The Machine Learning landscape is in a state of continuous change. New research, technologies and tools are put out every day. This sometimes makes it hard to keep up with the latest trends. Besides that, the vastness of the domain can induce the imposter syndrome in practitioners. This is perfectly put in the following tweet
I too had felt this over the years. Either I feel that I know too little or feel like I’m out of touch. To combat this, I’ve been following some challenges to get in touch with my skills and learn new ones along the way. One of the challenges I recently completed is #thePersonalMSDS.
#thePersonalMSDS was an initiative by one of my seniors, Muhammad Hamza Javaid to get industry professionals and students to follow a self-curated Data Science Masters roadmap to develop new skills and hone existing ones. The partaker can decide the number of days (usually 100) and the number of hours they want to dedicate towards learning per day. I first came across it in January 2020 and decided to pledge for 100 days of following a customized roadmap. I completed the challenge from January 13th 2020 to April 22nd 2020. During those 100 days, I studied various topics with the help of online courses and articles. Some of the things I studied back then included
- Statistics and Probability
- Big Data with Apache Spark
- AI for Business
- Investment Fundamentals & Data Analytics
- Data Engineering on GCP
- Basic Bash Scripting and Shell Programming
- Data Science Project Management
As it might be seen, I customized my learning path based on my needs and interests. This challenge not only helped me learn new skills but also to get on top of my existing skills. More recently I pledged the last 100 days, from May 26th 2021 to September 2nd 2021 to the #thePersonalMSDS challenge. I learned some new topics that I hadn’t learned before and also worked on some of the skills that I already have. I got a discount coupon for Databricks Data Science Pathway and I spent 36 days completing it. I earned 41 certificates in these 36 days, some of which you can check here. Some other topics/technologies that I studied apart from this were
- Deploying Machine Learning Models
- Spatial Analysis and Geospatial Data Science
- Data Privacy
- ElasticSearch (ELK Stack)
- HuggingFace Transformers
- Customer Segmentation
- Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
You can track my detailed learnings here. A question that I get a lot is how I find the motivation to start and continue. This is a great question and it is a very common problem. I too have gone off the track a few times so, through the process of trial and error, I worked out some methods that work for me. I hope you find them useful too.
Plan Ahead of Time
A good plan will help you stay on top of your skills and it’ll show how self-aware you are regarding your strengths and weaknesses. I like to make 2 separate lists, one dedicated to topics and skills that I want to learn and one for the skills that I’ve already learnt but either feel out of touch with or just want to study in-depth. Then I pick topics from both lists that I feel are both important and fun. Remember, you can always add or redact topics later.
Find a Community
Get your friends and/or colleagues to sign up for the challenge with you. If nobody wants to join, find people on the internet with the same interests. Become a part of online study groups. Most importantly share your daily progress on the internet with proper hashtags. It’ll get you the exposure you need to find people that are interested in what you’re doing and keep you motivated to meet the daily goal.
Stay Positive
Maintaining a routine like this along with work or studies can be cumbersome and frustrating at times. Sometimes it may feel like you are going nowhere but that is the moment where you need to look at how far you’ve come, how many new things you’ve learned, how many people you connect with along the way. This will help you stay positive and motivated.
Take Breaks
Self-learning is all about flexibility. You don’t need to burden yourself with covering a lot of topics in a short period of time. If you’re feeling tired, just take a break. Take as many breaks as necessary to relieve your stress and come back more focused. You are your own in charge.
Have Fun
The most important factor in staying motivated is to have fun while learning. The more you make your learning fun, the more you’ll look forward to it. Everyone has their own methods of having fun, e.g. you can do mini-projects using the skills you’re learning, make video tutorials, write blogs about it etc. I like to take handwritten notes and do mini-projects. You pick your poison.
So, if you are planning to learn something new or even brush up on your skills, start today, start now because tomorrow never comes. I wish you all the very best for your future.
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