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. ✨
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What 200K+ Engineers Read to Stay Ahead
Your GitHub stars won't save you if you're behind on tech trends.
That's why over 200K engineers read The Code to spot what's coming next.
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Should You Still Learn to Code?
This is not a clickbait video. The last few months I’ve been asked this by several mentees, and frankly, I’ve been asking myself.
I spent some time asking hiring managers and digging into the data to get you my honest answer as of 2026.
Blog version is here.
AI Engineering Volunteer Opportunity
I met one of my best friends at a Data Science for Social Good hackathon in Berlin, and now he’s started a NYC chapter!
They’re looking for volunteers to help with open source data/AI projects. This is a great opportunity to build something real for your portfolio.
Reach out on the site if you're interested (no need to be physically located in NY).
The Real Reason You’re Burned Out
I've hinted at it a couple of times, but the last few months have been hard on me. It's been tough keeping up my full-time schedule, content and coaching, and personal life goals and challenges.
But I think I may have figured out the problem — and more importantly, the solution.
A typical day for me in the last few months has been: Wake up at 5:30am. Take care of all the animals. Try to meditate while the animals are going crazy. Get distracted by something urgent on my phone and go work on that for a bit. Go to the gym but check email the whole time. Work on five different projects at Twitch (literally, right now I'm working on FIVE teams simultaneously). Write code using multiple AI agents in parallel. Do some content stuff. Take care of the animals while watching a tutorial. Watch memes. Sleep.
The thing that changed wasn't the number of hours I'm working — I'm actually working fewer hours than I used to. The problem is that I was never focused on a single thing.
Every moment I was working on something, I was thinking about something else. I got basically zero deep work done and I never got into a flow state.
I am fully convinced this is why I felt like shit. It wasn't that I was doing too much — it was too much at the same time.
So if you’re anything like me, it might be that the problem isn't your screen time, your workload, or even your ambition. The problem is that your attention is never fully anywhere. You're half-working, half-scrolling, half-thinking about the other thing you should be doing — and that fractured state of mind is what burns you out, not the work itself.
Here's the system I'm putting in place to try to address this:
Remove my content email and Slack from my phone. Nothing is ever urgent enough to justify the constant pull. I check those accounts at set times, twice a day, and that's it.
App blocker on my personal email until after the gym. I don't check anything on my phone until I've meditated, gone to the gym, and taken the dog on a walk.
Only music at the gym. No podcasts or audiobooks. Just me, the weights, and how my body feels.
Keep my personal laptop and phone outside of my office while working on Twitch stuff. If I need to context-switch, I have to physically get up, leave the room, and make it a deliberate choice.
Time-block content work separately from my day job. No more "I'll squeeze in a quick edit while the agent is working." Content gets its own protected window where it has my full attention, or it doesn't get done that day.
The research is clear that multitasking doesn't exist. What we call multitasking is actually rapid context switching, and every switch costs you. Studies show it can take up to 23 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption, so if you're switching every five minutes, you're never actually focused at all.
But when you're constantly switching, you feel busier than ever. You end the day exhausted, convinced you worked hard, and yet nothing meaningful moved forward. So you wake up the next day with the same list, the same stress, and even less energy. That's the burnout cycle, and it has nothing to do with working too many hours.
So if you're feeling burned out right now, I'd invite you to ask yourself “Am I actually overworked, or am I just brain fried from too much at once?”
With this in mind, I skipped the newsletter last week to fully enjoy my family vacation. It was nice. Let’s see how it goes when I’m back at work this week.
If any of this resonates, start small. Pick one thing to change (I’d suggest no phone in your room at night). Whatever it is, try giving one thing your full, undivided attention today and see how it feels. You might be surprised at the difference it makes.
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