Hey Reader,

I know I know, I've been MIA. I owe you an update. Before I do that in the coming weeks, I want to share a story & provide some value before I talk about myself.

Today I want to talk about why you crash after a killer week, and how one of my clients broke the cycle.

Coding Mania, PR after PR... then Momentum Gone

In the last year, my client, Maddie, scaled her business, OGTool, to $500k ARR and reached $1M.

In the last 3 weeks, she crushed it.

• "Coding Mania"
• 3-4 PRs in the gym (see here)
• Scaled from $3k to $8k/mo for her other business, Vision.

Then back to zero. Momentum gone. Results vanished.

Momentum-killer events like this kill the compounding gains of consistency.

And they are a major blocker to her raising a seed round.

So why was this happening?

Energy debt! But that's only a symptom of the larger problem. The root cause is dopamine.

Let me explain!

Chasing Dopamine Kills Your Energy, Momentum, & Results

The weekend before the crash, Maddie overbooked her weekend with friends & dates.

Making new friends is great and dopamine-rich, but it doesn't necessarily recharge you. So, she started the week drained.

Then, every night this week, a new idea would pop into her head right before bed, and she'd code till 2 AM. This only increased her energy debt. Again, chasing dopamine.

If we allow dopamine to dictate our days, our energy & focus suffer.

• Staying up late to scroll for "5 more mins" messes up our sleep
• Taking a break to scroll destroys our focus
• Going out drinking all weekend messes up our sleep
• Eating fast food messes up our energy levels

Don't get me wrong, all these are okay in moderation.

But when our energy drops, our momentum stops, and the next business goal,

• Leaving your job
• $25k/mo
• $50k/mo
• $1M Raised

gets farther & farther away.

What if you never had the energy drop, and you never lost momentum? Imagine how far your business would be.

But, Frankie, how do we do that? We learn to replicate perfect conditions.

Study the Good Days & Repeat Them

Maddie got on our sprint check-in this week and said she felt great.

We celebrated, and right before Maddie was about to move on, I stopped her.

Because ignoring what changed is the mistake that ensures you'll face the problem again.

So, we reviewed what worked.

Utilize your good days by

• Studying your patterns
• Engineering your environment to replicate the perfect conditions
• Taming your dopamine-chasing self.

Think about it like this: how much easier is it to hit a strike in bowling when you have bumpers up & the bowling ramp?

It's almost guaranteed!

That's how we need to set up our environment. So, let me show you how!

Maddie's Adjustments & Results

So, here are the changes we made during our check-in

1. Block sleep on the calendar like a meeting. We picked her ideal total sleep, worked backward from her wake-up time, and blocked the window. With a buffer so she wakes up naturally instead of to an alarm. (Read More)
2. A shutdown hour before bed. One hour before sleep, devices off, nothing stressful. She reads a book. Low stimulation only. (Read this & that)
3. A cap on social plans. We set a max number of dates per week based on what her energy could actually pay for. Start small, adjust from there.
4. Sort fun from restorative. Some things are fun and still drain you. Some things actually recharge you. She had to learn the difference and label it.
5. Protect the weekend, so Monday survives. For me, that means going out Friday instead of Saturday, so Sunday planning stays alive.
6. Review every week. What made this week good? What made it bad? Then iterate on the system.

Here are the results:

Not from overworking herself, from a week, she maintained her momentum.

Study your habits, strengths, and weaknesses like a scientist studies a new disease.

Build systems to protect your priorities from your dopamine-chasing self.

In a future post, I'll talk about making a dashboard to monitor all these systems.

Don't let Dopamine Derail Your Destiny

• You are not lazy. You are in energy debt.
• One great week paid for with a crash is not a great week.
• The injury teaches. The system ensures it never happens again.
• Study your good days. Repeat what made them good.
• Block sleep on the calendar before anything else gets in.
• Don't let your dopamine push you to do things your body can't physically do.

​Album of the Week​

P.S. Maddie is always looking for friends in the Bay. Give her a follow!