Tim Molnar
Appearances
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And if I see someone online and they went to maybe a great college and they have an impressive job and they have attractive photos and interesting hobbies, that very well could be someone that I would be a good match with, that you might be a good match with, or one of your listeners could be a good match with.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah, I love that question. So I think, yes, 100% it does. And I'm going to refer to it by the principle of the foot in the door approach. So this is something that I talk a little bit about in the book.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Connell, thanks so much for having me on. Really enjoyed the podcast and just a pleasure to be here talking with you today.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And it comes from the old door-to-door sales tactics, where if you could ask for a small favor and very literally get a foot in the door, you were much more likely to have success asking for the bigger favor. And so there are a lot of different ways this can play out. And so, you know, you can imagine you're at the dog park and you can just ask for very simple. I think it's a good practice.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Ask me for very simple things. Hey, you know, is that a Aussie? Or, you know, I love your golden retriever. Like, what's your golden retriever's name? Is your golden retriever friendly? You know, and can I say hi? Just these little things that... When you see people walking up to others on the street and initiating conversations in a non-romantic context, this is a totally normal thing to do.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
It's very disarming. And it's that small favor. That small favor now puts you into this circle of security. And now when you say, hey... I've really enjoyed this banter and like, I just love the energy that I'm picking up on here. I don't mean to be too forward, but would you be up for going for a walk sometime?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Would you look up for, you know, give me your number, whatever it might be that if I think it's, it's very closely related to the primacy effect, but it just, it just kind of goes by a slightly different name in this context, or I'm, I'm putting it into a slightly different, different box here, but the two are very closely tied together.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Absolutely right.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And just to add on that a little bit, because I have this research background and I like to read journal articles, there's an interesting study that was done by a French research team looking at exactly this. How much more effective are we when we start with this small favor first approach?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So what the professors did is they sent a team of about 300 undergraduates out into the field, so to speak, you know, a crowded area. And they tasked them with asking people on a date, just again, like to your point, to use your language, like a very direct approach. Yeah. And they recorded first, like, you know, men approaching women and then also like women approaching men. Yeah.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
what were the efficacy rates around that and like a lot of these research studies it was like a strictly heterosexual population and like there's a lot more research that like fortunately like coming through on like the LGBTQ community but it's still it's still like fairly sparse and so this one looked kind of like strictly at that and one of the things that was interesting is they found
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So I may just begin with a little bit of a backstory here and talk you through the genesis of how this project came to be. I think like many of your listeners, I was at a point with dating where I felt frustrated. I felt like I didn't have the confidence to go up and approach people in a way that was going to bring about results.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
When you started with, and this is France, so like every second person there smokes. So they started, you know, hey, can I get a light? Or other people would start if, you know, can I get directions? You know, where's the Eiffel Tower? Wherever they were in France. And there was a 5x success rate for the men who started with the small favor first approach. So they're like, where are directions?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And then like, hey, would you be interested in going out? Versus just the direct, you know, I saw you, I thought you're cute. Would you want to go out? Yeah.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And to me, when I read that, it reinforced, I think, what we intuitively know and like what you kind of in your work with like all of your clients and all the people you've helped under like inherently understand like, yeah, it's disarming and you just kind of sense that it's better. And it's fun to be able to tie the research to it and say, wow, five times better. as effective.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
That's pretty crazy.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
It was asking for dates. So they would send the students out and they'd say, yeah, they would say, your job is to ask for a date. And there were two approaches, basically two groups, one group that would say, would you like to go on a date? And then record the answers. And then another group would say, can I have a light? Thanks so much. Would you like to go on a date?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And maybe there was a little bit more in between that, right? But effectively the idea. And then they just compared those two different study samples and found pretty significant difference.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it would pass like the IRB reviews, the ethics here in the US. So I'm like, you know, you hear these like fascinating studies from psychology from like the 1950s. And they're doing these things where you're like, no chance would a research board let you do that stuff.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
But the things that we know from research actually lead to happiness, none of those are captured by any of those indicators.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Absolutely. So there were a few interesting findings that I came across, some surprising, some that aligned with my preexisting expectations when I started digging into this more from an empirical nature. One was just to be able to understand what individual experiences were.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And so there were some interesting Reddit threads that I had just gone through where people can post their Tinder statistics. And there was a programmer who had put together
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
a Python script that would basically give you a chart that would start with, you've been on Tinder for two years, you've swiped 113,000 times, 37% of those were right swipes, the others were left swipes, this is how many matches that led to, this is how many dates that, or, excuse me, conversations that led to, this is how many dates that led to.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
The results being I wanted to find a life partner, someone who's going to be a great fit, someone who is going to make me feel seen, someone who is going to be kind and loyal. And at the time, I was in graduate school and was working with first a behavioral economist and then a sociologist, so studying a lot of human behavior.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And you get to see this funnel, basically, from swipe down to actually meeting up for dates. And I talk in the book, and a few of these are the more egregious examples, but I really don't think that they're complete anomalies, and I'll explain why in a second here.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So there are a couple people that I talk about in the book who had swiped upwards of 100,000 times over four years, and that had landed them maybe a couple thousand matches, and that had landed them a couple hundred conversations, which ultimately led to zero dates.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And just to like kind of break that down from like top to bottom again, it was like four years, a hundred and call it 13, I think was the number of thousand swipes, zero dates.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
They had gotten, I think in this case it was like 200 and I'm blank on those, but let's call it 237 ish matches. 237 matches for this person and zero in real life dates.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah, and so I think hopefully this normalizes some of the experiences of people who are feeling like, gosh, you know, like I've been swiping and swiping and swiping, and then like occasionally I do get a match, and then we'll message for a bit, and then maybe it just stops, and I'm getting ghosted, and certainly like other people...
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
do have a lot of success and so like before i kind of tie a bow on this i just want to also acknowledge michael rosenfeld who's a sociologist over at stanford runs a study called how couples meet and stay together and back in 2017 there were 39 of new relationships that were formed meeting online and today it's closer to 50 percent So it's a statistic we hear thrown around a lot.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And what it tells us is when people ask the binary question, do apps work, clearly they're working for a lot of people if we're saying that the goal is a relationship and not discussing some of the other frustrations and whatnot that come through with this. But to get back to this Tinder plot and kind of going from all of these swipes down to like very few or sometimes zero dates.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
What's going on there? Well, when I dug into this a little bit more, Tinder had released a statistic around the success of men getting a match on dates and it was somewhere in the ballpark of two and a half percent.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So when they swipe Right on someone, there was a 2.5% chance that they were going to match with someone.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yes. So say you swiped right on 100 profiles, you would expect 2.5% of those people to swipe back on you.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah. And I'm only getting into the weeds on this. I know a lot of your audience is a little more right-brained, kind of like I am in these ways. So I think it's really interesting to understand. There's this idea where we have a few men who are maybe very conventionally attractive who are getting much higher success rates. So instead of 2.5%, they might be getting closer to 50%.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I figured, I'm spending all this time going through these different academic journals. I wonder what's been written on relationship science and if there are different theories that we can co-opt from these different studies of how humans behave to be able to date smarter myself. And in the research field, we often like to say that research is me-search.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I talk in the book about a theoretical sample size where this actually totally makes sense, where you have a handful of men who are doing very well and getting a lot of these swipes, and then a large swath of them who are getting zero or very few swipes, and it averages out to 2.5%, but it's what in mathematics we call a bimodal distribution. Basically, there are two modes.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
There are two averages. There's the big group of people who are getting almost no matches, and then another group of people who's getting a high degree of matches.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Exactly. And so getting back to your point of, well, great, let's figure out where is the optimism in this. You've told me that these are really difficult platforms. Again, just to revisit the Rosenfeld statistics, yes, about half of new relationships start online today. So there is a lot that we can do. And what are those things that we can do? Well, I really like the work.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
There's one by the name of Logan Urie, who's a behavioral scientist over at Hinge, and she does some great work with leading up their behavioral scientist team on what are some of the tangible things that we can do with our profiles to increase the probability of success.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Some of them I think you've probably spoken about at length on here, but some of the biggest ones are, you know, the first picture is really you're... She'll refer to it sometimes like a billboard, your billboard, your advertisement of what you're putting out into the world. And so you want to make sure that there's a clear picture of your face. You want to be smiling.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And this is something that I think makes sense to do. put a lot of effort into, or put some effort into. And this could be hiring a professional photographer. It could be just asking a friend with a good smartphone to shoot you in some good light. But that's super important. You want to keep your number of pictures between about four to six.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Have some that are showing you doing activities that you care about. You want others that have a full body shot so someone can get an idea of what the full you looks like. And so I think that's a lot in terms of profile design, especially with pictures. With any of the prompting, I think you want to be writing questions or answers in a way that initiates conversations.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So one way that I could think about responding to, you know, if I'm into the outdoors, I could say, you know, I love to ski. And it gives you a data point about me. And maybe if you're really interested in my pictures, you might write back and say, cool, have you ever been up to Whistler? Or have you been out to Tahoe to get over in Europe? But a different way that I can pose that same thing is,
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
you know, um, are you interested, you know, like, uh, just got back from a trip to Japan, like amazing powder and sushi and someone who's in the ski community understands that they read between the lines and, and like maybe even a question at the end, like, you know, like, let me know if you're up for sushi so that you've given a leading question to someone on the other end that they can more easily respond to.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I think that was really true for where I was at at the time. So I started to kind of work backwards from the goal that I wanted, that life partner. And I realized before that was going to happen, I was going to have at least a girlfriend, maybe several girlfriends. And before that, there were going to be some dates. Before that, I was going to have to find a way to go on dates.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
I completely agree. I think we have so much more agency than we give ourselves credit for. And like you're saying, putting a little bit of effort into that differentiates you from a giant swath of the population who's not taking the time to do that.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And then in terms of how we're actually engaging once we connect with someone is also going to be really indicative of whether or not this leads to meeting in real life. And so one of the things that I think is just as simple as from here is recognizing these tools. I mean, they are tools. They're great servants, terrible masters. And so if we're using them,
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
the way they're designed to be used, or I won't even say designed, the way that they can be used, we can move relatively quickly from a brief back and forth into a date. And I think that's really what we want to set the goal at here. We don't want to have these endless pen pal relationships where we're writing and writing for days and days and weeks on end.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
That's not why many people are on the apps. And if you are, find another platform. So I think if we're using these intentionally and thoughtfully, we can do a lot to differentiate ourselves and move more into that other group of the bimodal distribution that I was talking about of people who have had a lot of success on the apps and are going on dates with interesting people.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I started trying to figure out if I went up and had the confidence to approach someone... What might I say? Are there ways that I can do this with better efficacy, with authenticity? And are there research studies that have been done when guys are going up to women and ask them out, how often they might typically get a yes?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So there's a concept that has been talked about a bit before that I expand on in the book. And it's this idea known as the secretary problem. It discusses when do we know when we should stop dating.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So we run into this paradox of choice sometimes in the apps where there's so many options and there's the temptation to continue swiping to try and find this partner who's as good looking as this ex and as funny and charismatic as this ex and whose in-laws you got along well as this other ex.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And if you don't find them in this date, there's the temptation to just swipe the grasses greener on the next date. Um, we know that's not the case. We know there are a lot of fallacies and cognitive biases built into that thinking. And so then the question becomes, how do we know when to stop? How do we know when enough is enough?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
When, when we've met someone who's, uh, met the, you know, the three or four, like really fundamental criteria is that, that we're looking for someone, someone who may say stop dating.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Excellent question. The latter. So when do we decide, you know, I've been on some dates and this is the person who I want to commit to. So there was this math riddle that circulated in like the 1950s known as the secretary problem. And the idea is you're hiring for the position of a secretary and there are a hundred secretaries out in the waiting room.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
One of them comes in, you interview them and decide yes or no. If you say no, then that candidate is forever gone and you continue on with the interview process. Of course, you want to select the person who's going to be best for the job. you can make two mistakes. One mistake is you don't interview enough people.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So you interview two or three people, you say, yeah, this will do, and you leave the other 98 or 97 sitting out in the waiting room. The other mistake is to wait to the other end of the distribution where you said, gosh, I've interviewed 95 people at this point, I only have five more choices, and there are actually some pretty good ones now that I'm looking back on things.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So how do we more intentionally, more thoughtfully think about optimizing our chances of finding the best secretary? And there are no guarantees, but from a statistical standpoint, the way we maximize that is to interview the first 37% of candidates, identify who the best fit was, call that our baseline, and then continue to date.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Once we find someone who's better than that baseline, that's our person to settle down with. So this is a riddle that's been likened in a dating context in different places. Logan Urie talks about it in her book. I've heard it talked about in Algorithms to Live By. Again, it's an old math riddle. I think maybe Hannah Fry does a TED Talk on it. And my thought was it's an interesting...
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Corollary for the dating world, but there are a lot of simplifying assumptions that don't actually make it a great fit My thought is if you have a Qualified pool of a hundred people you know you've decided great I've swiped with this person they meet all these like initial criteria that I might have and we go and meet on a date within a group of you know 100 or 200 or whatever it might be people here
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And are there some type of numbers that I can assign to this to eventually be able to set a goal and say, great, if I set a goal to go on 60 dates, hopefully I can just go on one date and find my right person, but if I don't,
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
there are probably quite a few who you could choose to build a great relationship with and say, great, as soon as I find someone who makes me feel awesome about myself, who is caring and generous, that's someone where I really wanna invest and decide that I'm gonna make this relationship work.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And so I came up with a variation to this, which comes from this idea of being what's called a satisficer. So when we make decisions, there are a couple different ways we can go about making decisions. One is to be a maximizer. Maximizers are the people who want to optimize for the best outcome, the absolute best.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
um you know empirical best outcome so they're shopping for a car and they're going to test drive you know 130 different cars before they make a decision as opposed to saying great once i get one that you know has a pretty good safety record and has a decent you know 10-year 100 000 mile warranty and is able to accelerate as fast as i need to to you know merge onto the highway
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
It may not be the absolute best one, but it's a really good choice, and I'm going to choose to be happy with that decision. And so that is sort of the maximizing versus satisficing idea.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
The maximizer wants to find the objectively best choice out of all 130 cars, and the satisficer says, let me set a few criteria, and then once I find that, and maybe it's after test driving seven cars, great, I'm going to go ahead and put the down payment on and make it official. And so what the research shows us is that the satisficers are much more happy with their decisions.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I think there are a lot of important lessons for us in a dating context, which is it is not necessarily finding the person who is the funniest or the most attractive or has the best salary or has the dog that you get along with the absolute best. It really is about understanding what are your core values and getting clear on what those are and understanding when you have –
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
that's okay, I'll just view this as great, only 59 more, only 58 more, recognizing that there's this sense of rejection along the way, but that that's an inevitable part of getting to this thing that we all know is fundamental for our well-being, for our happiness, for our longevity, which is healthy relationships, and particularly one of those healthy relationships that you're going to have with a life partner.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
met someone who has those. So I have kind of this extension to the secretary problem called the satisficer solution. And I have a...
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
calculator that you can find off my website, timothymolnar.com slash calculator, where you can change around the parameters of the secretary problem and basically say instead of 100, you know, if we want to consider there are still 100 people in the waiting room, instead of just one person that we could be happy with, maybe we imagine we could be happy with 20 people or 10 or 5.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And then you can play around with the number of dates you would need to go on to likely meet that person. So it gives you a probability where it would say, you know, after you've gone on seven dates, if you decide there are 10 good matches out of these 100, then it will spit out the probability that you'll have met them after that seventh date.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And so for those listeners who may be a little bit more mathematically inclined, it may be a fun thing to just kind of play around with. And it gives you some ideas for, you know, playing with some parameters and understanding what the probabilistic implications are.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah, absolutely. I think there can be this temptation to want to always use the freemium version of whatever software it is and feel like we're gaming the system. We're getting the free version of Zoom. We're getting the free version of Hinge. We're getting, well, Netflix is a little bit different because maybe we're using our friend's grandma's account or something.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
But just to bring it back to these more standard freemium features, There can be a real temptation, and I find myself falling into that as well. But I think a good question to ask yourself is, what type of value do I put on this? And finances are a really personal thing, and so I don't like to give blanket advice of you should or should not. It's not this binary thing for everyone.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
There are a lot of things to consider. But I think I do like to think about it this way, where... If we assume that a dating app premium feature costs maybe $50 or $60, for some of your listeners who are working engineering jobs, it's not unreasonable that they're making that per hour.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
They're saying, you know, is it worth one hour of my time, the equivalent, to be able to increase my chances by 50%? It's a question to ask yourself. I don't want to say that there are unequivocal answers to it, but I think it's worth thinking about that opportunity cost of if I continue to date and how many more dinners do I need to buy?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
How much more time am I spending scrolling through these apps? How many more approaches do I need to prepare myself for? And this is by no means to say that if you do pay, you will for sure have success, but it's saying I think the whole idea behind Date Smarter or Big... core tenant of it is how do we increase the probability of finding success?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So, I went through this journey myself, eventually meeting my person who I've been with for almost five years now. Other friends would begin to ask me about my approach.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I just always go back to the fundamental idea of having healthy relationships in our lives is the single biggest contributor to our happiness. And so for me, Investing in those and whatever that looks like always seems worth it from where I sit.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah, and again, I do think that the behavioral science team who's collecting a lot of that data over at Hinge does a really nice job. And so I think if you're hearing that and feeling frustrated and feeling like maybe you've had some messages, some dates, it's a... worthwhile experiment to try. It can be a worthwhile experiment to try and say, great, I'm going to do this for a month.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
I'm going to set a reminder on my calendar for 27 days from now to cancel this or to revisit the idea of whether this has made a difference. But I approach this from a scientific perspective. And in my coaching, I like to do a lot of experimentation as well and say, let's just run a very simple experiment. We'll A-B test this. Last month, you had the freemium version.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
This month, you're going to pay the $50-odd and try the paid subscription. Did you have a different experience? If you did and it was notably better, was it $50-odd better? If so, great. And if not, then revisit that too.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
That sort of led into coaching and eventually this book, which Date Smarter is basically a look at how behavior science, how math can help us understand how to date more strategically in a way that feels authentic to us, but also in a way that leverages
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah. So first of all, thanks for doing your homework here and asking that question. It's a fun one for me to answer. So it's not something I talk about a lot, but I think it has the ability to really help individuals who are similarly situated where I was, which was not having a lot of dates, not necessarily having the confidence. I thought about what is really, truly holding me back.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
What are the roadblocks? And for me, it was that I was not going and saying hi to people. I was not going up and making that comment about the Aussie at the dog park or the chicken potstickers in aisle five over at Trader Joe's, just like something simple. And so I thought to myself, what is holding me back from doing that? It was probably confidence, self-esteem, something wrapped up in there.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And then I said, what research-backed practices do I know can help me overcome that? And so I turned to both affirmations and visualizations, kind of borrowing from positive psychology. And in the morning I would sit on my floor for about five minutes and I would close my eyes and I would picture myself in various settings.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So maybe it was over at the rock climbing gym and I saw someone who I thought seemed really interesting and I wanted to go chat to. And I would picture myself going up and just saying like, hey, you know, would you want to belay on this next route? And even from the floor of my bedroom, I would start to get that tightness, that anxiety in my chest or in my stomach.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I would just take a really deep breath. And I would do it again. And I'd start the visualization. And I'd go up to the same person and would ask the same question. And the tightness would still be there. and take that breath and do it again.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And slowly over time, and I don't want to say slowly over like three years, like slowly over like probably like a week and a half, two weeks from when I started this to when I asked really the first person out that I'd ever really asked out. And I had had like kind of that five number that you brought up was like girlfriends who I'd met through, you know, clubs or whatever.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
But in terms of like going up to someone who I really didn't know and who was a stranger idea, I hadn't done that. really in the first three decades of life. And so that visualization practice combined with affirmations of, you know, I get to go make someone's day.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And really I think that's a key thing, and I know you've talked about this before for listeners who maybe haven't listened to one of those episodes where you've mentioned it, is you have the ability to...
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
To make someone's day, to go up, make them smile, to be able to tell their friends later, hey, yeah, this nice guy came up to me today and started talking about, you know, frappuccinos in the coffee line. And, you know, we had a really nice chat. And I think, again, we just, we get very much in our heads about, you know, how does this make me feel?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
cognitive biases that we might have and like, how do we overcome these biases to be able to do this in a way that, that improves the probability that improves the chances of us finding what it is that we're, that we're really after.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
That is comfort and all of that and lose sight of that. So that was something that I would just continue to remind myself of, like, you know, I'm enough and someone would be fortunate to like have a nice conversation. And in this era of social atrophy where loneliness has never been higher and we have the surge in general, declaring it a pandemic.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
We have countries like the UK and Japan appointing ministers of loneliness. People crave this social connection and it really could be the highlight of their day, perhaps their week, for you to go up and offer to play them in the climbing gym or ask them what they're reading on the bus.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And for me to actually bring myself to actualize that and to recognize this discrepancy from like, sure, it sounds great, but how do I get myself to do that? It really was the combination of these affirmation and visualization practices. And
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Then I, you know, it was the difference between not being able to do that and then being able to walk up to someone and Trader Joe's and I made some stupid comment about salmon and we got chatting and we ended up going on five great dates and it didn't end up being a, you know, a forever fit. But that gave me the realization that like, yes, I can do this and I can do this again.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And certainly there were times where after that, I'd be like, great, okay, I'm going to go up and do this. And I'd chicken out and say like, great. Some days I just don't feel quite as confident and that's okay. I needed to extend grace to myself. And other days, you know, I'd be feeling great and maybe we'd chat to a number of people.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah. Got it.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Exactly.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So I had met, I think, 31 online and 16 in person. But what I talk about and maybe where you're getting to here and kind of the interesting finding was I tracked, did we go on a second date? And that was really interesting to me. And if we had met online, did we go on a second date? And if we had met in person, did we go on a second date?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah. And it wasn't just a small effect size. It was 10 X as much success. So about 70% of the dates were that I went on with someone I met in person. We went on a second date and a lot of them was like at least like three, four or five dates. It was like really like pretty decent connections. And there were only a handful from the 31 who I'd met online that led to second dates.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So the researcher and me and the statistician wanted to see if I could run what we'd use like a statistical regression to understand like, is there statistically significant difference between these sample size? And unfortunately the sample size was just a little bit too small to be able to register on those charts.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So one of them that I like to talk about is called the primacy effect. And the primacy effect stems from this idea that how an interaction starts really disproportionately impacts how the other person perceives the remainder of the experience.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So I was like, ah, I really want to talk about that in the book, but it didn't quite, quite check out on the little Z test I was running. So, um, what it did tell me though, was, There is a lot that we bring in person that we just couldn't possibly ever perceive, even with the most honest and authentic profile.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And when you're in line at the grocery store and the person in front of you pays a really genuine thank you to the person bagging your groceries and gives them a smile. Immediately I'm thinking, gosh, this is a person who sees the little people in life and treats them well. And when no one's looking, they're doing the right thing. And that's the kind of person I want to be with.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And if I see someone online and they went to maybe a great college and they have an impressive job and they have attractive photos and interesting hobbies, that very well could be someone that I would be a good match with, that you might be a good match with, or one of your listeners could be a good match with.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
But the things that we know from research actually lead to happiness, none of those are captured by any of those indicators. They're nice to haves, but they are not predictive of whether or not you are going to be in a relationship with this person in one, two, five, 10 years. We have great research from John and Julie Gottman on this.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And for those of you listeners who aren't familiar with their work, they're out of the University of Washington, and they'll have couples come into their love lab, and they'll hook them up to all sorts of biometrics to understand. Basically, they'll be in the apartment for maybe 24 hours, sometimes 72 hours.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
They'll test urine to be able to understand cortisol levels, like when are they feeling stressed, and they'll code all kinds of facial expressions to be able to understand, running this as a longitudinal study, what is the likelihood that this couple is together again in a year, 10 years, 20 years, whatever it might be, and they've been doing this for decades.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And they've reported that with nearly 90% success, they can tell just by watching this couple interact for a very short period of time whether or not they're gonna be together. And from that, they've distilled down the core things that really do lead to happiness and marital satisfaction. And none of those are how tall this person is. None of those are what job this person has.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
None of those are, you know, whether this person went to college X, Y, or Z. It's really things like loyalty and generosity and kindness and emotional stability. And these are things that are just very difficult to pick up on apps. And that's what I think I could more intuitively sense.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I think what your listeners will be able to more intuitively sense what the other person on the other side of this interaction can intuitively sense.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And so, as an example, if you show up to a date and it's totally natural to feel nervous, to feel a bit anxious, you're doing this incredibly vulnerable thing, which is showing up in front of somebody and saying, this is who I am. Yes or no? And from that place, we might make an awkward joke. And so now...
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So I think a really important piece of this question is, how do we get ourselves in the ring? How do we get ourselves a shot from when we've matched with someone on an app to be able to actually meet up with them in person? Because anyone who's used these knows there can be a really big divide between those two things. Right.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So one of the things that I talk about is using what James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, refers to as implementation intentions. And it's really a specific behavior, date, time of what we're going to do, or in this case, just specificity around when we're going to meet up. So you send over a plan, an invitation, and instead of like, hey, would you want to get together sometime?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
That's a really vague question because I don't know if I'm agreeing to a all-day hike. I don't know if we're going for coffee. I don't know if that's at seven in the morning or 2 p.m. on a Saturday or on a Thursday. And contrast that with, hey, it's been really fun chatting back and forth here. I'd love to take this to a coffee shop. Are you free Thursday at 6 p.m.?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
There's this really fun coffee shop that I've been loving downtown called, you know, whatever. And now the person on the other end of that has all the information that they need to make that decision. And it's possible that that decision is, no, actually, like, I was really comfortable on the app, and I'm really not looking for... meeting up with real people here.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
I'm doing this for self-gratification or other types of reasons, to ward off loneliness, as a numbing effect for some anxious feelings that I'm having. But that's a lot better to figure out at this stage as opposed to continuing to draw the conversation on for days and days and days. And so I think it's a lot about specificity. I think it's about clarity of intentions.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And yeah, I think it's like people want someone who's fun too. So the more that you can let your personality shine through and think about what are some things that are exciting to you? How do you ask interesting questions? I think all of those contribute to positive communication that can help people move the needle and improve their chances of having success.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah. The first real date that I had with my now partner, Paige, we went over to the Boulder Reservoir and we decided to bring a picnic, probably met up around 6.30 or 7. And immediately I knew there was something special. She had made this beet hummus because she had this CSA, so she'd get little produce once a week.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
While that's totally normal, the rest of this interaction has the ability to be perceived through that lens. We are looking to confirm, our confirmation bias steps in, and every time there's a little wink, a little nod, we're thinking, is that... just further indication that this is an awkward person.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And she had taken the time to cook these beets, blend them down, blend up the chickpeas. And I remember just being really taken with that. And... from her perspective, when she talks about the date and when it really clicked for her was we got into discussing our morning routines. You know, when we get up in the morning, what do we do?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And, and she would say, well, you know, like I like to start my day with a, with like a green smoothie. I was like, well, what goes into the green smoothie? And I was, I was like genuinely fascinated. My dad was into these for the longest time. And,
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Uh, and, and so I was curious, you know, I'd done little green smoothie kick myself at one point and, you know, she's talking about like, okay, well first I need like a thickener. So, so I put in like, I put in yogurt and I was like, is it Greek yogurt? And she's like, oh yeah, it's gotta be Chobani. And I was like, blue top, red top, like which one are we thinking?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I was genuinely curious to know, like, what went into that. And she said, like, in that moment, that was sort of her beet hummus moment. She was like, gosh, like, this guy wants to know whether I use the red-topped jibani or the blue-chopped jibani. Like... He actually cares about me and what's going on. I feel seen. I feel heard. I feel understood.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And neither of us were trying to put on an act of, oh, I'm going to put together this hummus because maybe I'll impress him. It's like, no, I love this CSA. I love fresh produce. And I want to make this hummus. And if nothing else, I get to have a good, tasty snack, even if he doesn't like this. And for me, I'm like, gosh, this is so fascinating. What goes in there?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
i think just that ability to show up with a genuine curiosity and this goes for so many conversations and and interactions that we have that's not just dating related but it's you know meeting people in a professional context meeting people on the bus is like you never know where something might lead but you know i've had fascinating conversations with like
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
people who started medical centers, and the guy who used to run the Tokyo Stock Exchange. And these weren't things where I was like, gosh, this seems like a really important person sitting on this bench. It was just like, here's a nice person. I'm going to say hi and then ask some interesting questions about what they're doing. And sometimes they might be busy. They might be doing other stuff.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
They might have things going on. They might have had a death in the family recently and might just be having an off day. But more often than not, we're starved for that connection, and people really appreciate that genuine curiosity.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah, I don't know why it was so fascinating to me, but it was, and I just kind of kept pressing. And so I think for someone listening to this, they're like, you know, I really don't care about yogurt. There's something else that they do care about and that they're going to be able to find common ground on and going to be able to probe a little bit more deeply on.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And so one of the ways that I would suggest listeners who are hearing this and thinking, gosh, it sounds, you know, I've had that experience before showing up to that date. And I knew within the first couple of minutes, like I didn't make the best impression. is instead of going into this job interview mode, which I think can feel very comfortable and saying, you know, what do you do for work?
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And we love people that are curious about us. I feel great in this conversation. You've been asking me great, thoughtful, well-curated conversations for the last 45 minutes, and I feel awesome. I'm like, gosh, Connell's such a nice guy. We're having this great conversation. Gosh, I feel so interesting because you've made me feel that way. You've given me space to talk about myself.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So I think for people who are like, gosh, what is it that I say? I need to come with the best story or do this. Right. Just a reminder that people care more about how you make them feel than the things that you necessarily have to share. And those things will come. But the better you can show up and just be genuinely curious, that unlocks so many doors.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And you know, how many siblings do you have? It's really showing up with, you know, a story or like something to share so that you're almost catching up like you would with a friend. And you're like, Oh gosh, kind of on the way over here, you know, like I was riding a scooter and like, I almost ran over this pigeon and it was kind of crazy. And you know, And this car had to slam on the brakes.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Absolutely. So I think we have a lot more agency in this realm of life than we give ourselves credit for. And I think it's easy and sometimes like cliche and a little bit trite to be like, oh yeah, just go ask someone out tomorrow. That can feel like a really big jump. If you feel like you're at a place to make that happen, then great. I think that's a great next step.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
If you're like me and where I was, I think a really great next step is do you have five minutes today to And can you sit down and visualize yourself doing something that feels hard or scary for you? That could be approaching someone, that could be meeting up for a date, that could be sending a message that feels a little bit vulnerable.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Whatever it is, visualize that process, feel where that discomfort comes up, repeat that, and just spend five minutes doing that today. And that can be your first next step.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Connell, thanks so much for having me. Your listeners really do have a treat being able to show up and listen to you episode after episode here. It's been fascinating chatting with you, and I would love to come back and chat again sometime.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And all of a sudden, you're sort of disarming the other person. And they're like, oh, we're just catching up as friends. We're not in this evaluative job interview mindset. So you can really seek to overcome that primacy effect when you bring in that nervous energy. And then on the other end of things, to be able to make someone else feel comfortable,
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Because I think one of the things that's easy to forget as we show up to this date, very focused on ourselves, thinking about, gosh, am I going to be good enough? Am I going to be funny enough? Am I tall enough? Am I handsome enough? Whatever insecurities or feelings we might be bringing to this, that the person on the other end of the table is experiencing those same feelings.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So we can extend grace to them and say, gosh, if they're showing up and falling into this job interview mode, we can just kind of quickly redirect the conversation and say, ah, I love that and I want to dig into that. But first I just need to tell you about this interesting movie that I saw yesterday and it reminded me of this because X, Y, or Z.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
So I think those are some of the ways that we can learn from behavior science, like on this first date, to be able to overcome this primacy effect and overcome some of these traps that we are hardwired to fall into.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Absolutely. And I think just to expound on that a little bit, there's also the concept of the recency effect, which is what has happened most recently is going to shape how we view that experience. So you can have a really nice dinner and you finish it with a dessert and you're like, we finished this on a high note. And there's a very particular reason why that's how a typical meal goes.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And you look back and said, wow, what a great meal that was. You leave on a high, you have that little sugar rush. And so it's also thinking about how we can carry that through to the end of the date. And this is not saying, like, great, just be perfect the whole way through the date.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
But it is saying there are ways that you can prepare, you can practice, you can run dry runs with your friends if you need to, but say, I'm going to come into this date, and if this isn't something that comes naturally to me, here's a way that I'm going to start things off, and here's a comfortable way that I'm going to end this. Hey, you know, I had a really nice time tonight.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Would love to follow up and get something scheduled for another date if you had a nice time. Just something simple like that.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Yeah. Well, I certainly have an anecdote of what not to do. So maybe we can learn... Okay, that's good too.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And the protagonist of this one happens to be me. So... I was in the midst of this dating journey that I had kind of alluded to earlier in the conversation where I had set a certain goal or what I had called the date number, a number of dates that I was targeting to go on.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Again, just to sort of like build resilience for when it didn't end up being that first date or the second date or the third date. that I wouldn't say, gosh, this isn't really happening.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
It would just sort of normalize the fact that like, yeah, it makes sense that you might need to go on 10, 20 dates and bruise your knees a little bit before you find the person who you can really hit your stride with. And to that end, and yes, I was a researcher, and so I was into collecting data, and this would have been more qualitative data of,
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
You know, go up, have a conversation with someone, write down what went well, what didn't go well. Was I, you know, looking at my feet? And did I not come across super confidently? Did I feel really nervous? And so, you know, I rushed what it was that I was saying to this person.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And there was one time pretty early on in the journey where I had seen this woman on the street and went up and told her that I thought she had a nice energy and was interested if she would be up for grabbing a coffee.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
and she holds up just this giant, oversized, almost like cartoon wedding ring in my face, and was like, ah, and has kind of like thick Eastern European accent, which I think just kind of added to the whole experience, and was like, oh, you know, like I'm married, and I was just thinking, gosh, like, Right, like I'm at that age where I need to start looking for wedding rings here.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And it was just a simple little, you know, oversight, but it was something that I learned from. And I think there are so many ways that we can learn from those first dates where, you know, maybe you're listening to this and saying, gosh, okay, so I'm going to come in with this story. for my next first date and you show up and you're like, gosh, for whatever reason, like that story just didn't hit.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Like I could feel the energy and the way I showed up, like it just didn't deliver like the full charisma that I bring. And to those people, I'd say like, we're not great at anything the first time we do it. And whether that's, you know, learning Mandarin or playing the viola, you're not going to be good at it the first couple times you do it.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
But you keep going and you build up those calluses on your fingers and you learn those, you know, Cantonese intonations or whatever language it might be. And over time you develop skills and dating similarly is a set of skills that allows us to be able to form what we are naturally wired to do, which is love and human connection.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And we have that innately, but these skills, particularly in this digitized world, aren't things that we were evolved to inherently understand how to do. So, so, so be gentle with yourself if you're feeling
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm going to agree, because I think it's great advice. This podcast is over. Keep going. No, I think it's wonderful advice. I think it makes a lot of sense and it really is a way to harness that social science principle to be able to say, great, let me warm up my social skills and let me prime myself for this experience that I'm about to have.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And to your point, you might be able to very naturally segue into, oh yeah, I was just talking to this fun guy at the bar and he was telling me that he was just on this you know, flight to the stratosphere. And he was telling me all about, you know, that, and you know, it's like, and you have this like natural in to the conversation. So I think there's a lot of value from that. Yeah.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And I also think that it dovetails with some advice that, that I give to my clients, which is, well, When we show up to a date, you're so right to say the energy that you're carrying with you is instrumental in how that experience is going to go. And there are a lot of little tips and tricks that we can do to prepare ourselves for that.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
I love that idea of showing up early so that you're not coming from like, gosh, I was weaving through traffic and I couldn't find a parking spot. And now I'm wondering, gosh, am I going to be judged for being late? This isn't who I am, but I just did too much traffic here. And so you're overcorrecting for that.
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
This Simple Move Makes You 500% Better at Approaching—Science Proves It! (Featuring ‘Date Smarter’ Author Tim Molnar)
And instead of coming right out of a work meeting and maybe hopping on a Zoom date, and you're like, great, I'm just going from one work call to the next, you're bringing in that energy of stressful corporate life into this date. And then you're like, yeah, you're having the same conversations about KPIs and whatever other corporate jargon. And you're like, yeah.