My New Adventure into the World of Data Science
Over the past year and a half, I've learning a variety of skills: freestyle rap, dance, pick-up/social dynamics, copywriting, improv, speed-reading/memory techniques, entrepreneurship, digital marketing, web development and poker. The goal was to "learn how to learn" aka meta-learning. And while learning a ton of random skills is pretty fun and makes me an interesting person, if I'm looking to get enough at something to turn it into a career, I need to focus on getting good at one skill.
And after a year and half of island hopping, I've decided to dive headfirst into a new adventure: data science. And i use the word "adventure" because seeing this as an "adventure" sounds much more appealing than just "pivoting careers."
And from now on, I'm no longer gonna write in the 'you' format. For a couple reasons:
1. I'm not in a position to tell you what to do with your life. I can only speak to my own experiences.
2. Sick of internet writers telling me '10 ways to be more successful' or '5 hacks to be more productive.' --> Charlatans.
Hence, I write about what I learn in life, through more of an immersive journalism lens. If you can relate or get value from it, even better.
I'm writing this post for a couple reasons:
1. To share my thought process on how I chose Data Science. My way is definitely not the "right" way. But it's different from the "find your passion" dogma floating around millenials. This works for me, maybe it'll work for you :)
2. I'm all about clean, fluid thinking. And by getting my thoughts out onto the page, I can dissect my thought process and identify flaws in my thinking.
Before I dive in, I want to introduce a concept called first principles thinking , which has had an ENORMOUS influence on how I think about things. As Elon Musk says:
“I think it is important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [When reasoning by analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done or it is like what other people are doing — slight iterations on a theme.
First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, “What are we sure is true?” … and then reason up from there.
Somebody could say, “Battery packs are really expensive and that’s just the way they will always be… Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt hour. It’s not going to be much better than that in the future.”
With first principles, you say, “What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the stock market value of the material constituents?”
It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation and a seal can. Break that down on a material basis and say, “If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange what would each of those things cost?”
It’s like $80 per kilowatt hour. So clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”
In order to figure out which direction I wanted to go, I asked myself three, first principles questions:
1. What do I enjoy? When I was a kid, I was obsessed with sports. To this day, I still remember random, arbitrary facts from over a decade ago. I remember that Tom Brady( quarterback of the New England Patriots) went 9-7 in 2002 and missed the playoffs the year after he won his Super Bowl. I remember in 2006, the lone season Randy Moss played a full season on the Raiders, he had exactly 1005 receiving yards(without Googling the numbers). Obviously, those last two sentences won't make sense to those who don't watch football. But the idea is that numbers/stats came pretty easily to me. I don't know if it's my passion, but I enjoyed it, which leads me to the next question......
2. What am I good at? Ever since I've started blogging, a lot of people have told me that I'm pretty good at writing. Obviously, this judgment is relative. I would say I'm OK, relative to my peers. But the odd thing is, when I was a kid, I wasn't a good writer. I got a 520 on the SAT writing section. I've never gotten an A on a paper until I was in college. And I probably read around 1 or 2 books a year when I was a kid.
But I was killer at math. I got an A in every single math class I've ever taken( except one Calculus class in college). Obviously, as I read and write more, I get better at it. But as Gary Vaynerchuk says:
" Go all-in on your strengths and outsource your weaknesses."
I don't think taking this advice to the extreme is helpful. But I do agree, that focusing on things that come a bit more naturally to me eases my climb towards mastery.
3. What's going to be important in the future? Money is usually the sign that I'm doing something valuable for the world. There are exceptions, like getting rich off gambling, or daytrading, but I believe that when I add real value to the world, the world will reward me with more than enough $$$.
And if I do want to add value to the world, thinking about what's important in the future, can be the door to figuring out what skills I want to focus on.
Obviously, when thinking about the future, there are A TON of "important" things. Too many to list in a blog post. Combining future importance with my interests, I wittled my list to these items:
- Virtual Reality
- Artificial Intelligence/Big Data
- Renewable Energy
- 3-D Printing
- Human DNA Sequencing
- Nano-technology
Using my answers from questions 1 and 2, out of all the options, transitioning to AI/Big-Data probably has the least amount of friction considering my current skillset/interests/strengths.
Conclusion: Data Science
Obviously, I don't know if this is "what I want to do." But I've come to the conclusion, in every stage of my life, I'll always be figuring out what's next. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson says:
" The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now."
The journey never ends. There might be a point where I reach the end of my Data Science adventure. What will I do? I'll find a new adventure.