Why I embrace failure (and think you should too)

Hey! Fun fact: Before Excel came to the market in 1985, there was another popular spreadsheet program called Lotus123. But Lotus123 didn’t adapt to Microsoft Windows as fast as Excel did, solidifying Excel’s market position.

Thank goodness…“Miss Lotus” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “Miss Excel.” 😅

Join Over 22,000 Professionals Mastering Excel

Stop me if this sounds familiar…

• You wrote “Proficient in Excel” on your résumé but pray nobody makes you prove it.

• You waste hours of your day watching Excel tutorials on YouTube.

• You make #REF! errors almost every single day. 🫠

If any of this resonates, The Excelerator Course was made for you. With over 100 training videos and 50 practice files, you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of Excel like never before—just like Michael!

Workbook readers get 10% off with the code WORKBOOK10. Sign up today!

End Your Day at 5 on the Dot With Custom Stats 

Imagine this: It’s been a long day at the office. Before you can head out, you have to send a spreadsheet of costs and totals to your boss. 

Sent! You start collecting your stuff to leave…until suddenly, your boss responds: 

“This is great, but I really need to see the minimum and maximum value. Can you do that?” 🥲

Instead of combing through the data (and staying at the office one second longer), here’s how to use custom stats to surface your max and min value in seconds: 

Excel Tip 💡 The status bar in Excel is the horizontal bar located at the bottom of the Excel window.

Voila! Select any column, and you’ll find the maximum and minimum values nestled in your status bar. 

And if you want to copy the value? Simple. Just double-click the desired value before selecting a cell. Press CTRL + V and you’re all set. 

Why I Embrace Failure (And Think You Should Too)

It’s 2016, and NASA-trained engineer Mark Rober wants to prove that anybody can learn how to code. He recruits 50,000 people to complete a series of coding puzzles. 🧩

But Rober’s experiment isn’t actually about coding—it’s about failure. 

Let’s rewind. Rober divided the participants into two groups:

• Group 1 would receive the message “You have failed. Please try again” when they made a coding error.

• Group 2 would get the error message “You have failed. You’ve lost 5 points. You now have 195 points. Please try again.” 

What happened? Group 1, on average, made 12 attempts and had a success rate of 68%. Group 2 made just five attempts and had a success rate of 52%. 

I nearly fell out of my chair when I first heard about this study. Why? It shows that “negative” consequences (even arbitrary ones!) massively impact our ability to learn and persevere. Group 2 did worse because the test encouraged them to fixate on failure using a points system.

In other words: The fear of failure stops us in our tracks. 

But failure is normal in the learning process. There’s no Excel mastery without making #REF errors. There’s no dream career without enduring rejection. There’s no personal growth without tackling inner roadblocks. 

The bottom line? In real life, you don’t “lose points” when failing at something new. You gain points. Failure gives you experience and knowledge you didn’t have before. 

That’s why I embrace failure and encourage you to do the same. After all, if you knew each failure brought you five points closer to success, wouldn’t each one excite you?

• If you’re a Mac user, this transparent notes app lets you see your notes without switching tabs (perfect for Zoom meetings and interviews).

• “I do this and it works every time,” reads a comment under my video on goal setting. 📈

• How to see your calendar and inbox side-by-side, no second monitor required. 

• How to set up a macro code in Excel (beginner-friendly!).

• Throwback to my podcast with Lori Harder about how working on myself led to six-figure days. 

Thanks for being here! Here’s some Thursday motivation from creator extraordinaire Rick Rubin: 

“When your intuition tells you to do something, even if you don’t understand why, you should listen. There’s a lot more going on than your conscious mind can pick up on.”

Stay Exceling,

Kat