Okay who here just types numbers into boxes
Welcome to the spreadsheets class. We meet once a week, and today is the first lesson. I want to spend it on one idea, because the rest of the course sits on top of it: you have to know your question before you open the sheet. Everything after this builds on that.
Most people do not really have a spreadsheet problem. They have a question problem. You open a blank sheet and it frightens you, not because spreadsheets are hard, but because there is no question living in it yet. A blank grid does not know what you want from it. Neither do you, half the time, and so you end up typing numbers into boxes.
Start with the question, not the sheet
Before you open a thing, say your question out loud. A real sentence. Not "I should track spending," but something more like:
- "How much did we spend on groceries last month compared to the month before?"
- "Which of my three kids' activities is actually costing me the most?"
- "Am I actually saving anything or just moving money around?"
Notice that none of those is "make a budget." Making a budget is a task. Knowing where your money went in December is a question. Questions are what spreadsheets do well. Tasks are what leave you staring at a blank sheet for twenty minutes before you close the laptop.
Write your question on a sticky note if you must. I mean it. Stick it on the monitor. When you get lost later, and you will, that little note is what brings you back.
A small at-home exercise
Try this before our next session. It takes ten minutes:
- Pick one real question you have about your own life right now. Money, time, meal planning, whatever it is. Something you genuinely do not know the answer to.
- Open a blank sheet.
- In row 1, type column headers that would let you answer that question. Just headers. No data yet.
- Stop there. Do not fill anything in. Just look at whether the headers would answer your question if they were full of real numbers.
That is all. If your headers do not get you to an answer, that too is useful. It means the question needs to get more specific, and that is fine. That is normal. That is most of week one for everyone who has ever done this.
Turn on autosave now, while you're thinking about it
While you have the sheet open for that exercise, go find the autosave toggle and turn it on. Right now. I will wait.
I say this every course, and I will keep saying it. Manual saving is a bet against toddlers, and the toddlers win. Mine did, plain as day, with a cup of apple juice and a keyboard, and I lost about twenty minutes of formula work I had no wish to redo that day. Autosave went on within the hour, and it has not come off since.
If you are on a shared or public computer, then of course do not leave anything with personal financial information sitting around after you are done. That part is simple good sense. But for your own device, your own file, autosave is not optional in my class. It is the one rule I truly enforce.
A word on pace
I will tell you something. A while back I had a stretch of three things back to back to back, all needing my full attention, and I ran clean out of gas. I had to cancel plans with a friend at the last minute over a text, which I hate to do, and afterward I wrote one word in the front of my little notebook: "batteries." Just a reminder to myself that I run out, same as anyone.
I mention it because this course will move in short pieces with real breaks, and that is on purpose. If today felt slow, I meant it to. We are not doing a marathon session. Spreadsheets reward patience far more than cramming, and so do people, if you ask me.
Before next time
Do the ten-minute exercise above. Headers only, no data. Bring your question and your headers next time, even if you think they are wrong. Wrong headers are still a fine place to start a real conversation.
- C