My first challenges as an aspiring Data Analyst

My first challenges as an aspiring Data Analyst

awareness and trust, jack of all trades?

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As I take my first steps into this world, I discovered that I know enough to start, I'm eager to learn more, but also realised that I know nothing and a long journey is unveiling ahead.

Once again in my life, I'm controlling my healthy OCD levels, to understand and control what I have in hands.

And that's actually my first struggle, my main concern, and my main point of energy focus. Well, I was never diagnosed with OCD, I use metaphorically but I thou realise that I am a little obcessive in having somethings tidy, organized and understanbly beautiful in my head, so I can easily access the whole chain of processes whilst diving into a problem or must say, it's solution. You might know already how this feels like when coding.

On the other hand, I drop the towel towards other things, I don't even bother to put my hands on.

My main questions of focus are:

Do I understand the problem? Am I able to subdivide this problem even more, in smaller solvable problems?

or

Do I really need to do/learn this right now? Is this helping me solving a problem short, or long term?

or

is this even constructive or meaningful,or just leasure? is this the best tool I can use right now? and even if it's leasure, I also give my 'ego monkey' some bananas and then say "ok, you've had some fun with that, now come back to focus."

I know by experience that I can waste loads of time trying to figure out a solution to then find that I was asking the wrong question.

I also get distracted by small challenges, or gaming, cooking, going for a walk, have some good coffee, or just by stupid moments of mind paralysis scrolling down on short stories that contributes with nothing at all to my life. But you know what?, it's okay.

As long as I give back. Sometimes I just need to focus on something else, completely different, and then come back to focus. Kind of relaxing and contracting my brain, in a sinusoidal way, to make it more effective. And I have to trust myself on that but also be accountable and honest.

That's why I say healthy OCD levels because I learnt and am still learning to develop my levels of awareness, decision and stop criteria. In life in general, not only professionally.

So I dig and I stop when I feel that I dove into another rabbit's hole. "That's really interesting" I say to myself, Maybe I'll come back later to this topic." Because if it is really that important, life will bring that back to me, ultimately.

On the other hand, the soft skills and ability to change perspectives, are crucial for problem solving and analysis.

I believe my soft skills have improved a lot since the beginning of my academic life, hmm 20 years ago?!, and returning to a continuously learning path for my aspiring Data Analyst track, is somehow inspiring and natural.

I know nothing, that's how I feel, but I know how to approach a problem, how to see it from different perspectives, and to imagine how it feels when seen from a different set of eyes. And high empathy levels when it comes to people can also be very challenging and another learning curve, but I'd keep that away from this topic for now. (Have you noticed what I've just did?)

So, eventually if you are also aspiring to become something else in your life, or to evolve into, not necessarily Data Analyst, or if you resonate somehow whith my personal journey, my personal message is

"Do it for yourself, focus more on understanding the problem, unveiling new perspectives, and less on becoming an expert usingh a specific tool."

Nothing wrong becoming an expert for the contrary. What I mean is, don't waste too much time learning to operate a hammer if you don't know where you should place your nails.

Although you might have heard this already: "A jack of all trades is a master of none" that's just the convenient partial version.

So I shall share the complete version as a final note:

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

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