The title is self-descriptive, I’m commiting to the challenge of being disciplined for at least 50 days. And I will be blogging about it here :nerd_face:

To give you some context, in the next couple of paragraphs I am going to describe how it is that I decided to embark in this journey. Then I will proceed with my weekly updates, which are intended to be a kind of personal journal, but you are free to read if you want to :blush:

A Brief Intro

In the beginning of this month, July 2020, I received an email from Udacity saying that I had been accepted into the Azure Machine Learning Scholarship program, developed in colaboration with Microsoft. They even gave me a badge:

Azure Machine Learning Scholarship Badge

To make story short, during this scholarship the moderators launched something called the #50DaysofUdacity Challenge, where you commit to study the course content for 50 days for at least 30 min. a day. I loved the idea inmediately! But because I was already working on the habit of (book) reading and doing physical exercise, I decided to give a twist to this challenge. So, for me it is the #50DaysofDiscipline Challenge, where I commit for 50 days to study, read a book and do some physical exercise. And yes, I have a full time job at L’Oréal.

My Journey

At the time of this writing, I am in day 9 of the #50DaysofDiscipline Challenge.

My idea is to write weekly a brief summary of the week that just passed, so this post will be updated weekly.

  • Week 1
    • Azure Machine Learning: I completed Lesson 1 (introduction to the course) and almost all the lectures in Lesson 2 (Introduction to Machine Learning)
      I liked the content. I could refresh some basic ML concepts and learn about their implementations in Azure Machine Learning Studio.
    • Book Reading: Finished reading chapter 4 of Mastery.
    • Physical Training: Mixed some weight training with CrossFit training (at home). During the weekend I went for a bike ride and some long walks.


  • Week 2
    • Azure Machine Learning: I completed Lesson 2 and around a third of Lesson 3 (Model Training)
    • Book Reading: Read almost half of chapter 5 of Mastery.
    • Physical Training: Mixed some weight training with CrossFit training (at home). In a couple of afternoons I finally dusted my skateboard and went to a skatepark a couple of blocks from my appartment.


  • Week 3
    • Azure Machine Learning: I’m still halfway through Lesson 3 (Model Training). This is the longest lessons, with 37 sub-lessons, which included many labs in Azure.
    • Book Reading: I had difficulties finding time at night to read, sometimes being able to read for just 15 minutes. Still I got to almost finish chapter 5 of Mastery; the longest chapter in the book.
    • Physical Training: CrossFit training 4 times and light walks the rest of the week. On saturday I was able to go for a bike ride also.


  • Week 4: Things started to get complicated, sometimes working late at night and other times writing essays and getting my documents ready for my Masters applications (these include sending documents to translate).
    • Azure Machine Learning: I was able to finish Lesson 3 and started working on Lesson 4: Supervised & Unsupervised Learning.
    • Book Reading: I managed to finish chapter 5, but then I had to prioritize some other things :pensive:
    • Physical Training: I continued doing CrossFit and some weightlifting, but was not able to train everyday.


  • Week 5: I had to prioritize my applications (Graduate School) and some other things (like big projects at work and my marriage), so I have to be sincere here: I stopped working on this challenge :cry:
    However, it was a great challege and I am going to give it another try later. Still, I was able to finish the 8 lessons of the Azure Machine Learning course on time and continued training for at least 4 times a week. I miss reserving 30min-1hour everyday just to read and am looking forward to start this over again; I found it very relaxing and totally worth it.