The Sneak: My study was going out at least 4 times a week, for at
least 3 hours a night, for my first month. I read this in some old
community book, it was called The Newbie Drill. The truth is, I really
enjoyed it. As I said, when I was running the openers, the fact that I was
meeting new groups of people and they were just having a conversation
blew my mind. It was really exciting for me, considering I came from a
place where I struggled to connect with people. It was miraculous. I
loved it. I would go out sometimes five nights a week, six nights a week,
seven nights a week. It got to a point where it probably wasn't healthy. I
was doing a worse job at my work as a stand-up comedian. The other
things that I was exploring at the time were suffering because my life
became out of balance because I was so excited. I don't think that
someone has to do that in their practice to succeed. As a matter of fact, I
pulled back from that. When I pulled back, I actually got better at
communicating with people. I still enjoyed those times when I was going
out all the time, but when I went back to doing it, say 4 times a week and
no more, my skills actually grew.
So I do think that there's a sweet spot somewhere around 4 times
per week, however that's a lot for a lot of people and I don't think that it's
completely necessary. If you can dedicate yourself to say, going out 2
times a week for 3 hours a night and practicing consistently for a couple
of months like that, I think that's fantastic. The bare minimum that I
would recommend would be going out one night a week. That's just if
your life is really crazy busy right now but you're interested in this and
you're planning on practicing even more at some point. But right now,
you're just trying to groove into it, my minimum for you would be once a
week, 3 hours a night, and make sure you approach at least 4 groups of
people while you're out there, to consider it a true night of practice.
Unless, of course, you meet somebody in the first, second, or third
approach that's so incredible that you end up spending the rest of the
night with them. In which case, fantastic night of practice and fantastic
night of your life.