Why You Need to Be Your Own Data Analyst: Behaviour Analysis with Scatter Plot

As a data analyst, I am so impressed how data analysis can be used in our daily life. How we can use it to analyse our lives and behaviours to become our better selves, to live more satisfying lives, to live happier lives.

We are almost halfway through 2023. Have you made new year resolution? Then the time to evaluate our goals has approached.

How have you done so far? If you crossed almost half of them, then you are lucky! Congratulations! Maybe you are making a little progress, maybe you feel you are slowly. This is still OK. Because we mostly tend to do a loooong list and it is hard to cover all in that list in just one year. Or are you one of those who are afraid to even open and check your list?

It’s still Ok. We still have a few more months ahead of us! No drama!

I would like to discuss about behaviour development methods to achieve our goals. So what does this have to do with data analysis? What is their relation?

Before starting, this article is inspired by the book ‘Tiny Habits’ from BJ. Fogg. I would highly recommend it if you have not read it yet!

In this article, I would like to talk on how to develop new behaviours and select the golden ones with scatter plot!

The very first step is- not surprisingly-setting our goals. Our goals determine the direction we will follow. Close your eyes and imagine the best, happier version of you? What are you doing? How are you spending your time? With whom are you spending your time? Your goals may be work related, or they may be about our personal life. A more fulfilling job, being a better data analyst/scientist, eating healthier, spending more quality time with your family, etc…

Motivation is the desire to do something.

If our motivation is high, we take action towards our goals easily. But, motivation level is not stable all the time. It has ups and downs. So, we may not (should not) rely on our motivation level. This is why after writing our new year’s resolution, many people continue to follow their list for the first weeks. But, after a while, unfortunately, our motivation decreases, and it becomes difficult to spare time for the things in our list. As time passes, we end up piled-up-need-to-do-list. And we are afraid to even look at our list. And forget about the list for the rest of the year.

So, the question is what can we substitute for motivation? My answer to this is: Behaviours and System.

For example, your goal is to become a better data analyst. But I assume that you would agree with me on this goal is to abstract. We need to do it more concrete and measurable. You may ask yourself some questions. What competencies do you think you need to have? Whay do you need to learn? How long does it take to learn it? What ‘s your daily life look like? How can you make time for learning things? Make a detailed list for the things you need to learn/practice. For example, my list looks like practice SQL, practise Python, practice a data visualisation tool, study machine learning, etc… And every point in my list, has a sub list including topics to cover them.

Now, we have our target and, we have divided our target into smaller pieces. And it makes them more achievable.

Our next step is what are the behaviours required to achieve these small goals. On that step, we do not consider whether the behaviour is easy or difficult. We are just brainstorming on what behaviours may be. The longer the list, the better.

For example, your behaviours may be studying, reading books on that topic, enrolling to a class, taking online courses, working with a mentor, joining to a study group, working with the datasets in Kaggle, writing articles on the topics you have learned, going to the library every day and studying on a topic, waking up at 5 every morning to study, listening online courses on your lunch break, etc… You may create your very own mind map.

Now, we came to the most important step. In this step, we are grouping our behaviors on the previous list that we have made.

We will find our behaviour profit. What is behaviour profit?

A behaviour has two important characteristics:

• The impact of the behaviour on our goal.
• The energy we need to spend to perform that behaviour.

And, we will find the profit of our behaviour with the following formula:

Profit = Impact of behaviour — Energy spends

What we want is a high profit! In other words, we want high impact and low energy!

Let’s examine the behaviours in the following chart!

For example, learning SQL is a competency that we need both for getting a job and for becoming a better data analyst. You may make a plan to listen a 20 minute online course every day. And the energy required for 20 minutes will also be less. Then this will be on the first region of the graph!

Well, the impact for learning SQL is high, but waking up at 5 to practise it will need lots of energy. We need to put it on the second region. Continuing this process, we place all the behaviours on our list!

For us, the golden behaviours will be the ones with the highest profit. In other words, the behaviors on the first region will be our guys!

To sum up the steps we need to follow are:

• Goals setting
• Splitting your goals into smaller chunks
• Behaviour List
• Choosing the golden behaviours.

If you still have some more goals on your list, you may determine the behaviours that have higher profits with scatter plot method and start underlying your goals.

Good luck with your goals.

If you prefer, you may share your behaviour list with us! That would be inspiring for all of us!

Happy Analysing!

With Love,

Melis.

READING RECOMMENDATIONS

1. https://medium.com/@meliss85/why-you-need-to-be-your-own-data-analyst-small-wins-big-impact-4b38cdb396db
2. https://medium.com/@meliss85/why-you-need-to-be-your-own-data-analyst-discovering-the-secrets-of-the-wheel-of-life-66db49685655
3. https://medium.com/@meliss85/being-your-own-data-analyst-the-art-of-doing-nothing-3af17a501e52

REFERENCES

1. Tiny Habits, BJ. Fogg, PhD.