How to balance dating and ambition?

A few weeks ago I wrote about Dating as a driven person.

In response, my friend who is a venture capitalist texted me. He said:

I fully empathise with his situation. As a VC, he has multiple meetings a day and needs to attend a lot of events after work. Networking is really important for deal flow.

I thought about various ways one can optimize their time during dating. This post will discuss how can one not neglect one’s romantic life and at the same time, avoid wasting time?

1. Use texting to filter out the wrong people

If you are a driven person, chances are that you are well-groomed also.

This means you probably get a lot more matches than average.

One of the best ways to save time is to treat texting as a filtering process.

How can we qualify whether someone is worth us investing more time to meet? These are 5 questions I ask generally:

i. What are you looking for in this app? If someone is not intentional, avoid them. If you really really want something casual, there is a lot of hotter people which provide a higher ROI for time spent. Time is scarce, build for the long term.

ii. EQ and communication skills: Look at the quality of their responses. How thoughtful are they in their responses? Do they ask meaningful questions? Are they humble and attentive? Did they start talking about sex even before meeting you in person?

If someone has low EQ or big ego, do not waste your time. This person is highly unlikely to be successful in the future and will also burden you significantly. Time is scarce, date a great communicator.

iii. How long have you been single? This can help you avoid people who broke up recently or in the process of getting divorced. Many are really high risk profiles as they could be unaware of inner work that is left to be undone and some times in a bitter state. Time is scarce, don’t be someone’s free therapist, distraction or rebound.

iv. How do you usually spend your weekends / weekday evenings? How someone spends their free time speaks volume about the person’s level of intentionality to their life. Do they go out to drink and party weekly? Do they play games or binge watch series? Do they give tuition? Do they volunteer?

v. Lifestyle compatibility: I’d usually talk about my own passion for fitness and ask how about you? What’s type of exercises do you enjoy doing?

You can tell someone’s fitness just by looking at whether they have a v shape or the amount of visceral fat.

If someone is fit, it is somewhat likely that they are disciplined, resilient and have good control over their impulses and emotions.

*Remember to weave these questions into your conversations in a way that is natural so that it doesn’t sound like an interview.

2. Aim to meet in person sooner rather than later

Avoid chatting more than 2 days without making any appointment to meet. You risk becoming a texting buddy to a bored individual who just enjoys texting.