What’s the blue frog test?

Happy Thursday! It’s April Fools’ Day on Saturday, so remember to be suspicious of what people tell you over the weekend. TBT to when my friend nearly made me spit out my coffee because she texted “OMG did you mean to put that on your story?!” She got me big time with that prank. 🙃

A 🔥 Combo to Pull Unique Values

In case you need a refresh (or you’re new here, welcome! 👋) we recently covered how to identify duplicate values in Excel.

Which brings us to today: So you’ve identified your duplicate values…now you might want to compile them into a separate list to spot patterns, present information neatly, and predict trends.

Here’s an example. Imagine you’re part of your company’s Party Planning Committee (i.e., you’re Angela from The Office). The above spreadsheet has two columns that list the cities where each employee lives.

Your job is to compile these duplicates into one column to help you decide where to host the company’s upcoming holiday party (the city where the most team members live).

Sure, you could manually copy and paste them, but that’s time-consuming (and hurts your chances of getting to happy hour in time for $5 tacos and tequila 🌮).

Luckily, a simple function combo can pull these unique values into a column in seconds. My video on this tip has 140,000 views, so it’s safe to say people have found it useful—and, hopefully, you do too!

Here’s how we’d create that column:

💡 Excel Explanation: The =FILTER function filters a range of data based on defined criteria, while the =COUNTIF function counts the number of cells that hit a criterion. By combining the two, Excel *filters* the data based on if the items *counted* on list two are also on list one.

Here’s the template for this super-simple combo: =FILTER(List 1,COUNTIF(List 2),(List 1))

Write this down on a Post-It note and stick it on your computer. I promise you’ll refer to it more often than you’d think!

The Blue Frog Test

It’s fair to say my content is unique (not a lot of people dance to “Drop It Like It’s Hot” to teach Excel 🤣). This means I get a fair amount of attention online—and not all of it is positive.

It’s pretty normal for me to see a comment from a User4295 to tell me to “stop dancing” or that I’m [insert negative adjective here]. The way I deal with negativity in my comments section? The Blue Frog Test.

“Wait, Kat, what? A blue frog?”

I can explain! Imagine I called you a blue frog. Would you feel slighted and offended? Probably not, because you’re obviously NOT a blue frog. When a random person leaves a not-so-nice comment, it’s the same as them saying “blue frog!”

Because this person doesn’t know the full you, they aren’t able to fully judge your character. This dilutes their comment from something mean to something that’s just a little weird (like calling you a blue frog).

But what if a mean comment still hits an emotional chord?

For me? I get excited. That shines a light on my blind spots, revealing places where I might still need to clear out limiting beliefs. It’s these limiting beliefs that hold us back from being our full authentic selves, and when we clear them out we can show up even more powerfully.

At the end of the day, negative commenters don’t understand what it takes to do what I do (a lot of guts, courage, and persistence) because they haven’t walked a mile in my shoes.

As long as I’m blue froggin’ the haters, I can still focus on their upside—they’re pushing my video through the algorithm to someone who might need—and appreciate—it. 🫶

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Life is too short to force yourself to finish a book that’s “meh.” If you don’t enjoy it, quit it! This isn’t English class—you won’t get an F if you don’t finish the reading (something I have to remind myself of all the time).

Stay Excelent,

Kat