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 came out of it with my goals and discipline intact.

It’s good to see the sun again, but why do we still have these egregious changes in the hours of the day?

As the world fizzed and bubbled, like some fermented food-stuff in a hipster’s pantry, I got cracking on delivery and improvement.

What I learned…

March was so busy that it passed without much time to learn. I 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. 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. 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. For example, if you flip 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 considerably surpass them 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. It’s helped me create a six-figure income in five years, change career, find myself, overcome addiction, define goals for the next 15 years, gain muscle, get fit, be a better partner, father and friend, and a happier individual overall. 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, 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 area in a public 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 attempting sit ups. 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. 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 physiotherapist 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 there. 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 steered clear of alcohol, finding wine creeping back into my evenings towards the end of March due to workload, stress, unreasonable toddlers… and a general tendency towards 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 particular month - I couldn’t help but see the glaring correlations between the science of dopamine, and the current state of our general happiness. The more I learned, the more I found links that explain so much about the state of the world and that may help us answer some urgent questions. Mainly, what on earth is going on with men?!

We know that suicide is the single biggest killer of men below the age of 50 (although it’s worth noting that women report higher rates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts). 

Meanwhile, men - particularly young men - are becoming increasingly conservative. Voting at the most recent UK election showed that young men were more than twice as likely as women to vote for the newly-founded, far-right party Reform UK.

All the while, toxic masculinity is pervading social media at an alarming rate. So much so, Andrew Tate and his manosphere make the news on an almost daily basis, and the discussion is continuing in popular media. The enormous popularity of Stephen Graham’s Netflix series Adolescence is evidence that people are interested in, and likely very concerned by, the rampant normalisation of misogyny. 

But what does any of this have to do with dopamine? Fair question...

Well, to start, graphic sexualised content can cause massive spikes in dopamine that then deregulate and lower the baseline level. Anyone engaging with that content will have to seek more graphic content the next time, in order to achieve the same peaks as before, while also experiencing an overall lowering of the baseline level. 

It’s a vicious cycle, whereby young men are losing their ability to regulate one of the most powerful chemical mechanisms of the human body. Their motivation chemistry - the very thing that sets us out to find food, or fight for our lives, or seek partnership to further the species - is changing. 

I’m certainly not the first to see the correlation between sexualised content and toxic masculinity. Nor am I the first to suggest that porn consumption may result in negative repercussions for the male psyche, for the representation of women, and for society as a whole. Religious groups have been opposed to porn for as long as it has existed, and factions of the feminist movement have explicitly drawn a direct line between porn consumption and male violence against women for decades. 

With all of this on my mind, and in the media, perhaps I’m less interested in how I'm staying happy this month, and more concerned as to why whole factions of society (namely, young men) are so very 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 capacity to do good in this world. But we’re also overworked, overwhelmed and burnt out. It’s no wonder we’re not feeling inspired to change the world!

Thanks for reading, stay happy, healthy and well!