You Have 3 Minutes to Impress a Woman

Start the clock the second she smiles back, gentlemen. You get just three minutes before a woman decides if you’re worth her time, according to a recent British survey.

In a new poll, more than 3,000 women—well, British women, anyway—revealed that a first impression involves a quick analysis of your looks, physique, fashion sense, ambition, and potential signs of wealth and success.

As a man, it’s hard to walk away from reading a study like this without feeling vaguely like a hapless civilian charged with defusing a bomb—only that bomb happens to be a beautiful tennis player standing in line at Starbucks, and your wire cutters are nothing but bad one-liners stolen from David Caruso. Say the wrong thing, wear the wrong jacket, spray the wrong cologne, and . . . she’s gone.

But first let’s acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: Are we any better? Three minutes would be a downright generous amount of time for most guys I know to make up their minds about a woman they’ve just met. I have a friend who dismisses girls in seconds based on the Seinfeldian rubric of ankle size.

Like one editor put it in our morning meeting, I’m pleasantly surprised that it takes the average woman 180 ticks of the clock to size us up.  Three minutes is an eternity in the dilated-time alternate universe where first impressions get made.

Sure, three minutes is about the length of the average movie trailer. But it’s also the same amount of time it took Braveheart to turn the Scots from weak-kneed saps into battle-ready warriors. It took Michael Vick and the Eagles just 1:16 two Sundays ago to complete perhaps the biggest upset in that team’s history. Hell, you could summarize seven seasons of Lost in the time frame you’ve been given to simply make her smile.

It’s not as hard as you might think. Our very own Carolyn Kylstra went on 100 dates to help distill the perfect first-impression formula. And please, relax. Feel free to improvise. There’s no need to hurry.