An idea popularized by the book Atomic Habits (by James Clear) is that improving 1% each day compounds enormously over time.
- A 1% improvement each day is 1.01³⁶⁵ ~ 38
- A 1% decrease each day is 0.99⁹³⁶⁵ ~ 0.026
By making small positive decisions each day as a data scientist, your progress will increase and push you to that elite level.
Ok, sure, this sounds good on paper, but what can you do to implement it in practice?
Well, the best way is to learn something new every day. No matter how small it is, if you gain knowledge every day, it goes without saying that this will benefit you in the long run.
I can give you some examples to try:
- Instead of Pandas, use a package like Polars or Spark to learn a new data manipulation framework.
- Enter aliases for any terminal or command line that you use frequently.
- When making code…
