SDS 332: Go through the Motions

Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, ladies and gentlemen, super pumped to have you back here on the show. Very, very excited and this has been a fantastic start to the New Year. So today for me when I’m recording, this is the 3rd of January, 2020. You’re probably listening to this a bit further down the track.

And what I wanted to share with you is an interesting concept. So the previous FiveMinuteFriday episode was about a concept that I learned from Jocko Willink on his, in one of his motivational videos called “Good” and today is another concept from Jocko, which I learned in another one of his motivational videos or videos which feature him. And the concept is about going through the motions. So a bit of background, what is happening on in my life right now? Well, for the past I would say six weeks, I have been nonstop recording and working on a massive Tableau course. I know you’ve probably heard me say this and I promise I’m not saying this for marketing purpose or anything like that. I, I if you’re interested in Tableau, I hope you find amazing ways to learn. It doesn’t have to be this course.

But it just a such a big part of my life right now that, I have been fully immersed in this. Like I’ve closed myself up in a room, in Brisbane, Australia and I have barely been leaving my room, for the past literally six weeks. So this started like probably 6th or 7th of December. So yeah, so it hasn’t been six weeks, so it’s been about four weeks then, but it feels like six weeks or more. But yeah, so it was from the very start of December and I have like, I barely go outside to get some food. I go to the gym. This is a gym, really cool gym in Australia called F45. It’s like a circuit training gym. So I go there almost every day and just to take care of my body as well so that I’m not just like sitting in front of the computer all the time.

For Christmas I did go for a dinner with friends and for New Year’s I spend two nights on the Gold Coast with my brother and his friends. But apart from that I’ve been really locked. I’ve locked myself in and being focused a 100 percent focus on this. And what that comes with is like of course a lot of excitement, a lot of engagement in the activity, and dissecting Tableau. I’ve learned a lot myself and I’m very excited about the things I can share now with the students who are going to be taking this course. But at the same time it also comes with periods where I feel very tired or over it or sad or lonely or just like, I can’t take this anymore. Imagine like not seeing people for days and days and days and just working on the same thing 12 hours a day, nonstop, no weekends.

And in some points I just want to give up. I just don’t want to keep going. I just want to like throw everything away and just like go do something else completely. But I know I have a deadline. I know I have to, all of this has to be done by, well there’s two courses I’m working on. The first one has to be done by 9th of January, 10th of January, like end of 9th of January. For you it would, it’s like, cause as you’re listening to this later is probably had to have been done. Wonder if I did it or not. Probably. But so the point is I know I have to do this and there’s so much volume of material that I have to go through because it’s a certification exam and I’m like taking this certifications myself and so on.

I just know I don’t have the luxury of like stopping or giving up even for even for a week or a couple of days, let alone just completely stopping. So I have to push myself. And sometimes these motivational videos come in handy and this one thing that is being very useful to me, that I’ve learned is the title of this episode is called “Go through the motions”. And so what it’s all about is that when you feel like giving up, when you feel like you’re too tired or when you feel like you need a break or you need a rest, but at the same time in the back of your head, you know, you need to get this done. If you stop now, you’re going to be jeopardizing your own future. The future of an important project to you. A future of something that’s super important to you.

You’re going to be putting like setting yourself back, days, weeks, months or even years in some cases. Like for instance, if you’re preparing for an exam at uni, if you fail an exam, you might have to retake the whole semester. Or spend a whole year, extra year at uni, so you can really be years you might be setting yourself back. You have to keep pushing. And how do you keep pushing when you can’t keep pushing? Well, you put yourself on autopilot. For a period of time there is an ability, we all have this ability to put ourselves on complete autopilot and just go through the motions. Like just imagine you’re going to the gym. Simplest example, you’re going to the gym and you’re like, I just can’t do this. You know, I’ve been to the gym five times this week and it’s like really hectic, I just want to go home. You know, you just started the exercise and you’re like, “I want to go home”.

Well, stop thinking, put yourself on autopilot and just go through the motions. Just find like in the gym it’s the easiest because you can go through the motions pretty much with anything you do in the gym. Just like switch your brain off, stop thinking and just do those crunches or, dumbbell lifts or squats, whatever they are and just keep doing them without even thinking, just make yourself like a robot. Go through emotions and kind of like extract yourself out of the world for like an hour or whatever it takes to get through that. The other example like in more kind of mind driven tasks in front of the computer which sometimes it’s hard to go through emotions, so have that planned out. So have some activities planned where when you’re tired you got to go be able to go through the motions.

Like when I’m recording these courses of course something creative, something exciting tutorials or recording audios, videos, I can’t do that just on autopilot. But for instance, preparing datasets which I’m going to be using for recording, I can do that on autopilot. Especially if I know what the data sets are about, I have done the creative part. I just need to do the data cleaning, data preparation, data aggregation and all that stuff. I can totally sit down and do that like on autopilot without thinking much just copy pasting or, you know, looking for anomalies in data. It’s like they are usual routine stuff. So I always have or I aim to have these tasks that are autopilotable that I can when I’m tired, when it happens that I just can’t keep going, I can’t be creative, I can put myself on autopilot and get those tasks done. 

And the important thing here is that you might feel like you need a break, you need a rest, you want to give up now. Just tell yourself that you’re not going to give up now you’re going to just go through the motions now and if you really feel like you still feel like giving up tomorrow, if you still feel like you really need a break tomorrow, then you’ll take a break.

And chances are that when you get to tomorrow, because you’ve done all this groundwork with the motions, you just been doing the motions for this whole day or this whole period of time when you wanted to give up, but you didn’t because you went through the motions, you’ve done all this groundwork, it will be much easier to push through and you’ll be excited to push through and you won’t want to give up anymore and you want to want take a break. And hey, if you really need to take a break, you still feel you need to take a break the following day, well maybe it’s time to take a break. But if you feel like you can keep pushing and you keep going after that, then there you go, just go at it.

So there we go, that’s what’s been inspiring me for the past couple days since I learned it and wanted to share with you. And I hope that inspires you too. And maybe next week there’ll be something, a time where you’ll be tired, you want to give up. Just remember this. Go through the motions. Put yourself on autopilot. Have those tasks ready that you can do on autopilot, and just go through them and see what happens. And I’ll talk to you next time. Until then, happy analyzing.