I understand the reasoning behind 'ploughing' and I also understand why it can be effective but, doing it all the time, I think is bad advise. As I said before, in order to communicate effectively you need to listen; ploughing is like cutting out the middle man, an anything goes, talking shit type of communication - a scattered thought way of finding a commonality so she's like "omg yeah I do that too" and you're thinking "finally! thank fuck!".

To me, when you find out a piece of information, you follow up with a question, mutual questions might then be asked, then the conversation flows either on the same topic or slowly transfers to another topic. You don't even need to listen for hookpoints. Take an interest in what they're saying and that interest of yours will naturally produce questions. Be interested in what they say, listen to what they say; hookpoints is basically an easy digestible name for you been intrigued enough to ask a question.

Once your talking there's absolutely no need for ploughing, learn how to make transitions into other topics and so forth. To me, ploughing is like forcing an interaction. Might just be me, but I really don't like the idea of it. A conversation should flow. I mean, if you're in a club and you say "hi, what's your name", she replies and you feel like you need to plough to get the conversation going, why don't you just say, "cool, I was just on my way to (where ever), I'll just be a minute and I'll come back to see you". Then sort yourself out and go back into the conversation.. obviously the club scene isn't my strong suit, yet, but still, you have to communicate with the girls there and that implys effective communication.

Take, for example, my latest report in my journal, how I was talking to the girl in the car and the multitude of topics that we made transitions onto. It wasn't forced, I didn't plough, I was just genuinely interested and listened and she, the same. Which then made for a great, free flowing conversation with natural transition through topics.


I don't mean to preach about this. I'm just being straight about it and what I personally think.

I think part of the problem is for years my mind has been conditioned for work conversations. So it's a logical exchange of information, nothing else. And I wasn't social for a long time. As you say Sha I probably need to do something like improv to shake the rust off and get the social wheels moving in my head again. Last night was quite good as the conversations with my mates were like improve, we were just bouncing things off each other. I need to do more of that to exercise that part of my brain.

@Barney, I would agree that ploughing probably isn't the best method of trying to spark an interaction. It can work for a short while I think, maybe gives the girl a chance to hear your voice and size you up a bit. It's better than clamming up. But the hook method is definitely better for making some kind of connection. As long as you avoid the try hard commonalities ("oh yeah I like that too") which I have been guilty of sometimes. I think a lot of that will handle itself as the confidence in social situations improves.

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Download the audio book. Open ended questions that let people talk about themselves makes ur life easy.

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It's true, everybody's favourite topic...themselves. All you need to do is give them the opportunity to talk about it.

One way of looking at this might be that your conversations are based around indirect fluff… So the girls aren't really aware of why your talking to them.

The girls you are talking to should be aware you are hitting on them, either through IOI or a SOI. Otherwise they will be questioning why you are talking to them.

From the very beginning of the interaction the frame of the conversation should be sexual, so that both of you can feel the sexual vibe.

Remember that these girls are most likely out to meet guys (subconsciously or consciously). That want to be hit on.

I disagree that the frame HAS to be sexual from the very beginning. By all means you have to show your interest and make your intentions clear, but you can start getting sexual later. Nothing wrong with starting out with a normal conversation as part of a normal social interaction and then beginning to build it up. Its real life - its really situation/context/environment specific.

Deliberatly going out of your way to get sexual immediatly just sounds too robotic and PUAish to me.

I agree with what your saying Broadsword. What I meant was in terms of removing any ambiguity as to why you're there.

It should be mutually understood that the conversation has a romantic/sexual subtext from the cuff... The conversation does not need sexually charged but she just shouldn't be wondering why you're there.

If you have to make it apparent straight away as a necessity that you are hitting on her then you really need to vary your approach.

I get it with the yad stop, fair play. But really you don't need to always proclaim your intent straight away.

Efficiency...

However it's made clear, she should understand why you're there. People don't generally just stop for random chats, this is doubly true of women stopping for chats with random men.