action, Part 2: fill the bucket.
The four malleable traits that make a man attractive and the story of incremental progress.
“How to start taking action, Part 1: hardness, habits, and hangups” is here.
When it comes to a man’s ability to have women in his life, the reasons not to act don’t make sense. Getting better with women may be difficult, but it’s also fairly straightforward—and the juice is absolutely worth the squeeze. Top guys will do better and better as time rolls on and society becomes increasingly hypergamous, filled with single women desperate for the validation only a high value man can provide.
If you feel that your life is good enough in the sense that you have a GF or wife and you’re getting the sex/love you need out of that relationship, even if not perfect, fair enough.1 Same is true if you prefer the MGTOW lifestyle, but that philosophy has always felt far more like cope than an actual, desired outcome.
For everyone other man out there, the truth is that whether we like it or not, having a woman and/or the ability to bring women into our lives is central to meeting our needs and living a satisfying life. Sex is more important than our society would like to admit: a man who is getting laid regularly will be a happier, more productive version of himself. But along with that is the feminine care and energy we desire, the companionship and shared experience. Most men want women in their lives, so it’s important to figure out how to make that happen on a consistent basis.
So: where do I start? Let’s shift to tactics.
There are essentially four malleable traits a man can have that will make him attractive to women:
Fitness (yes, it helps to be tall and handsome of course, but that is not malleable–and, most men who are both fit and well dressed aka stylish, will be handsome and tall enough for a significant number of women)
Lifestyle: fun, exciting, and/or interesting
Game
In today’s dating market, there are three types of men2 based on how they stack up in each trait:
Top guys
These men are fit, dress well with a distinct look, have an attractive lifestyle, and possess game. They are able to have sex with many attractive women or can choose the type of woman they want for a relationship. About 5% of all men are top guys.
Mid guys
Have some of the above, and may even excel in a particular trait of attraction (typically fitness or lifestyle), but the combination isn’t sufficient to provoke consistent, genuine female desire—they don’t rise above the threshold necessary to become a Top guy.
Mid guys “get lucky” sometimes, and they might end up in a relationship with a woman who chooses them because she’s proving that chicks are random, she’s making a deliberate choice to settle with a less desirable man than she’d like, or because he is dating below his SMV, although that equalizes in time as guys become more attractive with age in comparison to women of the same age.
Mid guys used to do much better in the Sexual Market Place (SMP) in terms of securing relationships with attractive women. However, the incredible reach of dating apps and social media mean women have access to better options, know it, and many would rather sleep with and pursue top guys, even if the odds of securing a relationship with one is low. Probably somewhere between 25-30% of guys are mid.
Low guys
Men who rarely have success with women because they are low on all four traits. To the extent they are getting laid and/or having relationships, it’s with women who themselves have low SMV. This represents a large group of men—let’s say 45-55% of men are low guys. The good news here is that a Low guy can move up to become a Mid guy by doing something as straightforward as going to the gym 3x/week, buying some new clothes, moving out of shared housing to live on his own, earning more money, or becoming better in social situations and upping his game.
Incels
Men who aren’t fit, don’t dress well, don’t have an attractive lifestyle, and have no game. If these guys can reverse one or two of the above, they’ll immediately move up to become a low guy. I use this term not because every guy who doesn’t get laid is part of the online incel community, but, assuming he has any vestigial sex drive in him, he is literally an incel—a man who would like to have sex, but cannot find a willing partner, and is therefore involuntarily celibate.
Most guys who want to do better with women are low or mid: incels are incels because they spend too much time on the internet (or playing video games and smoking pot). Some believe they can’t do better with chicks because they swim in the bitter cesspool of content spun up by other incels and the manosphere to make them mad about women, but the simple fact is that they don’t spend enough of their time doing things men who want to get laid and do well with women should do: working out, creating, building, exploring (outside—not reddit), enjoying hobbies, and pursuing some larger mission. Start doing that stuff, spend (a lot) less time on the internet, and you’ll become a Low or Mid guy within a few months.
Improvement is straightforward: Low guys need to figure out how to become Mids. As mentioned above, being mid still isn’t great in terms of getting women, but a Mid guy has a shot to have sex and/or relationships with reasonably attractive women, whereas low guys do not—you will occasionally see a very attractive woman with a guy who’s mid, but you will not see those types of chicks with low guys. Ever.
Mid guys need become a top guys, because unlike mid-chicks who can actually do OK in the SMP before they age out or get married, a Mid guy doesn’t really have good options: getting laid is mostly a factor of randomness/luck, and getting a relationship typically means choosing a woman of lower SMV. The chief difference between a Mid guy and a Top guy is that a Mid guy has to rely upon to be chosen, whereas a Top guy gets to choose.
Leveling up is hard, but simple: identify the traits where you are deficient and work to improve them.
Fitness: Get to 15% body fat with big muscles relative to your frame.
Fashion/Style: improve the way you dress—level up your clothes, shoes, accessories, etc.
Lifestyle: if you don’t do fun, exciting things (like going on vacation, hobbies, attending festivals or concerts, going out to dinner, etc.) on a somewhat regular basis (1x per 2 weeks-ish), girls will interpret you as boring.
Game: if you can’t talk to a random girl, flirt and tease, escalate a romantic encounter toward sex, have a conversation with a stranger for more than five minutes, make people laugh with some regularity, and tell entertaining stories, you need to work on this.
To move from low to mid, or from mid to top, the analogy goes something like this:
Imagine there’s a bucket and your job is simply to fill it up to the top. Your only tool is a soup spoon, so it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to fill. Nevertheless, every spoonful counts as progress and remains in the bucket, and you know that with enough time and effort, you will eventually fill that bucket. Do you want to put in that time and effort?
This has been said in many ways: Anne Lamott talks about it in Bird by Bird, Jeff Olson talks about it in The Slight Edge. The most famous book on this approach is probably The One Thing, by Jay Papasan and Gary W. Keller. I learned it while working as a server in my early 20s. I was expressing frustrations at not making progress, not having a girlfriend, uncertainty about career, etc., and over beers after work, a colleague said: “just get 1% better at whatever you’re working toward each day and you’re guaranteed to make progress.” He was likely referring to another book on this idea, One Percent Better by Doug Spurling. In all these books, the point is the same: small measures of progress lead to massive improvements over time. Guys who win, win the day. Keep putting spoonfuls in the bucket, and eventually the water will reach the top.
I recently picked up Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan, who’s the founder and CEO of AppSumo and used to work for Facebook and Mint, and he says: START TODAY! START NOW! DON’T WAIT! Nothing matters if you can’t get started.
Rather than worrying about the gains, do the work. Process over results. If the process is good, the results will follow if you persevere.
Recall the four traits of male attractiveness: fitness, fashion, lifestyle, and game. Fill the buckets. Make sure you have goals and/or measures—I hesitate to say you need one or the other or both, because motivation differs from person to person, but you need to have some idea of where you would like to go and some method of keeping track of what you’re doing to see if you are going in that direction. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Examples
Fitness
If you’re a skinny-ass worm, your goal should be to put on weight, so you need to track how much you weigh, how much you eat, and see that over time, you’re gaining weight.
If you’re a fat fuck like me, your goal should be to lose body-fat, and you’re going to need to measure the same things: how much you weigh and how much you eat, as well as what you eat. If you have a lot of muscle, you’ll see the difference on the scale; however, if you’ve never played a sport or lifted weights, you may not lose any weight. Ultimately, the best measure here is checking your bodyfat percentage, which you can have done at most gyms for a small fee.
Fashion
Look at guys chicks want to fuck: Johnny Depp, Timothee Chalamet, Idris Elba, etc. Check out their IG and see what they wear when they’re with women (suited is never a bad look, but rarely necessary, and be careful of counter-signaling). Then go buy some of those clothes, boots, and accessories, and get a haircut like the guy you look most like. Ask a female friend or relative (not your mom) to help, or a friend whose style you admire. Fashion/style is tricky, because it truly is personal, but it’s important to develop a distinctive look, if not matching a masculine archetype. If you don’t stand out, you’re wallpaper.
How often are you buying new shoes and clothes? How often do people comment on what you are wearing? Keep track. Typically it’ll be mostly good, but even bad gives you information—the point is to get a reaction. Try stuff. Don’t wear the same shit all the time. See what people say. Perhaps the best measure is: do you notice attractive chicks look at you? If they don’t, you need better style.
Lifestyle
Quick Inventory:
A) Count the number of things you do on average per week that people would be excited to do with you. Could be as simple as grabbing a happy hour or making dinner for friends. Going to a concert, sporting event, festival, or convention. Hiking, camping, SUPing, skiing, fishing, ATVing, boating–going to the beach! It could be debuting a new product or service at a conference, traveling for work or going to an award ceremony or celebration. It could be cooking. Or sex parties.
B) Count the number of hours you spend reading books (blogs and news count), listening to podcasts, or watching movies and/or TV series per week. Understand three things here:
1) books > blogs/news > podcasts > movies > series
2) it doesn’t count if you’re not paying attention (scrolling on your phone–if you can’t write a 300 word summary of what you consumed, it’s worthless)
3) political news, blogs, and podcasts don’t count—these make you more boorish, myopic, and abnormal (no woman wants to spend time with a guy who watches Fox News all day or is constantly going on about the Palestinians)3
C) Count the number of hours you spent scrolling through IG, watching Tik-Tok, or playing video games.
An equation: (3A + B) - 2C = X. X should be > 10, and the higher that number is, the better. This isn’t scientific of course—feel free to adjust—but it gives guys a rough way of measuring how interesting their life is. More importantly, it shows you how to start filling the bucket:
A) Do more fun/interesting stuff
B) Spend more time reading and consuming interesting content
C) Spend less time on IG, Tik-Tok, and video games
Game
This is the hardest pillar to measure, because game is esoteric in many ways, but the best way to learn (and fill the bucket), is to do:
How many girls are you talking to on a regular basis?
Random girl in day game > random girl in night game > girl in social situation (party) > girl on dating app > girl who is in social circle or a friend
How often do you go on dates, and how successful are you at escalating on those dates (flirt, physical touch, kiss, making out, sex)?
When you’re with friends or family, how often are you leading the conversation, telling stories, cracking jokes, asking questions? (If people resent you for monopolizing the conversation or yammering on, you’re not leading, you’re alienating.)
Same question for when you’re with strangers or people you know but only tangentially (ex someone who works or lives in the same building)?
Whatever the numbers are, aim to do more: fill the bucket. Notice here that with women, it’s not necessarily about having success–it’s much more important to make the attempt to talk to a girl or go on a date than it is to get the number or sleep with her. Yes, of course that is what we want eventually, but to begin with, it’s simply a matter of taking action and getting the experience.
If you’re a Low or Mid guy, fill the bucket. You will get there if you put in consistent effort over time and don’t quit. If you want to turn that spoon into a bowl, get some help along the way, whether that means hiring a trainer to help you with your fitness goals, a stylist for fashion, or a life/game coach for lifestyle and game.
I’m available for the latter if you want to hit me up. Otherwise, let me know what you think in the comments below.
If you’re in a relationship, however, it’s important to stay on top. The moment your woman perceives that you don’t have options, your relationship will become much more difficult and/or dissolve entirely.
By definition, we’re talking about guys who are single. The seduction and red pill communities often forget that there’s a huge population out there of what I’ll call normies–people of similar SMV, close-ish in age, who are married or partnered. Part of the reason they’re so easy to forget is that normy women don’t stay single for long: they’ll find a guy who’s stable, decent, good looking enough, and then bond with him. One reason it’s far better to be a mid guy than a low guy because mid guys have a chance at these chicks if and when they become single.
Unlike Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, and others, I am not captured by my audience so let me ask a simple question: how many conspiracy theorists can you name who are desired by women? None. Do you know why that is? Because women don’t want to spend time with some doomer-boomer, chicken-little who’s screaming that the sky is falling. Crazy is a turnoff. For those who haven’t figured it out: Joe Rogan is your hippy uncle who suddenly went trad-con at the age of 50 and is constantly complaining about how bad the government is while at the same time wondering why the government won’t fix our problems. Remember, girls just want to have fun! So focus on being the fun guy, leave the politics behind, and get to work.