The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into new land--Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wanted to create an end-of-year tome that would encourage and dare I say inspire. But like everything in the last few months--the best of intentions are strewn across the laundry room floor--or quite possibly that is actual laundry.
I am not a big fan of listicles or self-adorned professionals insisting they know best or can help you with your journey. There are no shortcuts period. Do the work. If that doesn't yield results, keep doing the work. I probably could have stretched that into an e-book of a decent length but I prefer getting to the joke quickly and succinctly.
The reason I ran over 1000 miles last year is because most people don't. I get up before dawn--most people don't. I don't eat meat and rarely drink. I don't read fiction. I meditate while swimming a slow silent mile. We all have little levers and oddities that yield an advantage in how we live our professional lives or even personal lives for that matter.
I also don't accept advertising or have a "real" job. I watch people with platforms tell us how to improve or create our work from the security of a 9 to 5 gig that pays the bills. I am basically unemployed or unemployable by most metrics but I am booked through March 2020. See what I did there?
I write books, I speak from the podium, I teach data workshops, and as of 2020 I will be fading away much of the contract work. Why? It's time to take the training wheels off of the bicycle. I have been learning. Enrolled in bootcamps, online executive education programs, and teaching data literacy. I learned to code in Python and dusted off my R code expertise. If you are going to call yourself an analyst you better have the skills to get the job done.
My expertise is in defining data questions, sourcing data, data modeling, curating insights, and weaving a compelling narrative. I am not promising a definitive answer but I am promising that I can hold up my end of the conversation.
I am not a big fan of listicles or self-adorned professionals insisting they know best or can help you with your journey. There are no shortcuts period. Do the work. If that doesn't yield results, keep doing the work. I probably could have stretched that into an e-book of a decent length but I prefer getting to the joke quickly and succinctly.
The reason I ran over 1000 miles last year is because most people don't. I get up before dawn--most people don't. I don't eat meat and rarely drink. I don't read fiction. I meditate while swimming a slow silent mile. We all have little levers and oddities that yield an advantage in how we live our professional lives or even personal lives for that matter.
I also don't accept advertising or have a "real" job. I watch people with platforms tell us how to improve or create our work from the security of a 9 to 5 gig that pays the bills. I am basically unemployed or unemployable by most metrics but I am booked through March 2020. See what I did there?
I write books, I speak from the podium, I teach data workshops, and as of 2020 I will be fading away much of the contract work. Why? It's time to take the training wheels off of the bicycle. I have been learning. Enrolled in bootcamps, online executive education programs, and teaching data literacy. I learned to code in Python and dusted off my R code expertise. If you are going to call yourself an analyst you better have the skills to get the job done.
My expertise is in defining data questions, sourcing data, data modeling, curating insights, and weaving a compelling narrative. I am not promising a definitive answer but I am promising that I can hold up my end of the conversation.
Here is a list of some of the best decisions I made in 2019
Podcasts
1619--create an environment where you can question why you include race as a checkbox on your surveys or data collection.
Akimbo
I can't provide links because they are migrating everything to their new platform. But you can search by these titles:
Friction
Systems Thinking
You Should Write a Book
LSE Public Lectures and Events
Ordinal Citizenship
Narrative Economics
Learning from Data: the art of statistics
