Hi Reader,
​
I’ve had in-depth conversations with dozens of people who want to build real, practical technical skills in AI. The same patterns keep coming up, especially for people coming from a non-technical background.

So I wanted to share with you the three biggest struggles I hear, and what actually helps.

1. Feeling of overwhelm

This is what I heard over and over again:

You watch tutorials, you take courses, you try different tools… but you still feel stuck.

It’s not because you’re not trying hard enough. It’s usually because there’s no clear focus. You jump between too many tools or frameworks without ever getting comfortable with any of them (I've been there! 🥲).

Or you get stuck because you don’t have the fundamentals in place. You feel discouraged before reading any meaningful milestone. It’s like trying to learn to ride a motorbike before you can ride a bicycle. It's possible, but unnecessarily hard.

That’s why deciding what you really need (even if it’s hard) and building a strong foundation can make a huge difference.

2. Getting caught up in the hype

What makes everything feel even more overwhelming for newcomers is the constant hype online. And honestly, I feel it too.

One day, you hear “prompt engineering is the hottest skill”. The next day, another headline pops up: “Prompt engineering is dead. Context engineering is the future”.

Or “Building a $10K SaaS is shockingly easy with [this new AI tool]”.

Or “Model Context Protocol is all you need!”.

And then… a few weeks later, you never hear about it again.

If you’ve followed in the AI/data space for a while, you’ve probably recognized this hype cycle over and over again.

Personally, what helps me is simply spending less time online. It helps me focus on learning what matters. There are so many new things popping up every day. If something sticks around long enough to matter, I’ll learn about it. If not, I simply ignore it.

3. Not having a roadmap

Someone said to me the other day: “If I had a structured path, I’d be so much further along.”

I get it. If you need something like this, I've put together this free AI learning roadmap (link here), so you can see the “big picture” of the core skills, concepts, and foundations you need to understand and build AI applications.

Of course, the roadmap isn’t perfect or universal. But I believe it gives some clarity and direction of what you need to go from absolute zero to hero.

In the past year, I also built a self-paced course called Python for AI Projects to help you confidently get through the fundamentals needed to move forward on this roadmap.

And for those interested:

The course will be on sale this Black Friday 🎉. I’ll share more details in the coming days.

Wishing you a great week ahead,

Thu 🤗