Today I’m starting my #66daysofdata

Dear network & myself,

It’s time to stop procrastinating and start doing.

Today I’m starting the #66daysofdata. Allow me to explain:

I’ve been a #datascience “lurker” for a while now. I catch myself doing a lot of things that make me think I'm productive, but the opposite is true: I follow multiple popular voices in the field here on LinkedIn, I read a blog post here and there, I watch a data science related YouTube video every once in a while and a dozen other things that don’t amount to anything. Up until now I have yet to put this interest to use: create things like a model to predict what playlist would suit me on a given day or program a useful image or PDF classifier or anything like that.?

Recently I’ve had a lot of time to spare and this made me refresh my data science skills. Completing a few Kaggle courses, revising my thesis, picking up data-related podcasts again (shout out to Ken’s nearest neighbors & DataCamp ’s DataFramed), and so on. Little by little, these things reignited the flame to start working on data science projects in my free time and prove to myself that I still possess this skill set and that I am still eager to expand my knowledge in this ever-expanding field.?

Moreover, I’ve recently completed Atomic Habits, by James Clear . The principles he lists in the book really collided with me and made me realize I had more bad habits than good ones. It is time to shake that imbalance up! In the book, the author mentions that habits should help you grow towards the identity you want to achieve as a person, not one pre-defined goal. In my case, I want to become and stay an engaged and up-to-date (or as good as can be) data scientist enthusiast in my spare time and in all fairness also a professional practitioner.

This brings me to #66daysofdata: I’ve been following Ken Jee for over 2 years and witnessed the launch of his #66daysofdata initiative, both here on LinkedIn and on his YouTube-channel back in 2020. Back then I didn’t take on the challenge, now I realize that I made up excuses back then. At that time, I had just handed in my Master Thesis in Communication Sciences and I was preparing for the entry-test for the Msc. in Statistical Data Analysis. Since I was certain this degree would make me work with data every day, I thought this challenge wasn’t for me.

So what is this #66daysofdata?

It comes down to creating a habit of spending 5 minutes a day on any data-related task. This can be working on data science projects, reading other people’s code on Kaggle or Github, learning about unknown techniques, visualizing datasets, practicing Python, R or SQL but it may also be just reading through a blog on a new AI discovery or refreshing knowledge on models or theories I learned in the past. I just have to do anything data-related for at least 5 minutes. The essence of the initiative is to build the habit of learning, being & staying enthusiastic and motivated when it comes to data science.

Tracking your progress is one of the building blocks to establish lasting habits, so LinkedIn will act as my weekly progress-bar where I’ll update you guys on what I learned, read or wrote… This way I hold myself accountable: in a way, you guys are my habit-contractors. If I skip multiple days, or worse, a week, I’ll have to be honest in my next post and feel ashamed.?I know most of connections will never read these words, but it will bind me to doing this weekly. If you made it this far into my self-rallying monologue, I can assume you'd be interested in what sort of projects I'll get myself into. Or you're just interested in whether or not I can make it even 2 weeks... In that case, be sure to check back every week on Sunday!

That’s it.

It’s time to stop procrastinating and start doing.

Today, I’m starting the #66daysofdata.

• More info on the initiative by Ken Jee can be found here: https://www.66daysofdata.com/
• Also follow me on Kaggle and Github