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Stressed? Busy? Excel-erate
your life This fall's coolest accessory is not a trophy handbag, a designer shoe or a pair of skinny jeans. It's a computer program sitting right there on your desktop. Sure, you use your Microsoft Excel to track business expenses and create spreadsheets by day. But legions of Excel-literates are databasing their lives, charting their wardrobes, dinner-party menus and DVD collections by night. Merlin Mann, who runs the San Francisco-based 43folders.com website and is an expert in so-called "life-hacking" time management, says that for many people, Excel is one of their two or three "killer apps." It's also a tool to manage stress. The ability to keep our myriad tasks, obligations and info bits in little boxes helps to keep us balanced, he says. "If it's on your mind, it's not getting done. It's using up space in your mind. Excel is like a robust outboard brain." As life accelerates, we Excel-erate. Once people have mastered the program in a work setting, it migrates home. "Next to e-mail, Excel is the most-used business application, more than Microsoft Word," Mann says. "It's like a chef's knife. People are so attached to it they become really fast and confident at it, it starts to become invisible." San Diego computer programmer Howie Wang uses Excel for the Thanksgiving dinner he prepares for 24 guests on a two-burner stove. "I had a huge page of scribbles -- when you're done, it just looks like trash," he says in a phone interview. "It just occurred to me it would be so much easier to use Excel." Now, with columns cross-referencing cooking times and colour-coded dishes, he and his helping friends -- who get printouts -- get everything to the table on time (you can see it at foodieview.com/blog/2005/11/03/ how-to-stay-sane-on-turkey-day/). " The best ideas are born of frustration," Wang says. "When you first hear about it, you think it's anal, but if you try it out, you'll find it simplifies things, instead of a dozen Post-it notes all over the place." Ask around and you'll find secret Excel-literates everywhere. TV executive Quincy Raby says she uses Excel to plot her entire work wardrobe and lay out an outfit the night before -- right down to undies, socks and accessories. Every time she buys a new item, it goes in there; every time she purges a piece, she deletes. She's out the door in a half-hour. " I know exactly what I have, how many shirts go with what pair of slacks, and what shoes go with what," Raby says. "Instead of mucking around in my closet, my husband and I can go for a run, or have a cup of coffee, hang out with the cat, get something to eat, and then go." A family member of mine uses Excel for party RSVP lists, so she can see at a glance how many she's cooking for. Another used it to plan her baby's feeding schedule. One friend chucked the cheesy white wedding binder tradition for a detailed wedding chart that she could read alphabetically or chronologically. Another starts a Christmas gift spreadsheet in October to track her lists and spending. No wonder other companies are catching the trend. In March, a Canadian company released Excel-esque software called The Baby Nanny to schedule and track baby's feeding, sleeping and fussing (http://www.thebabynanny.com). And Google recently introduced Google Spreadsheets, for creating and sharing spreadsheets on-line. People do love to share. In answer to my query this week for spreadsheet tales on Mann's site, more than 90 aficionados posted their favourite uses. People track their favourite TV shows and TIVO choices. A comedian named Bey tracks jokes in categories such as clean or dirty, sex, religion and readiness. Of course, there are the math brainiacs who spend their
spare time using Excel to search for prime-factorization patterns, and
lots
of
insider
vocab like "dynamic
programming." A fellow named Chris writes that he uses a decision-making process he learned in an artificial-intelligence class in college. " I've used this thing to decide on everything from which computer to buy to what apartments I should look into renting. I've even gone so far as to set up a chart of girls I could date to see which one I should be 'scientifically' pursuing. The results were actually not too far off the mark from my instincts . . . but it was still good to be sure." Most Excel-literates are wary of becoming too obsessive. Christine Hall, my Toronto friend who uses Excel to plot her Christmas gift-giving, was thinking of opening a spreadsheet this week, but held off. " Starting this early makes it seem so much less heartfelt," she says. "If I do it now it's just 'getting the task done on time and on budget.' " And
the biggest Excel-literates admit their friends keep them from nerding
out too severely. " I send the file to my friends so they can add their input in their respective columns, and then I use the information to plan out movie nights. To my friends' credit, they mock me mercilessly and don't actually fill out the chart, but I usually get enough general comments to determine what they feel like seeing." But Mann says that once you're hooked, it doesn't matter what friends think. "What, I'm not going to use Excel because you think it's dorky?" he says. San Francisco computer programmer Anil Dash, who is known on-line as an Excel "ninja," says part of the fun of using the software for "lifestyle" purposes lies in precisely that kind of rebellion. " We're wrongly taught that software is 'serious' and should only be used for practical purposes," the vice-president of blog technology company Six Apart says in an e-mail interview. "Technology is just as creative a medium as any other." Just ask the artists, including Dash's sister, who fill in Excel spreadsheet cells using the almost endless personalization and customization tools to make art. " There's a subversive element to using a business tool that way. Nothing says potential like a blank white sheet, and the Excel is compelling," he says. "Nobody thinks it's strange that graph paper makes you want to doodle; this is a digital representation of that same urge." And now, with Google Spreadsheets nipping at the heels of Microsoft's power tool, what does the future of spreadsheeting hold? " The new version of Excel supports a million rows," Dash says. "That seems like a decent limit." How to do it |
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