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. ✨

Everyone has REALLY strong opinions on what AI will do to the job market. Depending on who you ask, either we’re about to see a golden era of prosperity or we’re all doomed.

That contradiction is actually the most important thing about the AI jobs conversation right now, and it's what this week's video digs into. Not whether AI will change work (it will for sure) but the fact that the institutions producing the scariest headlines can't agree with themselves from one report to the next, much less agree with each other.

The video walks through every major report, expert opinions, and more to try to find some truth in the noise.

Blog version is here.

Most career advice tells you to find work that matters to you. Get clear on your purpose, the thinking goes, and the rest follows; You’ll feel motivated, be able to work longer, and feel good doing it.

And there's significant research behind this. People with a strong sense of purpose have better executive functioning, slower cognitive decline, and even better health outcomes like a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease.

So it's reasonable to believe that once you find meaningful work, you've solved the hardest problem. You probably believe that caring deeply about what you do is, on balance, an unqualified good.

Except the data tell a more complicated story. During Covid, healthcare workers who saw their jobs as deeply purposeful were more likely to burn out, not less. Amy Wrzesniewski's research on zookeepers found that people who described their work as a "calling" accepted long hours, low pay, and unsafe conditions. This is a pattern Tatjana Schnell identifies in The Psychology of Meaning in Life: the psychological system that fuels purpose is the same one that fuels over-identification and what researchers call “meaning entrapment.”

An example is Miwa Sado, a Japanese reporter, who logged 159 hours of overtime in a single month. She died of heart failure at 31. Her case became emblematic of “karoshi,” death by overwork, but what makes it relevant here is that Sado wasn't grinding through work she hated. She was doing journalism she believed in. The sense of purpose made it harder for her, and everyone around her, to see the damage.

The WHO's definition of burnout supports this: burnout isn't related to the number of hours you're working, it's about how you feel. And when you’re driven by purpose, "how you feel" gets overridden by "how much this matters." Caring can become a trap.

Schnell's research offers a different model. The people who sustain meaningfulness over time don't have one grand purpose. They have breadth, balance, and depth across multiple sources of meaning. "It is more sensible to have several sources of meaning in life and preferably of different kinds," she writes. "Ideally, at least one of them is self-transcendent."

So if you’re feeling ground down, a practical step is a simple audit: How many sources of meaning do you have in your life? What do you spend your time and energy on?

If one category dominates everything else, that can actually be a risk. Of course the goal isn't to care less about your work, but just to make sure work isn't the only source of meaning in your life.

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. 🚀

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

Forwarded this email? Sign up here.

Follow me on YouTube | Instagram | X | LinkedIn | TikTok

Note: This email may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase I may make a small commission, at no cost to you. Thank you for your support!