4 habits that helped me complete the 115 hour DataCamp Data Scientist Certification in 4 months

In 2021, I completed what I struggled to even get started with in 2020.

I achieved my Data Science learning goal — DataCamp’s Data Scientist Certification in R and SQL. I spent over a hundred hours learning how to clean and analyse data, produce data visualisations using ggplot2, and code machine learning models.

If you have a skill that you want to learn in 2022, you can use the four habits I used that helped me achieve my learning goal:

Bundle your learning time

Building a habit requires regularity. But we also need breaks.

I told myself I only needed to go through the course on days where I was at work. Days that were meant for me to relax were guarded.

Something is better than nothing

This habit helped me miss less than a handful of days over the four months.

I set a goal of half an hour per day. On days I struggled with motivation, I told myself that I needed to complete just one practice session (about two minutes) and that would be good enough.

Read what others are doing with their skills

This inspired me by showing me what I could potentially do with my new skills.

Most of the work I enjoyed reading about was from the football analytics community on Twitter. It was a perfect combination of my passion and skills.

Apply your new skills

This was my motivation for starting the course.

Using my new skills gave me realistic feedback about how much I knew and what I needed to learn more about. Practising my Data Science skills in public is one of my intentions in 2022.