Kathryn Walter, Senior Operations Research Analyst, Avista Corporation

When people find out I teach yoga, they sometimes ask me questions about how to get started. They might not know where to start – do they go to a studio? Can they go to a gym? Can they watch online videos? They might see certain populations, like younger women, doing yoga that makes seeing themselves joining in difficult. They might incorrectly think they need to be very flexible, have good balance, or enjoy meditating for long periods of time to survive a class. More often than you might expect, the idea of wearing yoga pants is really the thing holding them back.

This idea of wearing yoga pants to do yoga has become a bit ingrained in American culture, but this idea is quite scary for many potential yogis – What if they can’t find yoga pants their size? What if they don’t want to shell out the money for the big-name brands? What if they are men who don’t want to find out what yoga pants for men look like?

If you are someone who has asked one of these questions, the answer is the same: you don’t need yoga pants to do yoga. Just wear what works best for you. You only need to be able to move comfortably and maybe avoid clothing that could cause you to trip or flash someone. I usually wear whatever I’m already wearing that day. Admittedly, I work from home and only have video calls that show me from the shoulders up, so I’m usually wearing joggers or sweatpants. If I do change, I still might not pick the type of pants seen in yoga-related advertisements. I might simply switch from one set of sweats to another.

When people find out I do math for a living, they sometimes ask me similar questions about how they could get started incorporating more math into their work. They think they need to hire expensive consultants, get fancy software, gather and prepare a whole bunch of data, or take every course on Udemy that sounds relevant. Of course, they don’t need to do anything to get started. Like yoga, they can start where they are – instead of buying the most advanced software they’ve heard of, they can use what they have. They can try out different types of mathematical models until they find what works best for their work. With time and practice, they will figure it out.

I have similar conversations with students considering careers in math. They’ve heard that they must learn to use a specific software platform or go deep into a type of modeling in order to set themselves up for future success. Sometimes they think (and may have been told) that if they don’t absolutely love coding, they won’t go far. I disagree. I like doing yoga, and wearing pants in general is required for practicing in public. But I don’t spend my time prancing around in yoga-specific pants and trying to get really good at wearing them – whatever that would mean – without actually doing yoga in them. Similarly, I like doing math, and coding helps me do math. Solving problems is the fun part of my job, not coding the solutions.

My main coding language is VBA. That’s right. VBA. It’s the only language I’ve consistently used in every job I’ve had. For those of you who aren’t familiar with VBA, it’s about one step up from Microsoft Excel. It’s like an old pair of oversized sweatpants I’ve had since high school that I could wear for almost any yoga practice and be just fine. If I was a yoga pants influencer, I’d probably need to care more about fancy options. Luckily for me, I’m not. I focus on the practice itself when I do yoga. I figure out the pants situation as needed.

In my primary career, I’m happy to learn new tools and techniques, but I always go back to the modeling skills: What is the business problem I’m trying to solve? Which assumptions am I making? Who wants to use the results? How will they use the results? I figure out the tools and methodologies to use as I figure out the problem and the characteristics of the best solution. Maybe I do decide that I need the latest technology just like I do sometimes decide to wear pants marketed for yoga. But more often than not, I have what I need without going fancy. The results are almost always more important than what I used to create them.

The next time you might think you need fancy pants to do yoga, ask yourself why you think that. And then apply that same train of thought to why you need to go all-in on a tool or methodology before you can get started applying math to your work or building a math-based career. Start where you are with what you have, and go from there. You’ll figure it out.