I strongly recommend writing a personal (career) mission statement

I just realized today: even if I were the best AI engineer in the world (which I'm not), I'm not on a path to achieve anywhere near Andrej Karpathy's impact, and that's in part due to lack of sufficient ambition and imagination of possibilities. I clearly see a failure mode where one excels at their job but due to the small scope one's assigned and the box one confines oneself, their impact on society is limited by the company's mission. (Related: "Don't Call Yourself A Programmer" by Patrick McKenzie [1].)

[1]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

Why? What I've wanted out of my career or whether I cared at all has changed pretty drastically across different decades of my life. Some of that is changes in my own personality and circumstances, but some is just opening up of avenues I didn't realize were possibilities when I was younger. I originally wanted to be a writer. Maybe if I was more determined and focused on that, I could have been, but I know people from back in the day who had that goal and achieved it and I can't say any of them right now are better off or happier than I am. Giving up and doing something with a much clearer path to a stable existence worked out well.

Agree. I also recommend placing it somewhere public to keep yourself motivated to stick with it..