Spreadsheets Quotes

I diagnosed brain overload and set up a spreadsheet to analyze the situation.

How was your date with that boy?" "Which boy? There are so many. I have a spreadsheet just to keep track of them.

Business is supposed to be fun. We're supposed to love what we're doing. Don't let these old folks convince you that business is about spreadsheets and MBA's and metics and all that stuff. That's all good, but ultimately business is just about adding value to other peoples lives and getting them to pay you for it.

Business is supposed to be fun. We're supposed to love what we're doing. Don't let these old folks convince you that business is about spreadsheets and MBA's and metrics and all that stuff. That's all good, but ultimately business is just about adding value to other peoples lives and getting them to pay you for it.

Yet for some reason, we as a society have collectively decided it’s better to have millions of human beings spending years of their lives pretending to type into spreadsheets or preparing mind maps for PR meetings than freeing them to knit sweaters, play with their dogs, start a garage band, experiment with new recipes, or sit in cafés arguing about politics, and gossiping about their friends’ complex polyamorous love affairs.

Excel spreadsheets might as well be one of the most dangerous recent inventions.

Yes. I appreciate the helpful and long spreadsheet with all the many places you can't go.

My spreadsheets bring all the girls to the yard. Hi, Merit.

Come to the Dark Side.” Killian deepened his voice. “We have spreadsheets.

The book that simply demands to be read, for no good reason, is asking us to change our lives by putting aside what we usually think of as good reasons. It's asking us to stop calculating. It's asking us to do something for the plain old delight and interest of it, not because we can justify its place on the mental spreadsheet or accounting ledger (like the one Benjamin Franklin kept) by which we tote up the value of our actions.

Lottie did everything the old fashioned way, including the bookkeeping, which was fine with me since I knew nothing about accounting software anyway. To me, spreadsheets was what I did on Saturday mornings after washing my bed linen.

I have a spreadsheet of all the women I'd like to spread and sheet. Your mom is on my list. So is your grandma, may she rest in peace.

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about.

The sad spreadsheet of my life that reveals how much my debts far outweigh my assets.

What’s it like being a writer? Mostly it’s like being a child surrounded by adults. My friends have grown-up careers. They balance spreadsheets, analyze data, negotiate deals. They build things, heal patients, teach children. Meanwhile, I’m over here saying “Let’s pretend.

We’re told by this system that you are the car you drive or the size of your house or the number in your bank account. We’re taught from an early age by advertising agencies that we’re only as good as the wealth we have. It isn’t true. We’re not their slaves. We’re people. We’re not numbers on a spreadsheet. We aren’t disposable if we don’t make enough. This is our country, not theirs.

Excel suffers from an image problem. Most people assume that spreadsheet programs such as Excel are intended for accountants, analysts, financiers, scientists, mathematicians, and other geeky types. Creating a spreadsheet, sorting data, using functions, and making charts seems daunting, and best left to the nerds.

Good Stories Always Beat Good Spreadsheets” “Whether you are raising money, pitching your product to customers, selling the company, or recruiting employees, never forget that underneath all the math and the MBA bullshit talk, we are all still emotionally driven human beings. We want to attach ourselves to narratives. We don’t act because of equations. We follow our beliefs. We get behind leaders who stir our feelings. In the early days of your venture, if you find someone diving too deep into the numbers, that means they are struggling to find a reason to deeply care about you.

Fear of this uncertainty motivates people to spin their wheels for days considering all the possible outcomes, calculating them in a spreadsheet using utility cost analysis or some other fancy method that even the guy who invented it doesn't use. But all that analysis just keeps you on the sidelines. Often you're better off flipping a coin and moving in any clear direction. Once you start moving, you get new data regardless of where you're trying to go. And the new data makes the next decision and the next better than staying on the sidelines desperately trying to predict the future without that time machine.

a prerequisite for the creation of the intellectual edifice upon which your spreadsheets, air-conditioned offices and mobile phones rest was the curiosity-driven quest to understand the motions of the planets and the Earth’s place amongst the stars.

Now the line is: Forget the classics, concentrate on an education for the 21st century! Which apparently means knowing how to operate electronic devices and figure out a spreadsheet. That's not education, it's vocational training. What once were means seem to have become ends in education. And our more with-it "educators" shift with every passing wind, clutching at the latest gimmick the way drowning men do at straws.

I floundered over job listings and career discussions with headhunters, none of them appealing to me, the idea of going back to a nine-to-five job, crammed into subway cars like cattle, staring at spreadsheets all day with Micromanaging Marks and Type-A Taras hovering around me a soul-crushing prospect.

He handed me a spreadsheet of his own gear list -- everything extensively tested, accounted for and accurately weighed ... Chris' gear list resembled mine, at a base level. But there was a scientific certainty to his items, listed in precise terms and weighed down to fractions of an ounce. "You weigh your chapstick?" I cried out. "Your chapstick?

Our culture teaches us to focus on personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms. Our brains are built to help us function as members of a tribe. We are part of that tribe even when we are by ourselves, whether listening to music (that other people created), watching a basketball game on television (our own muscles tensing as the players run and jump), or preparing a spreadsheet for a sales meeting (anticipating the boss’s reactions). Most of our energy is devoted to connecting with others.

It would require careful planning and execution, but Marina always accomplished everything to which she put her mind. She made a lot of spreadsheets.

Call me anal retentive, but I like nothing more than trying to solve life’s problems with a good spreadsheet.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he jacks off to an Excel spreadsheet.

I love plans. Checklists, spreadsheets, timelines. I am literally passionate about that stuff.

If I have a spreadsheet that can, whatever, turn soup cans into gold, wouldn't I deserve an office?

Allegedly there was a Google Docs spreadsheet where it was being kept track of, but no one could agree on where it was.

The situation of the Kristang reminded me of an old TV show my sister found and binge-watched; you needed a spreadsheet to keep track of the characters, and everyone dies anyway.

Chloe, we’re gay. We can’t do math.” “Okay, well, next time I’ll come and make a spreadsheet.

Dan Bricklin, who conceived the first financial spreadsheet program, VisiCalc.

I want to be free of the spreadsheet as soon as I can.

I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached.

Oh my God. I’m so mad I missed that. Did you average the results at the end? Who won?” “Chloe, we’re gay. We can’t do math.” “Okay, well, next time I’ll come and make a spreadsheet.

If you find yourself creating a spreadsheet for a decision with a list of yes’s and no’s, pros and cons, checks and balances, why this is good or bad…forget it. If you cannot decide, the answer is no.

Solitude helps the soul remember that life and work have two completely different meanings. It reminds us that we were created for greatness in relationship with others, not task lists and spreadsheets.

Over time, managers and executives began using statistics and analysis to forecast the future, relying on databases and spreadsheets in much the same way ancient seers relied on tea leaves and goat entrails.

Over time, managers and executives began using statistics and analysis to forecast the future, relying on databases and spreadsheets in much the same way ancient seers relied on tea leaves and goat entrails. The

Brokenness exists within each channel of culture. Our role isn't merely to run reports, create spreadsheets, and show up on time. We are called to find the things that are broken and affect them in some positive way.

He may not be obsessive about it enough to log his data into a spreadsheet, but he’s mindful and aware of what he’s doing. He understands the mechanism behind charm and can often turn it on or off depending on what he wants. He has learned the type of humor and story-telling that gets a positive response in women. The last thing you can say about him was that he was born into the world with the “automatic” ability to fuck a lot of girls.

It’s the difference between utility and virtue. Many policy makers now think of education in functional terms. It’s about learning skills that will help students find employment—such as using a word processor or spreadsheet. Yet what about helping people to figure out the meaning of life? Or become good people? Or make a difference to others? Is education for a stage in life, completed once we find jobs, or should it be a lifelong pursuit?

Yes, your problem. Maybe you’re focused too much on the negatives. The negative invoices on the relationship spreadsheet.” I started to laugh, “My problem is I miss the obvious, your problem is that you pay too much attention to it.

Do you want this marriage to work or not?’ she said. ‘My spreadsheet identified –’ I interpreted Sonia’s expression as I don’t want to hear about your fucking spreadsheet. Do you, emotionally, as a whole mature person, want to live the rest of your life with Rosie and the Baby Under Development or are you going to let a computer make that decision for you, you pathetic geek? ‘Work. But I don’t think –’ ‘You think too much. Take her out to dinner and talk it over.

There are many [...] sites across the United States, entire landscapes that have been left to rot after they were no longer useful to frackers, miners, and drillers. It's a lot like how this culture treats people. It's certainly how we have been trained to treat our stuff - use it once, or until it breaks, then throw it away and buy some more. It's similar to what has been done to so many workers in the neoliberal period: they are used up and then abandoned to addiction and despair. It's what the entire carceral state is about: locking up huge sectors of the population who are more economically valuable as prison laborers and numbers on the spreadsheet of a private prison than they are as free workers.

We have invented technologies, from axes to helicopters, that boost our physical capabilities; and others, like spreadsheets, that automate complex tasks; but we have never built a generally applicable technology that can boost our intelligence.

Like any good analyst, the brain carefully evaluates these neural spreadsheets of unprocessed information to reach conclusions about the state of the visual and tactile world and the position of the body in it. And this is not as straightforward as it may sound.

These examples show that statistics are always to some extent constructed on the basis of judgements, and it would be an obvious delusion to think the full complexity of personal experience can be unambiguously coded and put into a spreadsheet or other software.

Because of the kind of programming that goes into games, they were (and still are) the most taxing form of programming. You can use a computer to crunch a bunch of numbers, sure, but spreadsheets don’t generally need sound cards and GPUs (graphics processing units).

I never "just go" with anything. I study on weekends for test that aren't happening until Wednesday. I plan out dinners for the week with Mom (on a spreadsheet). I take half a million selfies before posting the most chill-looking one. And even then I usually delete it.

I always felt that someone, a long time ago, organized the affairs of the world into areas that made sense-catagories of stuff that is perfectible, things that fit neatly in perfect bundles. The world of business, for example, is this way-line items, spreadsheets, things that add up, that can be perfected. The legal system-not always perfect, but nonetheless a mind-numbing effort to actually write down all kinds of laws and instructions that cover all aspects of being human, a kind of umbrella code of conduct we should all follow. Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. But after this someone got through organizing everything just perfectly, he (or probably a she) was left with a bunch of stuff that didn't fit anywhere-things in a shoe box that had to go somewhere. So in desperation this person threw up her arms and said, 'OK! Fine. All the rest of this stuff that isn't perfectible, that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else, will just have to be piled into this last, rather large, tattered box that we can sort of push behind the couch. Maybe later we can come back and figure where it all is supposed to fit in. Let's label the box ART.' The problem was thankfully never fixed, and in time the box overflowed as more and more art piled up. I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. The have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. Art is all just perfectly imperfect. Once the word ART enters the description of what you're up to , it is almost getting a hall pass from perfection. It thankfully releases us from any expectation of perfection. In relation to my own work not being perfect, I just always point to the tattered box behind the couch and mention the word ART, and people seem to understand and let you off the hook about being perfect a go back to their business.

Unlike most CEOs, when trying something new, Jeff Bezos and his senior team (known as the S Team) don’t try to develop elaborate financial projections or return on investment calculations. “You can’t put into a spreadsheet how people are going to behave around a new product,” Bezos will say.

If I could perform scansion on the Aeneid, if I could build a macro in an Excel spreadsheet, if I could spend the last nine birthdays and Christmases and New Year’s Eves alone, then I’m sure I could manage to organize a delightful festive lunch for thirty people on a budget of ten pounds per capita.

A monumental decision such as starting a family requires persuasive dissertations, licences, spreadsheets and field research. That's what I assumed until one night when we were lying in bed and, if I recall correctly, I asked Tracy if we were ready to have a family now, and she said sure. That was it.

everyone makes mistakes, but those mistakes are typically more on the order of forgetting to pay a phone bill, or leaving the oven on for a couple hours after dinner, or entering the wrong number into a spreadsheet. Perpetuating a multibillion-dollar fraud over a period of decades is something entirely different.

So ... you like her, Gabe?' Lauren pressed. 'Yes,' he answered, starting work on his spreadsheet again in an effort to stave off more questions. 'She's great, isn't she?' Shit. A smile tugged at his mouth and Lauren was standing right next to him. No question she could see it. He tried to cover himself by changing the subject.

Me: I’m glad we never had to resort to robbing banks for money. You’d be a terrible accomplice. Georgia: Yes, remember that. Me = terrible accomplice. Me: Tell me something I don’t already know. If you were a hooker, you’d probably track your payments on an Excel spreadsheet and claim them on your taxes. (Add terrible hooker to the list.) Georgia: Whatever. I’d be the most organized hooker. I’d get one of those credit card swipe-y things. Me: When is the right time to complete the transaction in that scenario? Georgia: I think they’d swipe before, and sign their PayPal receipt after. Me: Prostitute Georgia is classy AF. Georgia: I know, right?

These days, choosing discomfort looks more like doing the dishes or taking the dog for a walk. It takes the form of confronting a coworker or turning down an opportunity to travel to make sure a spreadsheet gets balanced. Still, the lesson is the same; the thing you try to avoid the most is often the remedy for your own self-centeredness.

as Lynch pored over financial spreadsheets at work, he wondered: What if there really is a Z? What if the jungle had concealed such a place? Even today, the Brazilian government estimates that there are more than sixty Indian tribes that have never been contacted by outsiders. “These forests are . . . almost the only place on earth where indigenous people can survive in isolation from the rest of mankind,” John Hemming, the distinguished historian of Brazilian Indians and a former director of the Royal Geographical Society, wrote. Sydney Possuelo, who was in charge of the Brazilian department set up to protect Indian tribes, has said of these groups, “No one knows for sure who they are, where they are, how many they are, and what languages they speak.” In 2006, members of a nomadic tribe called Nukak-Makú emerged from the Amazon in Colombia and announced that they were ready to join the modern world, though they were unaware that Colombia was a country and asked if the planes overhead were on an invisible road.

Elephants are therefore left only the option of being afraid of little things that sneak up and surprise them. Such things include mice, loud noises, spreadsheet surprises and sudden disappointments, food that is on the menu but unavailable, unannounced visitors, word of the displeasure of a higher executive, bad news about the effect of NutraSweet on the human kidney.

After several rounds of interviews with Google’s founders, they offered me a job. My bank account was diminishing quickly, so it was time to get back to paid employment, and fast. In typical—and yes, annoying—MBA fashion, I made a spreadsheet and listed my various opportunities in the rows and my selection criteria in the columns. I compared the roles, the level of responsibility, and so on. My heart wanted to join Google in its mission to provide the world with access to information, but in the spreadsheet game, the Google job fared the worst by far. I went back to Eric and explained my dilemma. The other companies were recruiting me for real jobs with teams to run and goals to hit. At Google, I would be the first “business unit general manager,” which sounded great except for the glaring fact that Google had no business units and therefore nothing to actually manage. Not only was the role lower in level than my other options, but it was entirely unclear what the job was in the first place. Eric responded with perhaps the best piece of career advice that I have ever heard. He covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). Then he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job—fast growth. When

Four years of fussing over spreadsheets until my eyes hurt and kissing egotistical traders’ asses in hopes that I could count on a good word come promotion time, staying late to cover for other risk analysts, planning team-building activities that didn’t involve used bowling shoes and all-you-can-eat MSG-laden buffets, and just like that, none of it matters. With one impromptu fifteen-minute meeting, I’m officially unemployed.

When salespeople lead with their product or service, it is impossible to be perceived as consultants or trusted advisors. It makes it as clear as day that the salesperson believes the relationship and sale are centered on his offering, not the customer and its needs. It’s as if the salesperson is begging the customer to put his offering’s features and price on a spreadsheet to be compared against every competitors’ features and price.

If this doesn’t make sense, once again, don’t worry. It doesn’t. It’s a plan designed by nerds who like looking at spreadsheets so much that they figured everyone else would enjoy it as well,*81 and that it might be a good way to determine who is permitted to live and die in America. It isn’t a plan designed by anyone who has ever gone hungry to feed their kids or anyone who lives in Section 8 housing or anyone who has ever been to prison.

But our general attitude was: The FBI’s not afraid of haystacks. We’re that good, we’re that strong, that is who we are—we do hard stuff better than anybody. If FBI agents have to take each stalk of hay off that stack, inspect it individually, and replace it precisely where it was before, we will goddamn do that, and for your convenience also provide you with a spreadsheet by four o’clock this afternoon that tallies all stalks of hay that were inspected in the last twelve hours.

Spreadsheets can model the historic frequency of big stock market declines. But they can’t model the feeling of coming home, looking at your kids, and wondering if you’ve made a mistake that will impact their lives. Studying history makes you feel like you understand something. But until you’ve lived through it and personally felt its consequences, you may not understand it enough to change your behavior. We all think we know how the world works. But we’ve all only experienced a tiny sliver of it.

For the psychologist Paul Bloom, this is a huge downside. Empathy, he argues, focuses our attention on single individuals, leading us to become both parochial and insensitive to scale.62 As Bertrand Russell is often reported to have said, “The mark of a civilized man is the capacity to read a column of numbers and weep,”63 but few of us are capable of truly feeling statistics in this way. If only we could be moved more by our heads than our hearts, we could do a lot more good. And yet the incentives to show empathy and spontaneous compassion are overwhelming. Think about it: Which kind of people are likely to make better friends, coworkers, and spouses—“calculators” who manage their generosity with a spreadsheet, or “emoters” who simply can’t help being moved to help people right in front of them? Sensing that emoters, rather than calculators, are generally preferred as allies, our brains are keen to advertise that we are emoters. Spontaneous generosity may not be the most effective way to improve human welfare on a global scale, but it’s effective where our ancestors needed it to be: at finding mates and building a strong network of allies.

The Seven Rules Spreadsheet — Being polite and respectful is always a good idea — If you look or sound different you won’t fit in — Conversation doesn’t just exchange Facts – it conveys how you’re feeling — You learn by making mistakes — Not everyone who is nice to me is my friend — It is better to be too diplomatic than too honest — Rules change depending on the situation and the person you are speaking to And, Rule Eight: Use the Rules to help with difficulties, to make life easier, to understand what’s acceptable, to enhance your strengths, but after that . . . do things your way.

add a note briefly describing what they have just been doing whether its checking email, browsing Facebook, creating a spreadsheet, or eating lunch. After a week of doing this regularly, you can start to have a clear picture of how you use your time and make modifications to be more productive. Compare week by week progress easily and see how much your productivity has improved since you started tracking your time. It may seem tedious at first to make a note every 15 to 30 minutes but Evernote is so easy to use and it’s really quite a quick process (especially if you just make a quick voice memo). Be

tip for applying this learning: To get people to “fall in love” with your ideas, don’t solely rely on numbers and data. People can tune out this type of input relatively easily. But if you communicate with a story or experience, you create an emotion. Start your next meeting with a story instead of a spreadsheet. Make your audience feel as well as think. Connect emotionally with them by telling a personal anecdote that reinforces the point of your presentation. Or draw upon a nostalgic shared memory. Once you inspire emotion, your listener will be less likely to disengage, and more likely to remember and respond to your message.

In Webvan’s case premature scaling was an integral part of the company culture and the prevailing venture capital “get big fast” mantra. Webvan spent $18 million to develop proprietary software and $40 million to set up its first automated warehouse before it had shipped a single item. Premature scaling had dire consequences since Webvan’s spending was on a scale that ensures it will be taught in business school case studies for years to come. As customer behavior continued to differ from the predictions in Webvan’s business plan, the company slowly realized it had overbuilt and over-designed. The business model made sense only at the high volumes predicted on the spreadsheet.

Stop Telling Yourself You’re Not Ready As we noted yesterday, we fear the unknown. For example, in our personal lives, we hesitate before saying hello to strangers. We immediately call a plumber before trying to fix plumbing problems on our own. We stick to the same grocery stores rather than visiting new stores. We gravitate toward the familiar. In our professional lives, we shy away from taking on unfamiliar projects. We cringe at the thought of creating new spreadsheets and reports for our bosses. We balk at branching out into new avenues of business. Instead, we remain in our comfort zones. There, after all, the risk of failure is minimal. One of the biggest reasons we do this is because we believe we’re unready to tackle new activities. We feel we lack the practical expertise to handle new projects with poise and effectiveness. We feel we lack the knowledge to know what we’re doing. In other words, we tell ourselves that we’re not 100% ready. This assumption stems from a basic and common fallacy: that we must be 100% prepared if we hope to perform a given task effectively. In reality, that’s untrue. The truth is, you’ll rarely be 100% ready for anything life throws at you. Individuals who have achieved success in their respective fields claim their success is a reflection of their persistence and grit, and an ability to adapt to their circumstances. It is not dictated by whether the individual has achieved mastery in any particular area.

Your purpose is the lens through which you filter all your business decisions, from the tiny to the monumental. We’re talking about who you work with, what you offer, where you focus your time and energy, and even how you define your audience. Determining the unique purpose that underpins your company of one isn’t always a quick or easy process, and there’s no spreadsheet that can crunch some numbers and spit out the answer. Figuring out your purpose requires actual reflection on both your own desires and the audience you want to serve. After all, doing business boils down to serving others in a mutually beneficial way. Customers give you money, gratitude, and a shared passion, and you address their problems by applying your unique skills and knowledge to what you sell them.

Then they disposed of her. Says so right in the records: ‘disposed.’ Gassed her with achlys-9, put her in an oven, pumped her ash into the sea. They didn’t even give her a name, just a number. Not because she was a thief or a murderer or had violated any man’s or woman’s rights, but because she was a Red who dared love a Gold. My selfish love killed her. “It wasn’t like your wife, Darrow. I didn’t watch mine die. I didn’t see Golds come into my world and ruin it. Instead I felt the coldness of the system swallow the only thing I lived for. A Copper pressing buttons, filling out a spreadsheet. A Brown twisting a knob to release gas. They killed my wife. But they won’t ever think so. She’s not a memory in their mind. She’s a statistic. It’s as if she never existed. Some ghost I loved but no one else ever saw. That’s what Society does—spread the blame so there is no villain, so it’s futile to even begin to find a villain, to find justice. It’s just machinery. Processes. And it rumbles on, inexorable till a whole generation rises that will throw themselves on the gears.

Specialist or Strategist? Isn’t it true that the more you practice, the better you get? Yes, but, and this bears repeating, the intuitive mastery we are striving for is not brilliant skill at predictable tasks. As the late science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, pointed out, specialization is for insects. Humans need the mystifying ability to cope with the unpredictable and ambiguous challenges posed by thinking adversaries in the real world. Since kendo masters practice hard, don’t we need to put in long hours to develop super competence? The answer is absolutely yes. However, sixteen hours at the office doing the same things day after day simply make you a workaholic (and very likely a micromanager); they do not per se confer an intuitive skill useful in competitive situations. Tom Peters suggests that you can spot who is going to do great things by what they do on airplanes. They don’t pull out the laptop and grind spreadsheets. Instead, they “read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the umpteenth time,” or pick up insights on human behavior from the great novelists.

The most common criticism of the spread was that it detached policy debate from the real world, that nobody used language the way that these debaters did, save perhaps for auctioneers. But even adolescents knew this wasn't true, that corporate persons deployed a version of the spread all the time: for they heard the spoken warnings at the end of the increasingly common television commercials for prescription drugs, when risk information was disclosed at a speed designed to make it difficult to comprehend; they heard the list of rules and caveats read rapid-fire at the end of promotions on the radio; they were at least vaguely familiar with the 'fine print' one received from financial institutions and health-insurance companies; the last thing one was supposed to do with these thousands of words was comprehend them. These types of disclosure were designed to conceal; they exposed you to information that, should you challenge the institution in question, would be treated like a 'dropped argument' in a fast round of debate - you have already conceded the validity of the point by failing to address it when it was presented. It's no excuse that you didn't have the time. Even before the twenty-four hour news cycle, Twitter storms, algorithmic trading, spreadsheets, the DDoS attack, Americans were getting 'spread' in their daily lives; meanwhile, their politicians went on speaking slowly, slowly about values utterly disconnected from their policies.

Well, Gordon assigned me to write a major piece of software for the Apple Macintosh. Financial spreadsheet, accounting, that sort of thing, powerful, easy to use, lots of graphics. I asked him exactly what he wanted in it, and he just said, ‘Everything. I want the top piece of all-singing, all-dancing business software for that machine.’ And being of a slightly whimsical turn of mind I took him literally. “You see, a pattern of numbers can represent anything you like, can be used to map any surface, or modulate any dynamic process—and so on. And any set of company accounts are, in the end, just a pattern of numbers. So I sat down and wrote a program that’ll take those numbers and do what you like with them. If you just want a bar graph it’ll do them as a bar graph, if you want them as a pie chart or scatter graph it’ll do them as a pie chart or scatter graph. If you want dancing girls jumping out of the pie chart in order to distract attention from the figures the pie chart actually represents, then the program will do that as well. Or you can turn your figures into, for instance, a flock of seagulls, and the formation they fly in and the way in which the wings of each gull beat will be determined by the performance of each division of your company. Great for producing animated corporate logos that actually mean something. “But the silliest feature of all was that if you wanted your company accounts represented as a piece of music, it could do that as well. Well, I thought it was silly. The corporate world went bananas over it.

This brings us to the third villain of decision making: short-term emotion. When we’ve got a difficult decision to make, our feelings churn. We replay the same arguments in our head. We agonize about our circumstances. We change our minds from day to day. If our decision was represented on a spreadsheet, none of the numbers would be changing—there’s no new information being added—but it doesn’t feel that way in our heads. We have kicked up so much dust that we can’t see the way forward. In those moments, what we need most is perspective.

the third villain of decision making: short-term emotion. When we’ve got a difficult decision to make, our feelings churn. We replay the same arguments in our head. We agonize about our circumstances. We change our minds from day to day. If our decision was represented on a spreadsheet, none of the numbers would be changing—there’s no new information being added—but it doesn’t feel that way in our heads. We have kicked up so much dust that we can’t see the way forward. In those moments, what we need most is perspective.

If Auto Fill is the Japanese throwing star of spreadsheets, then making charts surely is the equivalent of Japanese calligraphy. With just a few clicks of the mouse, it’s possible to turn your raw data into visual presentations that will impress all who come near.

Google Drive has many uses. However, if I had to name the killer feature, it would be the ability to instantly create or edit online documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other types of files from any Web browser connected to the Internet. It’s a cheap, quick and effective substitute for Microsoft Office.

Whether we understand work spiritually depends in large part on whether we understand the economy spiritually. If we view the economy materialistically, thinking that economics is just about numbers on spreadsheets and arcane policy issues, we’ll tend to view work materialistically. On the other hand, if we have the vision to see that the economy is really a moral system, a vast web of human relationships where people exchange their work with one another, we’ll tend to see the spiritual dignity and meaning of our work. That’s why dramatic economic changes, like the ones we’re all going through right now, make people especially likely to despiritualize their work. At such times, the older economic systems and institutions that had embodied the spirituality of work for earlier generations become obsolete. We lose the sense that our work is part of a greater social whole that has dignity and purpose. As a result, our own work loses its sense of dignity and purpose.

Duties were allocated and their meeting was adjourned until after the second honey trap by Ava. Angelina and Felicity would stay at base HQ and download data and run the company and thoroughly go through all accounts retrieved from the husband’s computers. It would be put into separate files for each husband, heavily encrypted and stored on a remote hard drive and a back up made daily on the company server. All figures would be inputted into excel spreadsheets and final figures would determine of each mans financial worth

I wish that, the way secret manuscripts ought to, the thing arrived on our laps bound in Moroccan leather, dusty and smelling of Muscilin and old fly-tying capes. That it was penned in permanent ink, calligraphied almost, in a neat and precise hand, filled with hand-drawn maps dotted with X spots and question marks, and with watercolour sketches instead of snapshots. Alas, no, it came in a much more contemporary and prosaic fashion, by email and as a spreadsheet file. Nevertheless, it had Gazza and me drooling with anticipation, because what it contained was priceless, so never mind the banal form and packaging.

Meetings with Cook could be terrifying. He exuded a Zenlike calm and didn’t waste words. “Talk about your numbers. Put your spreadsheet up,” he’d say as he nursed a Mountain Dew. (Some staffers wondered why he wasn’t bouncing off the walls from the caffeine.) When Cook turned the spotlight on someone, he hammered them with questions until he was satisfied. “Why is that?” “What do you mean?” “I don’t understand. Why are you not making it clear?” He was known to ask the same exact question 10 times in a row.

Tim Cook was a master of spreadsheets, not innovation. Since Cook had taken charge, legions of young MBAs had been hired to help feed the new CEO’s love of data crunching. For Christensen, that was a huge red flag. “When we teach people to be data-driven, we condemn them to take action when the game is over because there’s no data about the future,” said Christensen, adding facetiously that when he died, he planned to ask God why he only made data available about the past.

Anyway, it's a good thing we're human. We design business spreadsheets, paint programs, and word processing equipment. So that tells you where we're at as a species. What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?

If you’re an endomorph or you want to accelerate fat loss, decrease the carbs, and increase the protein (40% carbs, 40% protein, and 20% fat is super-popular among fitness models and physique athletes). Using nutrition tracking spreadsheets or software makes calculating your macronutrient ratios a cinch! But if you make sure to eat a lean protein, a fibrous vegetable, and a natural starchy carb with every meal, your numbers will be in the ballpark, automatically!

The leadership of engagement begins by reconnecting to the physicality and the people of a company, not simply its spreadsheet. It all begins in the workplace.

For example, assume you’re considering a setup where the stop-loss exit is $3.54, and the current price is $3.62. Taking the $140 maximum allowed loss we calculated above, divide that by $0.08 ($3.62 - $3.54 = $0.08), and you get 1,750 as your maximum position size (140/.08 = 1750).     I’ve provided an Excel spreadsheet that will quickly

Sports are what we watch when we just can’t look at another spreadsheet. They’re what we use when we need to get away from our lives for a little bit. Every human needs the escape, and sports provides this splendidly.

But radio, too, has come to rely more on data, and now when label executives pitch a station, they’re likely to come armed with spreadsheets.

Over the past year, as I have been working with the global tax-accounting firm KPMG to help their tax auditors and managers become happier, I began to realize that many of the employees were suffering from an unfortunate problem. Many of them had to spend 8 to 14 hours a day scanning tax forms for errors, and as they did, their brains were becoming wired to look for mistakes. This made them very good at their jobs, but they were getting so expert at seeing errors and potential pitfalls that this habit started to spill over into other areas of their lives. Like the Tetris players who suddenly saw those blocks everywhere, these accountants experienced each day as a tax audit, always scanning the world for the worst. As you can imagine, this was no picnic, and what’s more, it was undermining their relationships at work and at home. In performance reviews, they noticed only the faults of their team members, never the strengths. When they went home to their families, they noticed only the C’s on their kids’ report cards, never the A’s. When they ate at restaurants, they could only notice that the potatoes were underdone—never that the steak was cooked perfectly. One tax auditor confided that he had been very depressed over the past quarter. As we discussed why, he mentioned in passing that one day during a break at work he had made an Excel spreadsheet listing all the mistakes his wife had made over the past six weeks. Imagine the reaction of his wife (or soon to be ex wife) when he brought that list of faults home in an attempt to make things better. Tax auditors are far from the only ones who get stuck in this

ADOBE ACROBAT 6.0 73 Section Eight: Manipulating Tagged PDF Structural Elements 6 Click OK. The Progress dialog box that appears as Acrobat 6.0 Professional creates the PDF document Acrobat 6.0 Professional opens each application and converts the document to an accessible PDF document. A PDF document created from a Microsoft Word document, a Microsoft PowerPoint document, and a Microsoft Excel document The tags tree contains a tag and three tags representing the three combined documents. In the previous example, the author correctly tagged the text in the slide presentation and the table in the spreadsheet. Perform a Full Check on combined documents to ensure that all structural elements have been made accessible. Options for combining documents If you choose to combine PDF documents

The whales are a company asset on the ledgers—difficult to replace, of course, but ultimately a matter for spreadsheets.

Stated simply, an Excel spreadsheet, or more likely a proliferation of these spreadsheets, is ill-suited for the longer-term data management and analysis required by Six Sigma teams.

Many policy makers now think of education in functional terms. It’s about learning skills that will help students find employment—such as using a word processor or spreadsheet. Yet what about helping people to figure out the meaning of life? Or become good people? Or make a difference to others? Is education for a stage in life, completed once we find jobs, or should it be a lifelong pursuit?

The reality is your bosses or clients never ask for fastest spreadsheets. They ask for most usable, accurate and simple ones.

Typically, the most valuable knowledge workers are the ones who thrive in the straitjacketed world of corporate process, by building deep expertise in a narrow set of skills. (“Morty? He’s our spreadsheet guy. Vicki? She’s our warehouse go-to. Pete? He runs the basketball pool.”) They don’t seek mobility; organizational status quo is where they excel. Great companies such as IBM, General Electric, General Motors, and Johnson & Johnson offer management tracks for people with the greatest potential, whereby these stars rotate in and out of different roles every two years or so. But this approach emphasizes the development of management skills, not technical ones. As a result, most knowledge workers in traditional environments develop deep technical expertise but little breadth, or broad