Author: Shir Aviv

Balance of planning & doing

I am currently building a new Excel training program, unlike any other I have created before. Like with any creative & complex project, it requires a great deal of both planning and doing (i.e. the actual work of building the product).

Too much planning and I can easily get sucked into the perfectionism black hole.

Too much doing without enough planning and I can find myself spending weeks or months barking up the wrong tree by creating something irrelevant or unnecessary.

Even after running my business for the past 13+ years, I still find it challenging to strike the right balance of planning and doing.

What usually pushes me out of that mud, is giving myself just enough space to plan out a high level road map of where I am going. I may even flesh out a few of the initial details to help get the ball rolling. However, once I find myself getting caught up in too many details, I step back and remind myself that it’s time to start building.

The best part is that taking action, and actually beginning to build something will inevitably shed light on what aspects of the project are necessary, and which are in fact irrelevant.

Starting to build even before the full picture is clear gives me the space to adapt and course correct in a way that I otherwise would not be able to do.

Stuck in the planning stage? Stuck in the doing stage? Stuck in the process of finding a balance between the two? Leave a comment or a message and I’ll see how I can help.

#planning #doing #balance #bizownerlife #productivity #efficiency #excelwell #sharetheexcellove

Stroller struggles

After 2.5 hours I finally fixed our Baby Jogger City Select double stroller. After years of wear and tear the brake mechanism finally broke. Fortunately no children were harmed!

Big thank you to Baby Jogger for sending a completely new replacement brake mechanism at NO EXTRA COST. Just one of the many reasons we love Baby Jogger, and recommend them to every parent.

Couple takeaways from the experience:

  1. There was a single point of failure in the brake cable, rendering the entire brake dysfunctional.
  2. The process of replacing the brake was not as clear or intuitive as I would have liked.
  3. Supporting your customers not only maintains trust, it also helps customers look past certain issues.

From the spreadsheet perspective:

  1. If possible, build-in redundancies or backups for a single process/calculation, so that if one fails there is another one in place to seamlessly swap in.
  2. Stress test your spreadsheets for common issues that might arise, and see if the process of fixing the problem is clear and intuitive. Create written step-by-step guides to fix, and/or bake in some extra clarity/instructions to make that process as intuitive as possible.
  3. Support your clients/stakeholders. If you make a mistake, fix it at no cost to them. Failing to do so will break their trust in you, and rightfully so.

Happy strolling!

#strollerstruggles #backup #intuitivedesign #trustisparamount #parentwisdom #excelwell #sharetheexcellove

AA Battery Test

On the way to a client training session today I considered walking to the train station, until I remembered a quick and easy NYC transit hack:

bustime.mta.info

A website that lets you see the location of buses in real time, including estimates for arrival times. The best part is that this tool passed my AA Battery Test: it was both Accurate and Accessible.

Accurate because the bus was in fact less than 1 min away from my stop, and Accessible because it took me only a few seconds to find that out.

I have found that if you pass only one of these AA tests without the other, the net result is worthless.

Fortunately, this tool helped me make a better, more informed decision to catch the bus and save valuable minutes on my journey to my in-person client training session.

Turning to spreadsheets, there are a few tips to keep in mind with regard to the AA Battery Test.

ACCURATE Tips:

  1. Leverage Formula Audit Mode (aka “Show Formulas”). This gives you a temporary view of all the formulas on your current worksheet, to help easily spot common errors and fix them.
  2. Include intentionally redundant formulas to perform the same calculation using a different approach, and check to see whether the two answers are equal. This is a great way to double check your work and help ensure you are getting the right answer.
  3. Stress test your spreadsheet to try and break it. For example, enter unexpected values into cells or try to interact with your spreadsheet in unexpected or unusual ways to see if it can handle it, and ensure you are still getting the right answers.

ACCESSIBLE Tips:

  1. Organize & structure your data well. Create backups and versions of workbooks, clearly label your folders, file names, sheet names, column headers, etc, and fundamentally lay out your data in the way Excel needs to see it. For example, for data tables always use columns as types of data, and rows as individual instances or records of that data across all the columns/data types.
  2. Format your spreadsheet well so it is free of distractions. Keep it Simple, Intuitive, Consistent, and Optimized (when it comes to formatting, be a “SICO”). I teach a 2 hour class just on this topic.
  3. Acquire and maintain a baseline of knowledge and skills to accomplish fundamental Excel tasks. In other words, be able to get what you need done, or at least know how to learn more. I also teach a multi-part class on the fundamental skills of Navigation, Formatting, and Formulas.

So the next time you find yourself working on an important spreadsheet project, ask yourself “Does this spreadsheet pass the AA Battery Test?”

If this helped you, I invite you to share the excel love with someone who could benefit from hearing it.

#mtaforthewin #excelaudit #intentionalredundancy #stresstest #excelorganization #excelwell #sharetheexcellove

Order of errand operations

As a parent of 2 young children, I can safely say that nothing is more luxurious than eating lunch by myself, outside on a beautiful day. If you’re a parent you already understand. If you aren’t, enjoy your freedom :).

But it wasn’t all fun and games for me today, I had a laundry list of errands to run. And if I wasn’t careful and highly efficient with my time, that luxurious lunch would end up biting me in the rear end. For example, if I went to Costco first, the groceries would be sitting in a hot car for too long. The strawberries and salmon probably wouldn’t appreciate that none too much.

Fortunately, I was able to optimize my time by dropping off my wife first, getting the car inspected, and then stopping by Target to drop off an old car seat. When I saw a Shake Shack in the Target shopping center, I immediately shifted gears from my original plan and proceeded to indulge in my luxurious, solitary lunch.

The point is, I knew what had to get done, and I knew my constraints (e.g. time, location, temperature requirements for the groceries, etc), and was able to work within that and ensure the correct order of errand operations for the day. Mission accomplished!

Now, in math there is also an order of operations, famously known as PEMDAS (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction). Fortunately, Excel adopted this standard instead of reinventing the wheel.

The most important element here in Excel is the parentheses, because they have the power to FORCE certain calculations to occur before others within formulas.

For me, my wife was a parentheses, and while that sounds absolutely terrible, I mean it in the most positive way possible. If I did not drive her first she would be late for her meeting, so I put her in parentheses and jumped her to the top of the errand list :).

One quick Excel point – only use parentheses in your formula if they are actually necessary. If your formula calculates correctly without them, leave them out. Too many parentheses will still work inside a formula, but they will add clutter and create unnecessary confusion.

May your errands, both in and outside of the spreadsheet, be smooth and efficient, leveraging the best possible order of operations.

#metime #errands #parentluxuries #parentwisdom #PEMDAS #ordermatters #excelwell #sharetheexcellove

Same path, new perspective

Same path, new perspective

On this beautiful spring day at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, I can’t help but marvel at the serenity of this oasis amidst the chaos of the city.

Funny thing is, I have walked this exact path before, just this past winter. Yet, not surprisingly, it looks nothing like it does today now that the flowers are blooming. I am blessed with an entirely new adventure during this different season of the year.

I have experienced this same phenomenon with many Excel projects over the years. For example, something as simple as an updated data import has dramatically impacted the results of my spreadsheet. Even my current mood and level of focus plays a major role in the way I interact with, and how I leverage the power of spreadsheets.

If you would like a completely different perspective on your current spreadsheet, from your friendly neighborhood Excel expert, leave a comment with “same path” and I’d be happy to share a new perspective.

#botanicalgardens #spring #daffodils #perspective #excelwell #sharetheexcellove