March 2025 - Diary of a Revenue Engineer
Quote of the month:
"The test of progress is no longer whether we add more to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
What I thought…
This quarter was insane and intense and I just about came out with my goals and discipline intact.
By god it’s good to see the sun again more often, but why do we still have these egregious changes in the hours of the day.
As the world fizzed and bubbled with insanity like some poorly sealed fermenting food-stuff in the pantry of a DIY health-enthusiast, we got cracking on delivery and improvement.
What I learned…
I felt like March was so busy that it passed without much time to learn. It certainly was less intentional with regards learning, with the big lessons coming more organically.
In combination with this, I also actively removed some of the intense learning regimen from my routines this month. Why? Great question:
Dopamine balance
In my search for optimising motivation, energy and drive - I’ve also learned that taking breaks from the routines that build and boost Dopamine, or at least working on a random schedule, can help with increasing your overall dopamine ‘base level’.
Think of it like this... dopamine can peak and trough, just like the natural oscillations of life’s ups and downs. The ideal situation is to have smaller peaks and troughs in a more random rhythm - all of which increases the base level of dopamine.
It’s the most scientific description of the difference between happiness and contentment I think I've seen... even if not scientifically accurate to describe those states. Here’s how I’ve come to see them through my experiences:
Happiness: more intense moments of feeling, even if fleeting.
Contentment: more consistent sensation of general goodness.
Learning and entertainment
To this end, intense and consistent levels of learning, as I tend to engage with them, can miss that random rhythm which encourages a higher base line.
As an example, if you toss a coin to decide if you’re going to listen to music during your workout, that can help create a randomness which helps build a higher dopamine base level, rather than a predictable peak.
Hence, I am actively using the business of March to build that randomness and take a break.
Prompt Engineering
Through some self discovery and a massive project working alongside some distinctly talented people, I dove deeper into the structure and purpose of detailed prompts for better AI output.
It massively upped my game in this area and has helped me build some amazing things for myself and my profession.
I’ll be sharing some content soon on how I got massive returns from my work with AI last year, but I hope to surpass them considerably this year.
What I built…
This quarter I built a series of things for my personal and professional life:
Purpose and Goals
Using what I learned from prompt engineering and creating flows for my own goal setting and process, I created the beginnings of a prompt for AI to help people run through the same process I do, and have, for a few years now.
It’s helped me create a six figure income in five years, change career, find work, find myself, overcome addiction, define goals for the next 15 years, gain muscle, get fit, be a better partner, be a better father, a better friend and a happier individual.
I can’t think of a more beneficial use of AI right now.
Call analysis and Revenue Engineering
I’m also creating detailed processes to help scale my work and make it more cost effective for other organisations.
I’m lucky to be working with so many amazing people, and with a super impressive organisation at the moment, where this work can flourish.
I can certainly find opportunities to scale this work more, but creating the processes and the methodologies to achieve these things and seeing them work again and again in different contexts is deeply fulfilling.
How I lived longer…
I worked hard on getting back to my levels of HIIT pre-illness last quarter, building on my strength work and getting to that hallowed 10km run (a significant milestone for me):
HIIT
Several years ago, I started my journey back to fitness by doing something I called the (30x30) in a secluded room in a public leisure center gym.
It involved doing six different exercises for five cycles, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off.
I did it twice a week and I remember it killing me just doing jumping jacks and trying to do situps.
Now I do 50 seconds on, 20 seconds off, the same 6x5 but with greater intensity, weights and determination.
I’m building back up, slowly but surely, to where I was pre-illness... but I don’t have immediate goals to take it further than that.
Strength
I’ve been enjoying the comedic and scientific musings of Mike Israetel from "Renaisance Periodization" and he’s helping me up my game in the muscle department... much needed.
I’m able to lift and pull more with greater technique, but I still have a long way to go.
Endurance
Thanks to some great work from a Physio at Pea Green Physio near Bicester I was also able to up my game with running technique and capability.
This helped me achieve my first 10km in nearly two decades if you can believe it.
It took me about 1hr 15mins and there’s plenty to improve their still.
For now, I just want to go the distance, then I’ll work on a sub 30 5km and build up to a sub 60 10km in due course.
Still - good times and probably the achievement I’m most proud of this quarter.
Oh, and I mostly stayed off the booze, finding wine creeping back into my evenings towards the end of March due to workload, stress, toddlers being unreasonable and a general tendency towards chemical escapism.
How I stayed happier…
My investigations and learning into dopamine, its regulation and the habits one forms around it have been a major point of interest to me for months now.
However, this month, I couldn’t help but find many correlations between dopamine and the current state of general happiness. The more I learned, the more I found links between them all that explain so much about the state of the world right now. Mainly, what’s going on with so many men, especially young men, at the moment.
Suicide is the biggest killer of men below the age of 50.
So called “Toxic Masculinity” is pervading social media at outbreak levels.
Men are getting more and more conservative, which would be fine, if there wasn’t also a dash to the far right.
How, you may ask, does this have anything to do with dopamine? Fair question, well asked...
Well, addictions to graphic, sexualised content can cause massive spikes in dopamine that then deregulate and lower the baseline level ( as mentioned before). From this, anyone engaging in that activity will have to seek more graphic content to achieve the same, previous peaks, whilst also experiencing an average lowering of the baseline level. This leads to a denigration and objectification of women. You also receive a massive boost to dopamine when someone says something that you believe to be true (so called confirmation bias).
It’s a vicious cycle, where marginalised young men are losing the regulation of one of the most powerful chemical mechanisms in our own bodies. They are having their motivation chemistry, the very thing that set us out to find food, or fight for our lives and our loved ones, and seek partnership to further the species - these are the mechanisms being abused by companies. Then, vacuous and manipulative individuals desperate for power and money an any cost, leverage this broken internal system to their own, nefarious ends.
I’m certainly not the first to see this correlation, the puritans and the feminists have (as my partner reminds me) been shouting this from the rooftops for some time. It does, however, answer the question succinctly for me around “What is going on with the world”.
So - perhaps I’m less interested in how i’m staying happy, or seeking contentment these days, and more concerned as to why whole groups of people (namely, young men) are really unhappy.
Final thoughts…
I’m amazed how interconnected and impacted modern humanity is by ancient mechanisms in our bodies. We’re evolving our societies way faster than our physiology is able to cope with, even if our conscious minds are.
I think I put it best when I finally categorised myself correctly in conversation with a colleague. I called myself a “Cynical Optimist” and that sums me up well.
I really do believe that people have an almost limitless capability to do good in this world. But I also believe we’re idiots who can’t be bothered.
Let’s hope I am, at least, half right.
Thanks for reading, stay happy, healthy and well!
