Celebrate your screw-ups 💁

Hey! In last week’s newsletter I asked, “What’s your worst Excel advice?” and some of your responses were scary good. Here are some honorable mentions:

• “CSV files are super reliable”

• “The more tabs open, the better”

• “Your boss won’t mind if you send them a file named ‘Sheet 1’”

I’ll let this GIF sum up how I feel about you doing any of these things 😅

Calculate Percentages in Excel

Are you still calculating percentages like this? 👇

If so, I’ve got a little-known Excel tip for calculating percentages that’ll make your life much easier. I posted a video on this and one person commented, “I swear as soon as I start feeling good about Excel, someone shows me I know nothing.” LOL. I am here to help!

There you have it. Now you’re one step closer to mastering Excel 😎 (and it only took two minutes to learn!).

Celebrating Your Screw Ups

So, you messed up.

Maybe you accidentally deleted your company’s confidential files (calling myself out here 🫠). Maybe you got fired. Or maybe during your HBO Max internship, you sent a rogue email to a sizable portion of the customer base (true story).

Whatever it was, failure is almost never a warm and fuzzy feeling. The last thing you want to do is crawl out from under your rock to celebrate. But trust me—there’s value in honoring your screw-ups.

My perspective on this shifted when I learned how Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, approaches her failures.

She said, “My dad used to encourage my brother and me to fail growing up. He would ask us at the dinner table, ‘What did you fail at this week?’ And if I didn’t have something to tell him, he’d be disappointed…failure became about not trying, versus the outcome.”

That’s when I realized: Failure means you went for it—and that’s worth celebrating.

After all, if you knew that accomplishing [insert dream here] would require at least 99 failures, wouldn’t each one inspire you?

And hey—this doesn’t mean failure won’t sting (it most certainly did when someone corrected my Excel presentation live in 2018). Instead, this is just a reminder that a screw-up is not a setback.

Because here’s the truth: The journey to reaching your goal isn’t all up and to the right. It’s more like a spiral upwards full of wins and losses, where each failure and success compounds.

And as long as you’re moving forward—failures and all!—that’s what counts.

• To quit or not to quit. If you’re contemplating leaving your job, this guide will help you navigate the decision. 💼

• Loved this article on how to build an online presence that works for you instead of against you!

• Ever wonder which day of the week you’re most productive? What about how many checklist items you complete week over week? Office Otter tracks these metrics (and more!) automatically. Start taking stock of your tasks and your time here.*

• This thread is packed with great tips on how to be more creative (definitely going to try out “The Evil Twin” technique 👀).

• Few things are as life-changing as knowing how to color-code your Outlook inbox.

• Are you in your budgeting era? 💸 Here are four (free) Google Sheets budget templates.

• The Hustle is a daily newsletter on a mission to tell you about the growth, trends, and innovation driving business and tech news. Want to stay informed and have some fun? Get The Hustle in your inbox.

*This is sponsored advertising content.

If you type “doc.new” into your browser, Google Docs will automatically create a new document for you in seconds. 😌 Who doesn’t love a shortcut?!

Stay Excelent,

Kat