Value Driven Data Science: Boost your impact. Earn what you’re worth. Rewrite your career algorithm.

[00:00:00] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Hello and welcome to Your Value Boost from Value Driven Data Science, the podcast that helps data scientists transform their technical expertise into tangible business value, career autonomy, and financial reward. I am Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and I'm here again with Colin Priest, an actuary data scientist and lecturer at the University of New South Wales to turbocharge your data science career in less time than it takes to run a simple query.
[00:00:32] In today's episode, we'll explore how unexpected hobbies and activities can make you a more effective data scientist and enhance your data science career. Welcome back, Colin.
[00:00:43] Colin Priest: Thank you for having me back again. I must have done a decent job last time.
[00:00:47] Dr Genevieve Hayes: You did a fantastic job
[00:00:49] Colin Priest: now we get to talk about other fun things. I don't only get excited about nerdy stuff.
[00:00:53] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yes, but I suspect this will take a nerdy turn somewhere along the line.
[00:00:57] Colin Priest: If I have my way.
[00:00:59] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. So when I first launched this podcast three years ago, I thought it would be a great way to learn about people I admired in the data science industry while living out my childhood dream of becoming a radio host.
[00:01:13] What I didn't expect was how much the podcasting itself would enhance my day-to-day work as a data scientist, turns out, conducting good interviews requires many of the same skills that make data scientists effective, asking the right questions, listening carefully to responses, and knowing when to dig deeper or change directions.
[00:01:37] Without realizing it, I was practicing these skills every week through my podcast. Now this is a perfect example of how activities outside of data science can strengthen the very skills data scientists need for our careers. And Colin, you've discovered something similar to this through your own interests.
[00:01:59] How have you seen this play out in your own life?
[00:02:02] Colin Priest: We were having a chat about this right before we started, and I wanna talk about two things. I wanna talk about dancing and I wanna talk about swimming. But let's start with dancing. So 15 years ago, I moved to Singapore and I needed to make friends and I needed to be active. And it's not like when I lived in Sydney. There's lots of bushland I could go hiking in and things like that. It's very urban, so I needed something urban and social, and so, all right, I'm a little bit musical.
[00:02:29] I'll take up dancing. I've always loved music and move around. So I decided to learn street Latin dancing and it's like SZA and bachata. And this is a lead follow style of dance. It's not choreographed, so it's not all set in advance. It literally is happening live when you dance. And, like most males, I learn to lead.
[00:02:51] And I very quickly learned that. I needed to up a whole bunch of my mental skills. I could sort of get the rhythm. I had a mathematical background. I could sort of memorize some moves, but while that was difficult.
[00:03:04] That was the easy bit. Now once I have to listen to the music, I have to decide what to dance next. I have to signal that to my partner. I have to watch out for the other people dancing around me 'cause it's crowded so I don't crash into them. I have to react to if my partner does something different to what I expected.
[00:03:27] And then just to add more stress to this, I have to make it fun so that partners wanna dance with me again at some point of time.
[00:03:35] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And not stand on their toes.
[00:03:37] Colin Priest: Yeah. Oh, yes, yes. Do not particularly when you're my size, step on someone's toes. And I very quickly learned, don't put your elbows out when you dance, because then when you are a westerner guy in Asia, you're taller than everybody else.
[00:03:50] And if your elbows are out, you're literally getting someone in the face. And so I had to learn to think on my feet. I had to learn to pay attention to other people and I had to learn what motivated other people because I need a partner in a partner dance. And it turned out that those skills, even though I wasn't thinking about them at the time, made me a better data scientist.
[00:04:16] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Okay.
[00:04:17] Colin Priest: That thinking on your feet. You take a report or a predictive model to the stakeholder and you start on your spiel and all of a sudden they say something, but what about which you haven't thought about at all? You have to think on your feet. The worst way to present to a stakeholder is to stick to a script and refuse to interact with them.
[00:04:38] And so I needed to learn to think on my feet. I needed to read the environment, so I was listening to the music. You're dancing should actually follow the music, not just the rhythm, but music goes up and down in terms of stress and excitement. We get to the chorus. That's usually the most exciting part.
[00:04:56] You should be doing a different set of movements. You should be reading the room in both dancing and whenever you're presenting results or recommendations. And you should be doing that live, you still prepare. I used to practice moves at home on my own, but you've still gotta read the room.
[00:05:14] So that's a good practice. And you get very quick feedback if you get it wrong in dancing. You might tread on someone else's toes, they may tread on yours and you might hear screams.
[00:05:25] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I am sorry. I'm just imagining going into a boardroom and hearing screams when you mess up with.
[00:05:32] Colin Priest: Yeah, and then motivation, like what I discovered was, particularly as a beginner, you just go through a bunch of moves you've learned and it very quickly bores your partner to death. What I found as I got better was throw in a surprise every now and again. That absolutely surprises them of what's coming next.
[00:05:52] 'cause they thought you're about to do something and you did. You led them into something different. And just the look of delight on their face when they realize that something surprising has happened. Once again, we come to dealing with stakeholders. If you are that same boring person, they're not gonna pay any attention.
[00:06:10] Oh yeah. He's saying the same thing. If you throw in something unexpected, it goes, Ooh. What did he just say? That you are truly engaging with people.
[00:06:22] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And you also mentioned you'd learned from your times swimming and as a swimming coach. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
[00:06:30] Colin Priest: Well, both things taught me something. So in swimming, it's not like running or cycling. It is much more technique driven than those. So it is closer to tennis than it would be to running or cycling. You've gotta be fair, but your technique. Makes a bigger difference than your fitness. And that's because water is much thicker than air.
[00:06:51] And what I learned was I have to stop fighting the water work more on getting the drag down. And not so much thrashing through the water, but feeling the water working with it as well. So I guess there's a big wave coming. Don't fight the wave, feel it and go. How can I just balance into that?
[00:07:11] For example I have a fairly combative personality and communication style 'cause I grew up working class and in working class culture. That's a normal thing and it's something you do with people that you have some trust with. You're actually formal with people you distrust in working class culture.
[00:07:29] But when I work, I'm normally dealing with middle class people and they're not like that. And if I communicate in a combative way, I am fighting against them. They probably, would be happy to do what I want. But if I'm doing it in a combative way that says, I'm fighting you to get this done, they're gonna push back more just to teach me a lesson.
[00:07:48] And so couple of things is like, don't assume that someone is going to do the wrong thing or argue with you. The other thing is just find what it is that they're trying to do and where they're going.
[00:08:00] Can you align what you're talking about with that so that they don't have to make a huge detour and fight against their existing momentum?
[00:08:09] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Hmm.
[00:08:10] Colin Priest: The other thing we talk about is coaching. So after swimming for a while, I started coaching. I realized I was making the same mistakes in coaching that I was making as a data analyst. I kept overloading people. So being a nerd, I loved swimming technique and I'd see someone swimming and I'd think about eight things that I want 'em to fix.
[00:08:30] But if I tell 'em eight things to fix, they're exhausted. This swimming hard, they're exhausted. They can't keep eight things in their head and fix them. And in fact, in many cases, most. Don't have the kinesthetic awareness of what their body is doing to even understand the one. So I learned two things, alright?
[00:08:46] One is one thing at a time.
[00:08:49] Don't brain dump on people. Pick the most important thing and make sure your communication is about that. The other I had to learn is that often the thing I'm trying to communicate isn't intuitive to them. So I'm telling 'em to do something and they go, well, I'm already doing it, and I'm going, no, you're not.
[00:09:05] How do I explain this now? And so I had to learn to use a lot more metaphors and analogies or explain in a very different way. So. It forced me to think through when I'm dealing with people that are very different to me, what is intuitive to me is not intuitive to them. And watch when I talk to them, what is their reaction?
[00:09:29] Do they look like they're getting it or do they not get it? And if they're not getting it, do it a different way. Find a metaphor or an analogy. And so for me, when I talk about. Marketing models that push your product instead of matching what you need. Marketing people don't always get that because they focus very much on just how do I get many sales as possible.
[00:09:51] And so I talk about an example when Facebook for a week kept trying to sell me shampoo. Now this is a podcast you can't see, but I'm bored. I have no use for shampoo. Stop trying to sell it to me. And people look at that and this has come back to that surprise thing again. Oh yeah.
[00:10:14] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And yeah, and what you're saying about only one piece of feedback at a time, I've found that myself. I have to restrain myself to not give the eight pieces of feedback, but you're better off just giving one piece of feedback, concentrating on that, and getting that changed, and then focusing on the remaining seven at a future point in time.
[00:10:33] Colin Priest: you have to give more highlight, which is the most important. So if there are feeling overloaded, oh, I'll just focus on this one that you've told me is the most important. 'cause sometimes you have to give more for compliance reasons,
[00:10:44] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I agree.
[00:10:45] Colin Priest: But tell them what's most important and why. Why should you care?
[00:10:50] Dr Genevieve Hayes: You make this one change and that'll have the biggest impact. Yeah.
[00:10:53] Colin Priest: Yeah.
[00:10:54] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So if someone doesn't have a hobby outside of work, what sort of things would you recommend they try that might have the biggest impact on their data science career?
[00:11:03] Colin Priest: You should always have something outside of work just for your own sanity and health. I've gotta say. But let's say you don't, watch people. Go and sit in the cafe and watch people and see if you can figure out what they're doing and why.
[00:11:18] Anything that gets you outside of your normal data science environment makes your brain expand and makes you link things that you wouldn't have thought to link before.
[00:11:31] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:11:32] Colin Priest: It's making you generalize. If you are too narrow, you don't generalize.
[00:11:36] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. And you become an overfitted model.
[00:11:39] Colin Priest: Yes. Oh, excellent metaphor there.
[00:11:44] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So that's a wrap for today's value boost. But if you want more insights from Colin, you're in luck. We've got a longer episode where you'll learn how to leverage LMS to become a more effective data scientist. And it's packed with no nonsense advice for turning your data skills into serious clout, cash and career freedom.
[00:12:08] You can find it now, wherever you found this episode or at your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining me again, Colin,
[00:12:16] Colin Priest: Thank you for having
[00:12:17] Dr Genevieve Hayes: and for those in the audience. Thanks for listening. I'm Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and this has been Value-Driven Data Science.