Welcome to Gratitude Driven, a weekly newsletter where I share practical ideas and insights across personal growth, professional development, and the world of AI/ML. ✨

If you're a software engineer eyeing AI roles, you probably fall into one of two camps:

Both are wrong, sadly. 🫠

In this video, I cover how to actually make this transition in a practical way that leverages your existing skills but also highlights the common pitfalls.

Blog version is here.

You achieved something exciting: Maybe the model is in production, the metrics look good, and your manager said something complimentary in the team Slack. But instead of enjoying that for even a single minute, you're already thinking about the next project or the thing that's still broken.

You know you should feel grateful or excited about what you did well, but you just don’t.

Oliver Burkeman has a term for this: "insecure overachievers." It's a diplomatic way to describe people whose accomplishments are ultimately powered by a belief that they haven't yet earned the right to feel ok about themselves. Maybe you'll get there when you get the promotion. Maybe after you write your first book. Maybe once you've "realized your potential," which of course you never can, because how would you know when you’ve actually hit whatever ceiling you may have?

This is the same thing that makes high performers good at hard jobs. It's also often the reason that gratitude can be so hard to access. Gratitude asks you to pause and register that something is already good. But the fuel that drives you was built on the premise that nothing is good enough yet, so pausing doesn't feel like appreciation, it feels like losing your edge.

Here's what Burkeman says about what we should do: Remind ourselves that our actions don't have to be things we grind out, day after day, to inch closer to finally qualifying as adequate humans. They can be expressions of the fact that we already are.

Gratitude isn't the opposite of ambition; It's what happens when ambition stops being powered by fear. You can push for more in your life without believing that everything you've already done was just a down payment on your permission to exist. There's a difference between dissatisfaction powered by joy and curiosity and dissatisfaction powered by desperation (this is the premise of my WIP book!)

This week, try to notice the next time you accomplish something and immediately deflect, minimize, or pivot to what's next. You don't have to change the behavior, just catch it (basically I’m just suggesting mindfulness), and use that to start understanding your motivation more deeply, so that one day, it can come from a place of gratitude and joy vs. self-doubt and stress.

This month I launched the AI/ML Career Launchpad, the learning community I wish I had when I was starting my career in the field.

It’s a structured path for navigating skill development, portfolio projects, job applications, and more, all with direct access to me for any questions you have along the way.

Learn more here. 🚀

P.S. Prices are going up tomorrow. <3

Want to chat 1:1? Book time with me here.

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