What kind of writing tasks do you do on a regular basis as a data scientist?
Whilst DS is not my explicit job title, I work closely enough with data scientists day-to-day that it’s in my interests to keep up with developments in the field.
There are 3x DS-specific “writing tasks” that let me do this (the first two are daily; the third point can be anything from daily to weekly):
1. get up at 5AM, no matter what (…sorry!)
2. spend 15–20mins on https://www.quora.com/answer
- scroll through until you hit an intriguing DS-related question;
- immediately start typing out a response/answer, and don’t stop til you’ve typed 100 words (even if it’s very vague, stream-of-consciousness ranting)
- pause to go back over and edit/neaten, until it makes sense; keep extending & detailing the argument you are making, and make reference/s to (publicly available) original, external sources for your reader to explore — before long you may find you’ve crafted a small essay on the topic
- click Submit, then copy/paste the whole question + answer over to your blog (in my case https://olisteadman.medium.com)
- publish that and you’ve generated 2x pieces of valid content
3. study The Batch and follow up by reading the source/publication in cases where the DS concept is interesting enough to spark your imagination; ideally type up your own summary/review of that source.
Hope this helps. You might find other platforms/prompts more suitable to your specific routine but, in summary, it’s important to be constantly, consistently, creating content in which you provide your own interpretive lens on a question (asked by someone on Quora) or publication (recommended by The Batch).
Some weeks I find I have surplus time & energy to go further with the academic journals; in these cases it’s always fun to scroll https://www.researcher-app.com/search?query=data%20science for anything that catches my eye. I try to publish 1x piece on Medium every morning before work, and every evening after dinner. This way, research activity bookends each day and it pays off as I’m always up to speed with latest developments.
