I’ve actually heard this topic brought up a few times before. Simplified, the question is whether to:

1) Just have fun.
2) Actively pick up.

Scenario 1: “Just have fun, and don’t consciously worry about sarging.” Personally, this hasn’t worked out well for me. There were a number of approaches where I just had fun with a girl, but didn’t escalate properly (wasn’t actively running game), so we would just part ways after a good lighthearted conversation. Obviously, I think this is bad for the overall goal of bouncing a girl, improving my game, etc.

Scenario 2: On the flipside, putting on my “game face” and getting down to the “serious” business of PUA hasn’t worked well either. Prowling and hunting a bar or club for girls to sarge puts me in a needy state. I think letting go of the outcome dependence is key. I know I get stuck on outcome dependence a lot during a sarge, for example, thinking “I have to get this girl attracted to me,” or “I have to get this girl’s number,” and it makes me clingy and needy.

So what’s my present opinion?

Personally, I don’t think the two choices are mutually exclusive. I currently believe that focusing on just one of the two will have you going home alone. I think you need to do (1), and then actually put in the effort and do (2).

In other words, I think you should just relax and chill and have fun with every girl (and even guy) you meet, until you find one girl that you really like. After you are having fun with her, and realize you like her, then you should actively game the heck out of her.

And once your PUA skills reaches the level of say, a veteran race car driver or a starting NBA player, and you internalize most of the skills, you won’t have to think about the mechanics of pickup anymore. But for now, since most of us are still working on our fundamentals, I don’t think we are quite there yet, so we still need to think about what we are doing at almost every step.

And practicing and running simulations sounds like a great idea to me. I know running some simulations with RedCloud, Luigi, and Streetwize a few weeks ago was helpful. We should run more simulations with fellow PUAs as often as possible. After all, if you can’t effectively game a fellow PUA in a practice session, and you get stuck and tongue-tied in a practice session, you won’t be able to game a real live girl either!