Week 19, 2024 - Diary of a Revenue Engineer
Quote of the week:
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."
- Vince Lombardi
What I thought…
What a week... shorter thanks to the generous gift of the May bank holiday here in the UK on Monday past, but one crammed with plenty of personal and professional battles.
I’ve managed to put on the same weight in three weeks, which took me three months to shift - driving a return to ritual and routine. The same poor diet left and dip in exercise made me fatigued and unmotivated.
As well as this I’ve started a new job for a very interesting company and I’ve been very impressed with how interesting and capable the team have been.
On top of all of this, spring has finally been kind enough to let the sun out and its beautiful rays have eked out some melanin from deep beneath my skin and the vitamin D has been very welcome.
I loved the quote of the week this week, it’s a simple sentiment but one that I think really sums up a purposeful motivation. Can we achieve lofty goals we set ourselves? Not always, but having them out there drives us to achieve great things in any case. I’m always left with that motivating thought too... what if we DID.
So, join me in another journey through the madness of my current battles and, I hope, that they may offer some buoyancy to your own ones.
What I learned…
I had a mixture of learning across some great places this week. I listened to a talk from Paul Stamets, the fungi polymath from the United States. I also got more information on nutrition, exercise routines and, having started my new job, absorbed a wealth of information about the software supply chain,
Mushrooms
I have a nutritional and longevity-based interest in this fruiting parts of the wonder that is mycelium - so much so that I’m looking at a Mycology course as we speak. Stamets is the amateur scientist who really has pioneered a revolution in thinking about how we consider plant and fungal life and it’s applications to our society. This talk (which i recommend listening to here) is a full-on, somewhat jumbled tour of an amazing man’s journey of discovery and it’s littered with outstanding facts and a passion for science. The longest living and potentially largest organism in the world is a fungi... 30 foot fungi once ruled the world before any other life, including flying insects or trees, dominated our land like some 1980’s science fiction... fungi inherited the world after every major extinction event and may yet do so again... their structure mimics the internet, the pattern of Dark Matter in the universe and a Japanese lab even had Slime Mold design a more efficient (verging on near optimal) structure for their metro system. If you have any interest in longevity, science or just good old mad pieces of information - listen to this talk.
Nutrition
Lots learned, but here’s two of the best pieces I picked up:
Nuts - Eating a healthy quantity and variance of nuts as part of your regular diet can be akin to the health benefits of four hours of cardio each week.
Veggies - A study found that having 30 different plants and veggies each week is an ideal goal for nutritional health.
Software Supply Chain
This was one of those things I learned about and instantly discovered a whole multi-billion dollar industry out there I’d never considered. One of the most interesting things I discovered was that around 85% of all software is created using open-source software. That, is very important when considering security, ensuring that all of them are updated, safe, and not the product of bad-actors looking to infect systems with malware for nefarious means. There’s so much more to share here, but I recommend learning more here: https://www.sonatype.com/
What I built…
Whilst finishing some consultancy for a client, I stumbled upon a LOAD of pre-prepared content I created for interviews on both Canva and Miro.
It lead me to remember, in each of the interviews I’d not been asked (or specifically told not to) create any slides or pre-prepare content... and for each one I had done... and every one was well received.
When reflecting on why I actually did that work, why I built out those content pieces... I remembered that I thought “Well, if everyone has been told not to... at worst I’ll stand out...” and I certainly did.
For everyone I made content for, it was well received and I made it to the final round of every interview.
In one specific case, I was told “Don’t create content, it’s not required at this level.” and then the KDM for the role said, in response to my presentation “It’s so refreshing... you’re the first one who took the time to create some content...”.
It just goes to show - a competitive edge can sometimes be given to you in black and white and you shouldn’t take everything you’re told in an organisation's process to be the gospel truth - it could just be bad communication or crossed wires.
How I lived longer…
I actually failed pretty hard here this week.
I’m not ashamed to call BS when I take a tumble... and I certainly did.
I put on 2KG in 3 weeks, weight which took me at least 3 months to shift. A gut punch for sure.
When I told my partner she said “well maybe it’s muscle, it weighs more right?” which was both very kind and, though based in some logic, missed some key components.
Firstly... if I had put any muscle on then it was muscle directly related to not sleeping, eating cinnamon buns and drinking red wine.
It also would have been the muscles directly involved in sitting in comfy chairs for hours on end.
All in all - I’ve not been doing justice to my prior work and, though I appreciate life happens and everyone can fall “off the wagon” on occasion... it’s time to pick myself up... dust the cinnamon sugar from my portly chest, and climb, achingly, back onto that hard, be-splintered wooden wagon of self progression.
I’ve already taken steps to get back to routine and I felt the impact almost immediately.
How I stayed happier…
My overall energy levels, attention, focus, drive and enthusiasm dipped over the last couple of weeks too.
There really has been a direct correlation between my overall fitness, rest levels and nutrition and how good I’ve felt.
I know I’m not breaking any molds, or challenging any widely held beliefs here - but it’s so stark and unmissable when you’ve been doing such a good job with lifestyle changes to feel the impacts of reverting to how things were.
It got me thinking - was I in that state as a standard previous to my efforts in self-progression, fitness, health and discipline?
Was I living in that mire? Wading through the boggy-fog that I’ve felt as a byproduct of late?
It’s a stark thought. One that invigorates me to do more and be better. But also one that get’s me thinking...
I had no frame of reference when I was in that state, I had no other feelings or ways of living to compare it to. I have those now and it’s much easier to make a choice to do more when armed with that information. How many others are in that same situation right now?
Final Thoughts…
All in all, an exciting week with so much learned again, much of it through a little smack of self-failure.
It’s good though, by failing here in whatever sense I choose to define it, allows me better perspective on what it is I wish to achieve.
No one is perfect. No process, no goal, no function, no objective or attainment.
But pursuit of better, that Kaizen approach is really something to be admired.
I choose to try to be better, every day in every way I can.
My family deserves it. My friends deserve it. I deserve it.
You deserve it too, so good luck and thanks for stopping by.
