I’ve been reading this book, 4-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss. He’ll occasionally throw in these “Comfort Challenges” to help you develop skills by taking you out of your comfort zone. Makes sense. One of these challenges is “Get Phone Numbers.” Everyday he challenges the reader to ask for two phone numbers from a member of the opposite sex. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you are in a relationship or if the person says yes, you just need to ask for phone numbers. Why? To get over the fear of asking. Well, I’ve “started” this exercise this week and what have I discovered? Randomly asking for phone number is an INCREDIBLE amount of fear. 
This just seems like a great exercise for me. Not just to meet girls, but to increase my ability to initiate communication. So, how many phone numbers have I gotten this week? Zero. How many phone numbers have I asked for? Zero. Why? Good lord that fear of asking seems monumental! This is sooo much harder than making eyes with some gal at the bar, chatting her up, and getting her phone number. Going up to a girl in the grocery store, without any previous signals and asking for her number? I was not programmed for this! Which is precisely why I HAVE to do this.
There is always an excuse not to do something. Reflect upon your actions for the past two days. There was probably something you made up an excuse for not to do something. For example, working out. We’ve all made plenty of excuses why we can’t work out today. If you think there are a lot of excuses not to work out, try this exercise. The number of excuses will increase ten fold. I may have told myself today my hair doesn’t look good enough right now. Seriously? W-T-F yo?
I am going to hit this challenge head on at some point and that point is…tomorrow (I bet you were expecting “Today” but I’m in bed and previous research has shown that beautiful girls do not just wonder into my bedroom). I will keep BoumanBlog readers abreast of my progress futile attempts at getting two phone numbers a day. Maybe writing about this publicly will light a fire under my butt? Perhaps a vlog in the near future will be produced and you can hear my cheesy pick up lines? I think that can be done…if I ever get the cajones to ask. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…
*Bored at work? Check out the blog post I wrote for my company’s blog.
