Ever wonder how engineers can step into a company, join a development team, and start building software right away? It’s because the way a business logically builds its database, is the exact same way their brains logically think.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, your mind is constantly building a database and storing your experiences. The steps below will give you a practical setup to those experiences. Following these simple steps will optimize memory recall, and teach you how a business creates its databases!!
The Steps
- Identify the user
- Architect the data storage
- Create rules
- Populate the data
- Build your intelligence
Storing Actions for Memory Recall
Example: The mind palace
It all starts with you as a user.
Step 1: User Statement
As a user, I want to remember where I’ve put everything.
Step 2: Architect the data storage
Create a detail log during your real time experiences throughout the day. With each event throughout your day representing an entry into the Actions mind table.
| Action | Item Tag | Timestamp |
| Wakeup | Self | 9/30/2018 @ 5:30 am MT |
| Put on Shoes | Shoes | 9/30/2018 @ 5:40 am MT |
| Workout | Self | 9/30/2018 @ 6:00 am MT |
| Eat breakfast | Self | 9/30/2018 @ 8:30 am MT |
| Go to work | Self | 9/30/2018 @ 9:00 am MT |
| Go to team stand-up | Self | 9/30/2018 @ 9:45 am MT |
| Set drink down | Rockstar | 9/30/2018 @ 9:50 am MT |
NOTE: Actions can be as granular as you want them to be.
In my personal life, my actions table is very basic and logical like the one above. It’s really only representative of the things that people see. You might choose to create a “Thoughts” table, or “Feelings” table to represent what happens that no one else can see (those tables will have a lot more entries than the actions table, or at least one would hope).
Rule Creation for New Tables
During the course of your life you’re going to start to notice trends in your Actions table. For example, I randomly leave my drink container in the many different areas I traverse throughout its short life. I seem to leave my Orange Rockstar can at everyone’s desk at work. This has led me to create a new table called Remember.
Remember table info:
Columns:
- Tag Item: The item I don’t want to forget
- Location: The location of where the item is
- When: The time that I need to remember
Step 3: Create Rules
- When the action in the Actions table is “Set drink down”, I store the Tag Item as the “Item” in the Remember table.
- When the remember item is populated, I’ll blink, and store the image of the location in the “Location” column on the table
- I’ll add an estimated time to the table of when I’ll need the item. Perhaps it’s the current time + the length of my meeting?
Step 4: Populate the data
| Item | Location | When |
| Shoes | Upstairs bedroom | Tomorrow |
| Rockstar | Huddle room | 15 minutes |
Let’s pause on the actual mind palace creation, and ask the question:
How can this help me with understanding data in business?
Good question. Let’s apply the mind palace to a very practical business application. Marketing teams, listen up!
Example:
Step 1: User Statement
I am a marketer who needs to create targeted marketing campaigns for the leads in my system.
- Needs to create campaigns
- For relevant leads
Step 2: Architect the user actions
A business who wants this user to be successful would need to have the following tables available
- A marketing campaigns table (possibly titled “marketingCampaigns”)
- A leads table (possibly titled “leads”)
- A rule to tie a campaign to a lead
Table: MarketingCampaigns
| Campaign | Create Date |
| Awareness Q1 2018 | 11/01/2018 |
| Nurture Q1 2018 | 11/01/2018 |
Table: Leads
| Lead | Contact Date | Create Date |
| DataTron | 06/01/2018 | |
| RainFocus | 11/15/2015 | 01/01/2015 |
| Analytics Odyssey | 10/01/2018 |
Step 3: Create Rules
- The Awereness campaign needs to be sent to anyone who has not been contacted yet (i.e. when contact date is missing)
- The Nurturing campaign needs to be sent to those that have already been contacted, but the contact date was longer than 6 months ago
- See my article on how creating categories and tags can up your rule creation game!
Step 4: Populate your link of leads to campaigns
Table: campaignLeads
| Campaign | Lead | Send Date | Create Date |
| Awareness Q1 2018 | DataTron | 01/01/2018 | 11/01/2018 |
| Awareness Q1 2018 | Analytics Odyssey | 01/01/2018 | 11/01/2018 |
| Nurture 2018 | RainFocus | 01/01/2018 | 11/01/2018 |
Don’t forget the last step!!
Step 5: Build your intelligence
If you’ve successfully completed steps 1-4 then you’re ready to brave the Odyssey of Intelligence. In my mind palace, imagine I’m on step 4…
| Item | Location | When |
| Shoes | Upstairs bedroom | Tomorrow |
| Rockstar | Huddle room | 15 minutes |
I’m feeling tired and remember I still have half my Rockstar somewhere! The query is simple. Display the “Rockstar” rows, now grab location from the top most row. It’s as easy as that. Isn’t it?
Then why is data intelligence so hard?
This is the paradigm I’m here to tackle. I’m here to tell you that data intelligence isn’t hard. It’s simple. But you have to buy off on being data driven. Your company has to buy off on being data driven. The intelligence will come easy if the solution was architected from the beginning. However, oftentimes it is not.
The data lifecycle from identifying the user, to delivering intelligent results for strategic business decisions is a long process. It touches nearly every department in the business, and can span the course of several years. Most companies want to be more intelligent. Few take the right algorithmic approach to achieve it. True data intelligence such as Neural Networks or Logistic Regression are just a small step away. See my next blog post where we discuss data maturity and create a practical business assessment of your current analytical stage.