I have no formal education beyond high school, nor do I have a learning structure that you would typically have when completing higher education, like university. I have been procrastinating for a month or two on completing a course in Data Analytics for various reasons.

The course below:

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate from Coursera

Despite enjoying the content, I have completed three and half of the 8 courses for the certificate. I know that I should have made more progress with this course by now.

After some self-reflection, I understood that the fear of finishing the course and then realising I don’t want to do this kind of work and the anxiety of the looming project at the end, have been the main deterrents from getting started with the course. I tried to see it from an outsider’s perspective and think about the advice they would give me. 

“It’s just as valuable to know what you don’t want to do as much as what you want to do”’

I’m sure they would also say 

“It is much preferable to do the project badly than not doing it at all.”

My inspiration for this personal Experiment

I have included a few sources of inspiration that have guided my thinking on how to approach this personal productivity experiment

Scott Young (add link) has a very interesting concept of dividing projects or tasks into commitments and experiments. The idea is to avoid having a rigid habit of completing every single book you pick up or having to finish a task that isn’t a priority. You must see through commitments, but experiments can be put down at any time. They are just for data and exploration of the experience.

It is important to have flexibility with a goals.

Execution Gap – 12 Week Year

One of the concepts in the book 12 Week Year that helped me understand the simplicity of action is the Execution Gap

• Most people know what to do, but they don’t do it consistently.
• The biggest challenge isn’t knowledge, it’s execution—turning plans into action.

Overplanning and under-executing.

I have, for as long as I can remember, overplanned things. Creating lists and making things so complicated it would make it impossible to execute the plans or I would give up out of frustration of the plan not working. 

The goal would be to make the execution of the task a priority and remove all other barriers to doing so.

The experimental mindset – Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

This a great book that really resonated with me. I have read other productivity books, but I enjoyed the concepts promoted by it. 

The author is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, she is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer. The book is in essence about replacing the old linear model of setting goals with a process of iteration, discovery through curiosity. Failure is replaced by feedback and data. 

For example, if I tried to set a goal to complete an online course in 3 months, I could unknowingly set myself up to fail if I had been overly ambitious with the timeline or found the content was more complex than expected.

If my goal was only to work on the course every morning before work, the only failure would be not doing it. There is no pressure to stick to a deadline or produce a specific result.

From the material that I downloaded by signing up for her newsletter which I would recommend, it outlines four stages.

Making a time commitment to do the activity 

Just doing it, the only failure is not doing anything

Share your learning through content such as a blog post or another medium.

Set your sights to work on a bigger project built on what you have already learnt

Planning it out

With the wisdom I have learnt from these various sources, I will complete my study plan by making it into an experiment. The aim is to learn how to stay consistent for 90 days

Guidelines for the Experiment

I plan to study each day for 3 months (12 weeks) with the focus on setting a time each day in the morning and night to study, complete projects and review. 

The only measure of success is to show up and do the work. It doesn’t matter how long I spend each day studying and there is no pressure on the quality of the output. It is more important to be consistent with the habit of doing the work each day.

At each milestone, such as finishing the certificate, I will post on Linkedin and update my progress here to share my learning.

At the end of the project, I will evaluate if this is the career for me and if so start applying for work.

How I Developed my Study Plan

My study plan will give me an idea of how I am tracking each module or course, with an estimate of how long it should take. This will not be a deadline but allow me to understand better how long certain aspects of the study plan take longer than predicted.

The study plan was created from my research on the web. One of the principal sources I used to understand the essential tools needed to work in this field is the YouTube channel of Alex the Analyst.

This a comprehensive channel for anything and everything related to Data Analytics and getting into the field. I recommend checking it out.

There is one video in particular that outlines these tools:

Main Tools Required for Data Analyst Role:

SQL

Tableau

Since I am already taking the Google certificate for Data Analytics, this will be my starting point. I will need additional resources and learning to be competent in the above tools. After some further research for learning platforms, I found one that suited my needs. This one was recommended by a friend in the field of Data. So I decided to go with:

The pricing is quite competitive considering it is a third of the price of Coursera for the monthly subscription and has hundreds of courses and hands-on projects to choose from. I decided on 4 courses that will cover the main tools I want to learn. Below is the outline for my schedule showing the suggested Start and Finish dates along with progress status.

I will post updates weekly on my progress. Let’s see how it goes!