How I Almost Quit Data Analysis (And Why I Didn't)
Hey friend,
I want to tell you something I don’t talk about enough.
I almost quit.
Not once.
Not twice.
Multiple times.
In my first year of learning data analysis
I sat in front of my laptop staring at SQL queries that made zero sense.
I watched tutorial after tutorial.
I still couldn’t build anything on my own.
I remember thinking: maybe this just isn’t for me.
Here’s what made it worse.
I had no tech degree.
No technical background.
No one in my circle who worked in data.
Every job description I read asked for qualifications I didn’t have.
Every LinkedIn profile I compared myself to looked more impressive than mine.
I felt like I was already behind before I even started.
So why didn’t I quit?
Honestly I got desperate.
I stopped trying to learn everything.
I started trying to build one thing.
One project. One dataset.
One question I wanted to answer.
That shift changed everything.
When I stopped following tutorials and started solving real problems
I stopped feeling like a student trying to memorize syntax.
I started feeling like an analyst trying to find answers.
That’s the thing nobody tells you at the start.
The tools aren’t the hard part.
The mindset is.
Most people learning data are waiting to feel “ready” before they build.
But you never feel ready until you’ve built something.
8 years later, here’s where I am:
Senior data analyst
2 years in data consulting
93K followers teaching what I know
I look forward to Mondays
None of that happened because I’m gifted.
It happened because I stopped waiting and started building.
I’m not sharing this to impress you.
I’m sharing it because if you’re reading this newsletter, there’s a good chance you’re where I was.
Overwhelmed.
Comparing yourself.
Wondering if you’re cut out for this.
Let me remind you - You are.
This newsletter exists for one reason.
To close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Each week I’ll share one thing:
a skill
a lesson
a mindset shift
that moves you forward.
No fluff.
No theory for the sake of theory.
Just the stuff that need to do the job.
Talk soon,
Stanley
very inspiring! Infact I want to start a newsletter and share my learning experience in data analysis. What do you think? What topics needed for data analysis? python and excel or tableau?