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8 Evidence-Based Tips that Helped Me Find Love

2022-10-17 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Logan Ury · recording, 15:40 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Relationships and personal life · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, Evidence-based framing, Sponsor segment present, Family

In a Love Club episode Ali shares eight dating tips from behavioural scientist Logan Ury and her book How to Not Die Alone, with clips of his interview with her: throw away the checklist, overcome the hesitator mindset, avoid the interview trap, end on a high note, always go on a second date, be experiential rather than evaluative, notice who energises you, and treat dating as an experiment.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Love Club intro: relationships and happiness, Logan Ury and How to Not Die Alone

  • ★★ Ali says studies show that the quality of one's single romantic relationship correlates with positive health and happiness outcomes. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali's Love Club is his ongoing series exploring principles, strategies and tools for building longer-lasting, more fulfilling relationships in all areas of life. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali says Logan Ury, head of behavioural science at the dating app Hinge, wrote How to Not Die Alone, which he first read over a year ago and which completely changed how he approaches dating. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali says Logan Ury argues throughout How to Not Die Alone that love might be natural but dating certainly is not. — 00:00:58

00:01:17 — Tip 1: throw away the checklist

  • ★★★ Following Logan Ury, Ali says dating checklists optimise for the wrong things: for a prom date rather than a life partner. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Logan Ury says her husband is a five-foot-eight red-headed vegan engineer, none of which would have been on a checklist of hers. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ Logan Ury advises ripping up your dating checklist and your so-called type and dating different types of people to see what side of you they bring out. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Logan Ury advises being strict about how you want a partner to make you feel and the life you want, and flexible about how they show up in the world and what qualities they have. — 00:02:40
  • ★★ Ali says that in a life partner we want someone loyal, kind, emotionally stable, a good communicator with a growth mindset, someone to grow and make hard decisions with, qualities rarely on dating checklists. — 00:02:40 · growth mindset

00:03:03 — Tip 2: overcome the hesitator mindset

  • ★★ Ali says the intention-action gap, wanting to do something but not doing it, is common in dating: hesitators say they will start dating once they lose weight or have their life more together. — 00:03:09
  • ★★ To overcome the hesitator mindset, Ali suggests from How to Not Die Alone setting deadlines, such as having made a Hinge profile three weeks from now. — 00:03:09
  • ★★ Ali advises hesitators to do the dating prep work in advance, such as downloading the dating apps and asking a friend to take decent photos, which is often easier than going on the dates. — 00:03:38
  • ★★ Ali suggests telling others you intend to start dating, even telling yourself in a mirror that you are the sort of person who goes on dates; apparently behavioural-science evidence says this changes how we think of our identities. (hedged) — 00:03:38
  • ★★ Rather than aiming for five dates a week and doing none, Ali advises hesitators to start small: one date a week, say on a Thursday night, or even one a month, which is far better than nothing. — 00:04:37
  • ★★★ Ali read the interview-trap tip around the time of his first several dates with his future wife; on their second date they played Topgolf, and doing an activity helped them bond more than a dinner would have. — 00:04:37

00:04:47 — Tip 3: don't fall into the interview trap

  • ★★ Logan Ury says many dates are job interviews (what did you study, how many siblings, what is your five-year plan), questions that are dry and boring and do not affect whether two people can be in a relationship. — 00:05:06 · also in: Dating App Scientist Number 1 Dating Tip #shorts, 6 Lessons I've Learned About Online Dating
  • ★★★ Logan Ury suggests doing an activity together on a date, such as meeting in a park to try to pet five dogs or making your own dumpling tour of a street. — 00:05:35 · also in: 6 Lessons I've Learned About Online Dating
  • ★★ Ali says doing something on a date helps an anxious dater not overthink it and helps the other person relax, so you get more of an idea of what they are really like. — 00:06:04
  • ★★ When filming videos, Ali says, having something in his hand and a cup of tea to sip on helps him feel a lot more comfortable in front of the camera. — 00:06:26
  • ★★ Ali explains the peak-end rule, replicated a lot in psychology studies: we are far more likely to remember an experience's intensely positive or negative peaks and its end. — 00:06:26

00:06:34 — Tip 4: the peak-end rule

  • ★★ Logan Ury cites Daniel Kahneman's research finding that people would rather have a slightly longer colonoscopy that ends less painfully, because we disproportionately remember things by how they end. — 00:06:55
  • ★★★ Logan Ury says even a mediocre date can be saved by ending on a high note: ask for a kiss, order dessert, give a meaningful compliment or show a surprise mural. — 00:07:25
  • ★★ Logan Ury says some of the best people she knows, who would make great long-term partners, do not perform well on first dates: they are awkward, introverted and not good at small talk. — 00:07:25

00:07:45 — Tip 5: the second date rule

  • ★★★ Logan Ury's second date rule: treat a first date as a warm-up and assume you will go on a second unless something crazy, terrible or unsafe happens, giving people more of a shot. — 00:07:54
  • ★★ Ali says Logan Ury's How to Not Die Alone contrasts the spark with the slow burn: many of us optimise for feeling the spark of intense chemistry on a first date. — 00:08:23
  • ★★★ Ali's general rule: unless a first date goes disastrously wrong, always at least offer a second date, assuming the other person consents. — 00:08:23
  • ★★ Ali has applied the second date rule to his life: after any first date that is not a complete disaster he offers to meet again and decides properly after the second date. — 00:08:23
  • ★★★ Ali finds the experiential rather than evaluative mindset on dates super helpful: the friends he knows who succeed at dating just see whether they vibe with the person. — 00:09:11

00:09:15 — Tip 6: the experiential mindset

  • ★★ Ali says that when he has been evaluative on dates he was not fully present, while focusing on how the person makes him feel makes a date feel a lot more natural. — 00:09:40
  • ★★ Ali says being intentional about dating should not go so far overboard that it takes the joy and the experience out of it. — 00:10:08

  • ★★★ Logan Ury contrasts the evaluative mindset, judging a date against a rubric of whether they are good enough, with the experiential mindset: being in the moment and watching for how you feel. — 00:10:08 · also in: 6 Lessons I've Learned About Online Dating

    “The experiential mindset is, I am going to be in the moment with you.”

  • ★★★ Logan Ury says one of our culture's biggest mistakes is applying what works at work to dating: a corporate mindset with a spreadsheet and an investor pitch leads to a hundred dates without connection. — 00:10:40

00:11:09 — The Deep Dive podcast, interviews on Nebula and the CuriosityStream sponsor read

  • ★★ Ali's interview with Logan Ury is part of Deep Dive, his weekly podcast interviewing people, which has been going for a whole year and is on all podcast platforms. — 00:11:09 · Deep Dive
  • ★ Ali's interviews with entrepreneurs, authors and creators, done over lockdown as live streams on his YouTube channel, are now available only on Nebula. — 00:11:44 · Nebula
  • ★★ Logan Ury suggests an activity: ask who in your life, not only romantically, is your penthouse person, who brings your energy up and makes you feel creative and inspired. — 00:13:11

00:13:18 — Tip 7: basement person versus penthouse person

  • ★★ Ali advises noticing whether you leave a date energised; you probably don't want to go beyond the second date with someone who drains your energy. (hedged) — 00:13:40 · energisers and drainers
  • ★★★ Ali's eighth tip is to have the humility to treat dating as an experiment, since dating is largely about learning about yourself. — 00:13:40 · experimental mindset

00:14:02 — Tip 8: treat it like an experiment; the 37% rule; sign-off

  • ★★ Logan Ury says dating in the modern sense was invented around the 1890s, and dating on apps is around a decade old. — 00:14:10
  • ★★ Logan Ury says many of us are making dating up as we go along, and treating it as an experiment means you learn something from every failure. — 00:14:39 · experimental mindset
  • ★★ Ali says the 37% rule, which he explains in a Book Club video, means we usually have to do quite a lot of dating before finding the person. — 00:14:39 · Book Club
  • ★★ Ali, saying he is no expert, follows Logan Ury: there is no perfect person out there; it is about finding someone you feel you can build a future with and then building it together. — 00:15:08

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: experiential mindset · How to Not Die Alone · Logan Ury · Love Club · peak-end rule · second date rule

Also: People: Daniel Kahneman · Izzy Sealey

Projects: Book Club · Deep Dive

Organizations: Nebula · Topgolf

Concepts: 37 percent rule · energisers and drainers · experimental mindset · growth mindset · intention-action gap · penthouse and basement people · prom date · spark versus slow burn · three dating tendencies

Products: Hinge

Also centred on How to Not Die Alone: This Book Changed my Love Life · 15 Books To Read to Change Your Life · 4 Books You Should Read in 2023

Also centred on Logan Ury: This Book Changed my Love Life · Dating App Scientist Number 1 Dating Tip #shorts · 6 Lessons I've Learned About Online Dating

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