How I’m Upskilling in the Age of AI (Staying Motivated without Burning Out)

Author(s): Prisca Ekhaeyemhe

Originally published on Towards AI.

Overwhelmed by AI? Struggling to stay relevant while holding down a 9–5? You’re not alone. Non-members can read it here.

Six months ago, I made a quiet promise to myself:
I would find a way to keep learning, especially in AI, even while working full-time and juggling life.

I didn’t have a plan. Just a sense of urgency. I didn’t want to fall behind in tech. And I didn’t want to burn out trying to keep up.

Fast-forward to today, I’ve:

• Built real AI projects I’m proud of.
• Written 12 articles about what I’m learning
• Started growing a personal portfolio and voice in the tech space

All while still working a demanding 9–5 and managing real-life responsibilities.

I’m not sharing this to impress you. I’m sharing it to tell you:
It’s possible.
You don’t have to be a genius or quit your job to upskill meaningfully. If you’ve been trying to learn new skills but struggling with time, focus, or impostor syndrome, this article is for you.

I’ll share 5 mindset shifts and practical tactics that helped me stay consistent, build useful projects, and share my work publicly (even when I was scared to).

You still have time to grow this year without overwhelming yourself.
Let’s get into it.

You don’t need a 10-hour course or a PhD to grow in AI. What you need is a plan that works with your real life. So let’s start with the first mindset shift that changed everything for me:

1. Stop Trying to Learn Everything at Once

The FOMO is real. There’s so much happening in AI right now that it’s easy to feel behind before you even start.

But here’s the truth: chasing every new framework is a losing game. These tools are changing rapidly. What matters most are the fundamentals.

Instead of trying to master every new tech stack (LangChain, RAG, MCP, you name it), I focused on core concepts:

• Word embeddings
• Tokenization
• LLM architectures
• Transformers

This helped me build a real foundation and made every new tool easier to understand.

Stop subscribing to every newsletter; this is a recipe for being overwhelmed and burnt out. Trust me, I learned this the hard way.

You don’t need to know everything. You just need to deeply understand one thing at a time.

AI already makes broad knowledge easy to attain; however, having depth is what will differentiate you from the pack.

2. Learning Without Building is a Waste of Time

It’s easy to binge tutorials. But passive learning fades quickly.

What changed my learning journey was this simple rule:
For every concept I learn, I build something with it.

Not the same project from the tutorial. Something different. Something useful. Something mine. This keeps you motivated in your learning.

For example, I built an audio-to-minutes translator because I was tired of taking meeting notes. It wasn’t perfect, but it made learning about speech-to-text, summarization, and embeddings way more fun and memorable.

If you can’t apply it, you haven’t really learned it.

3. Put Your Work Out in Public (Even If It’s Not Perfect)

I used to build everything in private. On my local machine. Safe. Unseen. But then I started pushing my projects to GitHub, and everything changed.

• It kept me motivated.
• It helped me see my own growth.
• It gave me a portfolio I could share beyond my day job.

Trust me, there’s something powerful about watching your GitHub light up with personal projects. It becomes a timeline of your progress.

Your work deserves to be seen — even if you’re still learning.

4. Show Your Work, Even If You’re Scared

This one took me the longest to embrace.

Sharing your learning journey online — on LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, wherever can feel terrifying. What if no one cares? What if you get it wrong? But here’s what I’ve learned:
You have something to say.
Your perspective matters.
Even if you’re a beginner, there’s someone one step behind you who could benefit.

I started posting short lessons from what I was learning this year. No fluff, just “Here’s what I figured out this week.” It helped me clarify my own understanding and slowly built my voice as a tech communicator.

Teaching is learning in disguise, and the best way to build your personal brand.

5. My Simple Framework for Upskilling in 2025

If you’re short on time and overwhelmed by choice, here’s the roadmap I follow:

1. 📌 Pick a skill to go deep on (e.g., Python, LLM, transformers, or SQL optimization)
2. 📖 Learn the fundamentals, not just tools.
3. 🛠 Build something useful
4. 📂 Push to GitHub
5. 📢 Share online

That’s it. No 10-hour courses. No burnout. Just tiny steps, consistently.

Final Thoughts: You’re Not Behind

It’s easy to scroll through LinkedIn or Medium and feel like everyone else is miles ahead.

But behind every AI “thought leader” is someone who also felt overwhelmed at the start. I still do sometimes.

The difference is: they kept showing up.

So here’s my advice:
Start with one thing.
Build something small.
Write about it and hit “publish” even if you’re nervous.

Your future self will thank you.

What’s one thing you’ll learn this month, and what will you build with it?
Drop a comment or share your journey. I’d love to follow along.

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Published via Towards AI